I gathered these words from my mother’s tears; tears that fell upon the earth as though awakening dormant seeds in the desert of our world.
In shaping my message to this life, if I had children as many as the years of the promise, and if I were asked to choose one among them to lead the march of freedom toward the light, I would find no scale capable of measuring justice between them.
And so I return to the one to whom I gave my promise at the age of nine — to the woman whose tears I used to catch before the dust of the earth and the smoke of burning hearts could swallow them. She would say to me: “Let the tears fall, my son… perhaps they will awaken life in a seed buried in drought. There are many seeds in our deserts, and more sand still, but tears are few.”
Today, distinguished guests, I try to replace my own heart with my mother’s, to choose with her instinct, her simplicity, her love, and her tears… those tears of which she spoke as she bid farewell to life after more than eighty years: “Remember, Zouheir… what we have suffered is less than zero compared to the suffering of a world without justice.”
Nicosia 2026
Zouheir Shalabi