I am the French boy who lost his mom in the theatre when some people opened fire for reasons unknown to both us and them. I am the teenager from Baghdad who lost his hand in a blast because he was out watching a game of football. I am the mother from Brussels who saw her son carried away under a white blanket which would be a symbol of her life from here on, because she was audacious enough to let him go out to meet his friends on a spring afternoon. I am the woman from Syria who has had herself torn to shreds by men who claim to be Gods just because I am a woman. I am the unborn from Jakarta who never got to see the light of day.

I am the human who has lived at a time when you have decided that you want our blood to mark your supremacy on the world. I am the human who watches television every night and surfs through and away from the news channels as fast as he can so that he doesn’t need to hear about another bombing, another tragedy in some corner of the world. I am the human who fears to step into crowded places. I am the human who calls his wife every couple of hours asking how her day is going, craving to hear her voice and know that she is still alive. I am the human you, you monsters have left in a perpetual state of terror.

So, terrorists of the world, the self-proclaimed righteous men of God, I want to tell you this, today. You can take all the guns in the world and you can fire them straight at us but with every bullet that hits an innocent human being, your God will die a little more. You see, love and blood have the same color. Red.

And believe me when I tell you, the Red of our love runs far deeper than the Red of the blood that you so easily spill on our floors.

I remember when you entered schools in Peshawar and shot down innocent students, children for God’s sake and you said that you did it because these children were the weakest points of your enemies and you hit where it hurt the most. You were right. These children are our weakest points. It is just sad that your parents have to wake up every single day with the guilt of letting you live to become the demons that you have. I feel for them.

The point of this letter is not to tell you about how much terror you have caused because that will give you pleasure. Instead, I’ll tell you exactly what is happening. You are creating two worlds. One, the bubble you live in. The second, the bubble which will engulf you. What you do not realise is that no matter what you do, Paris will still see young hearts standing in a long embrace beyond the bloodshed that surrounds them. You will see children flocking to school despite what you did in Peshawar. You will see Brussels and Ankara and Baghdad and every other place returning to the exact same state as it was before you thought you could take your filthy hands and try to destroy them.

The reason for this is simple – You. Are. Insignificant.

You do not matter to us; you are like pests – small and immaterial. Come what may, we have and we will always stand together and fight. We will fight for ourselves, for our love and for the tag of being called human beings.

You know, I sometimes feel worse for you than the ones you put to sleep. They lost their bodies to your bullets but you had lost your souls long, long ago. You see, the money that you spent to buy ammunition was a huge lot. But it couldn’t help you get a spine. Joke’s on you, really.

I am the human from India writing this letter to you. I have tears thinking of everything that is wrong with this world. But dear terrorist, I’ll not give you the satisfaction of believing for one moment, that you have caused any of this. One day, somewhere down the line, you yourself will realise what you have done. Maybe your child will walk in and ask you why you did what you did. And in his eyes, you will see yourself as you are – a disgrace to humanity. And you will live the rest of your life with that guilt.

Maybe that will be your greatest sentence.

—

Graffiti in Berlin by Nazli Koca, March 2016

Sayan Sen is a 19-year-old from Kolkata, India, with a deep affection for puns and football. Currently pursuing Electrical Engineering, he loves poetry and loses his heart to all those who offer him food. He makes homes out of quotes and never says no to stargazing and 3 A.M heart-talks.

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