#11: The One with ‘The Soul of My Soul’

Reflections on life on my 35th birthday.

Dear friend,

How are you? And how is your beautiful heart?

It’s almost 3am. Today is my 35th birthday. The children are sleeping, the house smells of freshly baked cake, Christmas lights are twinkling all up and down our street as people will awaken to another Christmas Eve, and I truly am grateful - so grateful -  to have had another year of life and so grateful to live with purpose and passion with a heart that is alive.

Today is my 35th birthday and I would normally come to you, as most writers do, with a post filled with my reflections and life learnings over the course of my life so far. But this is not what I feel called to, although perhaps such a post will come at a later time. Right now, I want to share what’s in my heart and on my mind. I hope you can receive this with an open heart and mind, too.

Today may be my birthday, but yesterday, 23rd December would have been little Reem’s 4th birthday. And she is all I can think about, she is all I can see when I close my eyes.

Just a year older than my little boy, she is the most beautiful little girl with the curliest pigtails and the cheekiest, most endearing smile. Sharing a birthday with the grandfather who adores her beyond words, I wonder what their day would have looked like if death had not knocked upon their door; if ethnic cleansing had not ravaged their homeland; if murder and bloodshed and torture and injustice had not crept into their lives, mercilessly stealing life away…

I wonder what their day would have looked like.

Would she have eaten the fruit she’d dreamt about, the only thing she’d asked for, sitting down to finally catch her breath after chasing her grandfather around the yard? Would he have held her in his arms and spun her around until her laughter filled his heart? Would they have sat side by side, surrounded by family and love, and made a birthday wish blowing out a candle over the cake they shared?  

Khaled, little Reem’s grandfather, while kissing her lifeless body, described her in a way I had never heard a human describe another human before. He said, in Arabic, “She is the soul of my soul”.

She is the soul of my soul.

She is the soul of my soul. 

When I hear those words, I have no words.

How hauntingly, poignantly, powerfully, breathtakingly… beautiful.

A love that cannot be explained somehow explained in a few simple words that will forever be etched in my heart and the hearts of millions of others all around the world. Millions of hearts that have finally awoken to the plight of the Palestinians, now that the genocide is being televised (albeit biased - social media is where reality is fully being exposed).

Sadly, however, many hearts remain closed, many remain blind, many remain apathetic and unmoved… and many hearts actually support this.

I am not here to judge or condemn anyone or anything. My Spiritual Master told me that to do so absolutely ensures its reproduction, and I have seen this play out in my own life as well as in the world on a global scale. Have the once oppressed not now become the oppressors? I’ll let you come to that conclusion on your own.

But my heart has to say the words that I type today, and that is that our humanity cannot be selective. We cannot pick and choose which human lives we care about.

Little Reem, her brother and over 10,000 other pure, innocent little children have been murdered in Palestine over the past 75+ days. Over 20,000 human beings have been slaughtered, hundreds of thousands have been displaced, hundreds of thousands are starving to death, thousands are being unlawfully detained, thousands remain in jail since before October 7th including children… the list goes on and on, and gets more and more painful to hear. This is GENOCIDE. Supported and funded by the few most powerful countries in the world, despite most of the world calling for a ceasefire.

If after all of this, you still cannot see that this is genocide, I am not going to try and convince you that it is. If you still cannot speak up for the Palestinians the way you did for the Ukrainians, I am not going to try and make you. If you are aware of all that is going on and still refuse to look, to research, to have conversations, then I cannot do anything to help you.

All I ask is that today, on my birthday and on the Eve of the day when the whole world unites in celebrating the birth of Christ - one of the greatest awakeners of human consciousness to walk this earth - please remember that the birth you celebrate took place in a land where mass slaughter, genocide and ethnic cleansing is currently taking place.

Christmas is cancelled in Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. That tells you everything.

The great man we celebrate on Christmas Day would never have just stood back and watched this happen. It is time for us to embody Christ and all the many other Prophets, Messengers and Peacemakers who changed this world for the better. Now is an opportunity like never before to embody Christ Consciousness, to be the change we wish to see and to extend our peace and love to the whole of humanity. Not just to those who look and sound like us.

My birthday wish and my life’s dream is for the awakening of human hearts and global consciousness, for peace in Palestine and peace for the whole of humanity. Big wishes that can come true through small actions taken by many. We each have to play our part.

Reem’s grandfather Khaled taught us so much through his beautiful words. Reem is the soul of his soul. And we are all the soul of each other’s soul.

We are one soul. We are one family. We are ONE.

Let us remember.

Sending Light, Love & Peace,

Sabah x

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Donate to Restless Beings’ Palestine Emergency Appeal here.

Follow Motaz Azaiza on Instagram - Palestinian photographer and journalist on the ground in Gaza.

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