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The Powers of the World

I have been travelling a bit. I was in Iran and Pakistan, India and some african countries. I wanted to know what's going on there and and what life looks like for the majority of people.

Well. I have seen a bit of what I wanted to see and I have learned. What I saw and learned is not making me happy. It looks like too many people are being squeezed and tortured by forces they cannot control. And I, as a sppectator, have no way to help either. I can give some money here and there and listen to their stories, but the wheels of the world economy are turning and turning crushing hopes and livelyhoods like a bulldozer, which works the earth without mercy and without a sense for the plight of the creatures, whose lives it destroys. My heart is heavy with what I saw and I want to turn away. I want to hide in a nice and quiet room of my own, with my books and my music arranged around me, a room with a water cooker and a matraze to sleep on, a confortable warm carpet and a chair to sit and read and a little table on which I can put my clothe when it's time to sleep. My heart is heavy from the suffering of the world, heavy from the hot spaces and the buzzing of the flies, which swarm around the women preparing the scarce food for their families. It's heavy from the hungry men and women and the sick children with their slow movements and their sad and empty faces. It's heavy from the struggle which doesn't yield anything. It's heavy from the hands tugging my shirt and asking for some coins or a book or most of all an encouraging word. It's heavy from the hopes of so many, heavy from their useless trials, their daily struggle and the modesty, with which they go on day after day after day in search of a meal for their children and a few coins for the doctor. It's heavy from Moussas lost years in the Coranic School and from Amadus shame

about his ignorance in reading and writing.

Martin Näf, around 2011-12