NYAC | 3min Read
Published on May 7, 2026
Indifference Is A Sin Against Life
Indifference Is A Sin Against Life
Today I saw another dead body.
It shouldn’t have been different from any other day, but it was. Every day is a new kind of grief when you
are at war.
“War” is what they call it.
“War” on a people who have done nothing but exist in peace and try
to survive despite everything the world has thrown at them. We are bombed. We are hounded. We are
starved, even mocked for our pain. And still the mothers carry their young with them when they are
forced to flee their homes. Still the grandmother cooks her special dish with whatever scraps she can find
in a makeshift tent made of plastic. Still the children smile and play over the piles of rubble, unaware of
the dead bodies buried underneath. The world tries to turn us into statistics every day, and every day they
are given fresh evidence that we are not. This is not a war against my people. It is a war against humanity.
Our children have the same smiles, they shed the same tears. So why are they any different? What does a
white man have in his character that they do not? I shudder to think that for all our intelligence, we come
down to this vile system of awarding privileges on the basis of one’s skin tone. I’m sure you can tell I
have a lot of thoughts on this matter. I am bitter. I believe I have every right to be, since you are sitting
safely behind your screen reading this while I am fighting for my life. You meet your family, you hug and
kiss them every day. We are not given this luxury. We must resort to praying that they will survive one
more day, and meeting them is something most of us only dream of. If we do meet them, it is in heaven.
But the world will not listen. It will use the mask of ‘necessary evils’ to try and justify its complicity. It
will try to drown out our voices and turn us into another desensitizing piece of history to be forgotten, as
it has for the last 76 years. And yet, when I wake up tomorrow to my 2-year-old daughter crying because
of the bombing outside our torn tent, I will remember. When I am struggling to find water and wheat to
keep my family alive because there is no available aid in the city of rubble, I will remember. When I see
the life fade from my last family member’s eyes, if I am still alive by then, I will remember.
So when I die and God asks me why I am not surprised, I will tell Him the tale of each dead body I saw.
Of every child and every soul that had the nerve, the sheer audacity to be born in the wrong part of the
world. Whose only sin was to try and live. And I will tell Him of your sin too.
We will never meet. You will never see me, nor I you. But for once, when you are done reading this, do
not think. Do not try to rationalize any of your guilt, anger, shame, or God forbid, empathy. Simply feel.
Both our hearts beat with the same rhythm. We love different things and different people, but we love all
the same. And it is with this love that I bid you goodbye with the hopes that maybe, you’ll begin to
imagine how precious life is. How indifference is a sin against life itself.
