Star and Crescent Crossed Lovers

by Dillon Freed
August 17, 2011

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1657/star-and-crescent-crossed-lovers

The New York Times, on July 31, wrote an article about Raji Mohammed, a boy, and Halima Mohammedi, a girl, and how these two Afghan teenagers love each other. But instead of holding hands in a dim movie theatre, they are fighting for their lives. You see, the hatred between their two ethnic groups (he is a Tajik and she is a Hazara) makes the tension between the fictional Montague family and Capulet family seem tepid.

How did they fall in love? They met as you would expect if you were writing a sappy, love story, at an ice-cream shop in which she worked for a pittance. After several visits to the shop, they began to catch and hold each other's eyes.

One day, Halima bravely – she knew the danger, she knew the land she lived in – and thus, clandestinely, gave Rafi her number by dropping a piece of paper to the floor where he could just as furtively acquire it.

He called her, and for one year – they only spoke on the phone.

But then, of course, like Thisbe and Pyramus, they decided to meet. And so they did… several times without incident.

But on a late afternoon, as the lovers were driving down a road, a slew of people with spirits seemingly designed by Alexander McQueen sans any beauty or genius, espied them, and quickly decided to slaughter the two -- perhaps the mob wished to make sure their destination in the afterlife was certain.

Just before souls left bodies, the police intervened and stayed the pack. Before you get the wrong idea about the police, know that they threw Rafi and Halima into prison. Also, in the fracas, a police car and building were torched and one man was killed.

As you might expect, if you were to guess the exact opposite of normal human reactions, the New York Times reported that the "Family members of the man killed in the riot sent word to [Halima] that she bears the blame for his death."

That's disgusting.

But wait, perhaps, I should not be so quick to condemn, the same family members, in the same message, told Halima, all can be forgiven if she would but, "Marry one of their other sons…" Ah well, that changes everything…

If you were to imagine Jesus and Satan sitting side by side, you would have a less clear image of good and evil than what is taking place in Afghanistan right now.

To adduce, the New York Times quoted Halima who said, representing perfect humanism and spirituality in three short sentences, "We are all human. God created us from one dirt. Why can we not marry each other, or love each other?"

To which, her father, representing the worst of our species, replied, "What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them."

Well now, reader of mine, how do you handle that? What I say, is when you see a blatantly evil person, you don't ask who or why the person is that way, you just imprison it, or kill it, and you tell other people like them to either change or you'll take them out as well. You do not, under any circumstances, respect the cultural differences between yourself and the demons of this world.

But since we cannot imprison or fight these demons – tell your friends about this story and put pressure on your elected officials to compel the international community to save Rafi and Halima: to first, free them from prison, and then to fight for them to be able to love each other (which may mean, getting them out of their country). It is the very least we can do, for the deaths in Romeo and Juliet are a mere fiction and that needs to remain a fact.

Related Topics:  Op-Ed and Editorial receive the latest by email: subscribe to weekly blitz's free mailing list