A Prayer for a Friend

a short story on peace and war

I want to write about peace and love and war. I want to write about my friend. My dear, old friend and the last day he spent with me, oh, so many years ago now. His last day here, he called by to tell me he was leaving. Those were the days before we all had mobile phones. He had a camera, the kind that took a roll of film because those were the days before digital, and he wanted to spend his last day with me, riding around on his scooter like we had done so many times. We rode out to the coast, taking photos of the scenery, and of us, for him to take with him. He got two sets printed, one for me. I still have those photos. I was sweet sixteen, a rebellious teen with beads in my hair, and he a young, Israeli paratrooper travelling the world to study language and culture. And he the sweetest, kindest, most considerate and soft-spoken gentleman I have ever known. Yuval. My friend’s name is Yuval.

I looked him up two weeks ago. My kind, gentle, peace-loving friend in his war-torn homeland. He is safe, as can be, volunteering on farms bordering the Gaza Strip left bereft of labour, his tour business grounded by war, too old now to be called up for duty, thank God. But his friends, he told me, his friends and their children were held hostage in Gaza. He was awaiting their release. Awaiting the release of his friends and their children while their leaders negotiated over human lives. Over my friend’s friends and their children’s lives.

I promised prayers for his friends and their children, and wished my friend peace and love, a paltry offering of words and intention that I vainly hoped would convey some heart, some minuscule measure of faith and goodness in the face of unthinkable horror. And his reply: peace and love is scarce now but it is the only hope and solution to end this.

Peace and love is scarce now but it is the only hope and solution to end this.

I have heard that in parts of the North of Ireland where walls still divide Catholic and Protestant communities, one side waves flags for Israel and the other for Palestine. Both flags are sold in the same stores for a tenner a piece. London riots. The headlines tell me aging Holocaust survivors in the UK are afraid to leave their homes amid “rising antisemitism”. How does any of that help? Who does that help? Not my dear, old friend who tells me peace and love is the only solution to end this. Not his friends nor their children. Not the innocent babies caught up in the fire of an age old fight that surely needn’t be theirs.

I am acutely aware as I write this that posting it is risky. It could easily be misconstrued as taking a side, and maybe not the popular one. Or worse, the crime of complacency, taking no side at all. But there are many sides in war, and many powers that profit from keeping us divided and distracted. Occasionally I look in on social media, and all I see is more of the same old story of us versus them, left versus right, Muslims versus Jews, intolerance amplified by a million voices screaming at screens. Only more fodder for the beast that feeds on division and hate and the powers that profit from it.

I want to write about peace and love and war, but how can I? How can I, who has only ever known the ease of peacetime, never the horrors of war? How can I, who can switch off the news and sleep safely? No, I can only offer my prayers. I can only hold peace and love in my own life and hope it ripples out across the ether like waves across a pond. I can only keep living in congruence with my heart, keep my home my sanctuary, my centre of sanity and groundedness in a world torn apart by hatred and grief. Keep my feet rooted to the earth, my heart wrapped in gratitude, my loved ones close. I can only keep living in accord with the prayers I implore and the words of my friend in his war-torn homeland: peace and love is the only hope and solution to end this.

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