Posted by parhad (64.160.45.136) on December 18, 2001 at 07:45:59:
In Reply to: anyone have an update on Lina Nissan? posted by Alli on December 15, 2001 at 13:47:20:
True to form we never build anything...just react when there is a crisis. Lina is as doomed as this generation in Iraq. We never see past next week. Assyrians will indeed feel "sorry" for Lina and the children of Iraq, we are all good at that, feeling sorry and being pathetic ourselves...how quickly did we all learn that our parents respond to us best when we are bent and broken, tossed into a corner and weeping with pain...and how often do they recoil from us when we are strong and fearless, as if we were breaking with some hoary tradition.
Assyrians love the Miskeena...the hapless, helpless one. We think a person too proud and arrogant, foolish too, who struggles cheerfully in the face of obstacles...we'd much prefer to help the hopeless cause than work at bringing hope to our causes.
I am grown tired with offering my sculpture at the cost of casting it for any number of good causes. I gave Jackie a sculpture to auction off for the Assyrian Aid Society only to see it sitting on a desk at her office months later. There was an Assyrian student in Chicago who needed money to attend graduate school in Assyriology...that offer too went unheeded. Other people know how to stage benefits, to auction things etc...but not us. All we know to do is stick our hands out like some beggar in a back alley...exposing our wounds and festering sores in order to get pity. The thought of renting a place, getting wine and cheese donated, planning an Art show or benefit concert...and doing it RIGHT, would never cross our minds...would be foreign and too difficult for us...too hard because it would require some real pride in place of the false kind we walked away with at birth almost.
Beggars never prosper....even with a fistfull of coins.