‘when we are young as the time passes by nothing seems to be slow or tedious. and there is nothing faster than time, especially when we live the most precious last few years, months or hours of our life.’ “it seems to me that just yesterday i was a young man, holding my father’s hand, afraid of the sound of the hooves as the horses passed us along the way. it seems only yesterday i got married; just yesterday i became your father, my son. “oh, how fast the time passes. what would i think of if they had put in front of me a scenario of all that i would do over in the next 50 or 60 years? “i would certainly ask to add some more years to my age so that i can do all what is put in front of me — fi ght the battles, complete the engagement, share joys and sorrows, mistakes and differences and time to walk, sit and sleep and intimate acts, eat and drink, argue, smoke, wait ... etc, etc, etc! “i look back and see how many hours, days, weeks, months, and years i have been waiting for, and what is more boring and exhausting than that ...? “i waited for the train to arrive ... waited hours to get the work done, waited hours before travel, waited hours for an intimate message, or a bad cable, from a lover or an enemy, waited for hours for the moment of separation, the moment of death of a friend or relative. “and when we break down all the moments of our lives to the smallest parts of the quagmire, all the time we spent on trifl e issues, repeating the same mistakes dozens of times, as if we do not learn, or do not know how to learn. “sometimes things seem to be very far away, as if years have been numbered by the hundreds, and i do not know where those years have gone by, and what happened to my dozens of dreams and aspirations, and did they all come true, some or none of them? “and now i write to you, my son, and the fall (autumn) of my life is hastily accepted, and the papers about my health are scattered all over the place around me, and i do not know and when ‘my’ winter will come and i will be laid to rest under a blanket of ice to keep my body in tact but sans spirit. “when i started the journey of my life there were no keys, and in the midst of my life i found a pile of them … now i have no key and no lock to open what is left of my life …. period.” this is the page from my next article, ‘abdullatif the armenian’. we congratulate all christians and lovers of peace on the birthday of the messenger of love and peace. email:
