Abraham's Vision - Elias Ibrahim

Avital Aboody - Elias consoling me

|2008-05-30 23:11:32

One week after attending Elias' funeral I went home to my family in Los Angeles for Spring Break. I was deep in mourning for Elias and searching for something tangible to keep him alive in my heart. First I found the green beaded necklace that he gave me when he visited me in Berkeley. I put it on and smiled as I remembered how excited he was to present it to me months after he bought it in China Town in NY. But then I rummaged through papers in my room and found what I was really looking for. On the last day of the final Vision Program retreat the staff scattered large pieces of construction paper around the room. Each paper had a different group member's name on it and everyone was instructed to walk around the room and write a personal message on everyone's page. On Elias' would-be 22nd birthday, I found this paper buried in my bedroom in L.A and I read the message that he had written to me. I was brought to tears because I realized that what he wrote about me over a year ago, is exactly how I feel about him today.

He wrote: “I can surely say that no one has shared this trip with me as you did. Just about every image of the Balkans has you in it. There’s surely a good reason for that, I imagine. Your humor and attitude is something that I’ll carry with me, as are the multitude of the talks, jokes, and goofing around. You commented about the connection we “had” during the program but I’m sure that you, like I, don’t want that “had” to be in the past tense. I’m sure I’ll never know someone I’ll understand as well as you. Well, I’ll be sure to see you soon. Call me. Elias”

I continued to read the other comments on the page and I discovered a quote written in small print on the top corner of the page. There was no name next to it or any explanation, just the quote. Then I suddenly remembered that it was a quote Elias said to me after a group process session in which I had expressed sadness about some aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and my complicated connection to it. I was so moved by the quote that I insisted he write it down for me. I had completely forgotten about that until I re-read it after his death. I was blown away by what I perceived to be a prophetic statement that Elias was invoking me to remember as I struggle to accept that he is no longer with us.

The quote is from The Prophet by Khalil Gibran and reads as follows: "And the self same well from which your laughter rises was often times filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain"

So now I carry these words with me wherever I go and whenever I feel sorrow or anger about Elias' premature death, I remember his laughter and the way that it complimented my own. I take strength from his ability to radiate hope even in the face of injustices and difficult situations.

Narin B. Stassis - Elias at the CTAUN conference at the United Nation

|2008-04-17 02:16:32

Saddened by the loss of one so young
One who not only could, but did
One who saw, and spoke
Who said
One who now unfortunately is dead

Elias who came to this world
Saw so much, cared so much
One who made impressions on me and many others
As his vision for the future unfurled

In his short time and space
With his peaceful smiling face
Will be remembered
For all he did and could have done
His peaceful song, has just begun

May he rest in peace....Narin Stassis
First Vice Chair, CTAUN

gabe - Elias -- The Loving Wind

|2008-04-08 14:28:50

Once upon a time, there was a young breeze that softly sang his Song in the leaves of trees. Over the years, he grew up to become a happy and loving Wind -- happy to sing with the birds and to play among the flowers.

Over the years, the Wind grew stronger and blew across the land. He discovered the world was a very large place. It was filled with many more trees, flowers and animals than he had dreamed possible. And he became friends with all of them: with the white pines, the black bears, the blue herons and even with the pink flamingos. The Wind knew that color and shape made no difference when it came to making friends.

Each year the Wind grew a little older and a little stronger. His song became a powerful one that could be heard over the loudest thunderstorms. One day, the Wind looked toward the top of the sky and said, "I wonder what's beyond the clouds and above the sky."

He asked his bluebird friends but they didn't know. He asked his vulture friends but they didn't know. He turned to his eagle friends who had soared higher than all of his other friends but they also did not know. They had never thought about what was beyond.

The day finally came when the Wind decided to find out what was beyond the heavens. He gathered all of his strength in an effort to blow higher than he had ever blown. He blew over the fields and they asked what he was doing.

"I'm going to see what's beyond," he said.

He blew through the forest shaking the trees awake. "I've got to go now. I'm going to see what's out there," he said as he passed. The trees wished him success and they told the water what was happening. The water told the fish and the fish swam throughout the lands telling the animals. All waited quietly to see if the Wind would succeed.

The Wind circled the earth seven times, each time blowing faster and faster, until he blew with more energy than he had ever before blown. He shot skyward climbing higher and higher. He went higher than the clouds; higher than the moon; and higher than the stars; higher than the heavens he had seen overhead so many times.

And his journey was just beginning.

One day, the trees and the plants and the animals awoke to a Song. It was the same Song the Wind had sung for so many years. But the Song was not coming from the Wind. He had gone on. They listened very carefully and they heard the Song coming from all around them. It was coming from the air and the water, from the flowers and vegetables, from the dogs and the cats; and from the youngest saplings and the mightiest trees. It was coming from every blade of grass and pebble of sand.

The Song was coming from them.

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper - Elias' Final entry of the 2006-07 VP (3.1.07)

|2008-04-07 19:29:04

This was Elias', and the group's, final entry on our 2006-07 Vision Program weblog.

"I would hope this might be the start of the presentation cycle for the Vision Fellows. It was neither my school nor community presentation, which are still upcoming, but getting in front of a crowd and explaining the Fellowship Program to benefactors of Abraham's Vision was a valuable experience. It allowed me to formulate, possibly for the first time, what the Fellowship meant to me after all, in the early long run. And it was no practice presentation, either, no test-run; this was the crowd that supports Abraham's Vision, and I'd better know what I'm doing.

So my partner Rebecca and I collaborated on it in the week running up to the presentation, and it took a good deal of focus to finally formulate the assorted thoughts we had coming from our summer into a coherent presentation. We worked on addressing who we were, what brought us, etc., but then got into the serious matters of what has changed in us since then. She can address them [her changes] herself, but my thoughts ran in the direction of a newfound focus in my character. Gandhi's ubiquitous quote, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," is one big area-- I now go about my life and my relationships in a quest for pure character. This means I now check my own thoughts and feelings, and am starting to develop empathy, an automatic one, for all injustices. This includes, as I stated in my presentation, the empathy for the Jewish experience, a sudden realization in Belgrade that only later could I put into words, first for this presentation.

Being up in front of this crowd was new, and did have an 'otherness' feel to it at times. This was not my community, not my class, not my age. That is more disarming than one might imagine; I was a visitor, I did not feel the pressure of any judgment. Still, an unspoken dissonance could be felt at times; irrelevant questions about whether my family left our homeland willingly in 1948 or was forced out, the assessment of just how radical I still was.

All told though, the crowd seemed moved by our presentation. The small audience noticed the air of jest and informality between me and Rebecca; she and I traded off her notes, joked, and whispered to each other, giving the audience an idea of something that we often don't address when we discuss the experience: the interpersonal bonds we developed during the Fellowship.

When made to think about it, I see a variety of ways that the participants have changed. Some have refocused themselves onto global issues of peace and justice. Some are revisited by their own ghosts. Some are reinvigorated in their struggles. Some are still sorting their thoughts out even now. As for me, in typical esoteric fashion, I've taken a powerful interest in the peoples and the tragedy of the Balkans. There is still room for further growth for me, though; possibly there is an opportunity to take a leading stand on this in my campus. This campus seems to demand it."

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper - Student Entry from Neum (7.22.06)

|2008-04-07 19:24:03

Elias wrote this essay on one of the last days of the trip. His introspection and ability to evaluate and re-evaluate himself and his peers, his optimism and hope, and his clear commitment to the future shine through his words.

"Everyone felt it in the basement of the Hotel Bristol those few warm July afternoons. As the heat, the tension, still lingering from Sarajevo, came over us, we figured it would happen but were surprised nonetheless. And there it was, a crack, a far-off wail, a steady booming. We, the Palestinians, the underdogs, with nothing left, opened up and gushed forth. And for three hours, we basically let loose, one after the other, a steady torrent of a potent mix of emotion, defiance, and tragedy. As it flowed, it chipped and eroded away at all of us, both sides, at the exteriors laid there by society and prejudice and fear, and it exposed a raw and sensitive place that both sides of the conflict understood.

For many of the Jewish students, this was a breaking point, where they felt the pain that we had held back. And then when we understood just what was happening to us, another current, just as painful, just as powerful, rode in on tears, brought by the women in the group demanding recognition that their pain was just as pronounced and just as personal as that of the Palestinian students. So, the doubly-oppressed took the power and they dictated the course of the discussion from there on out.

The silence that followed this outpouring was broken, as I remember it, by a very faint sound: with outstretched hand and sympathetic eyes, they asked, “Now what? What can I do?” It may have been immediate, or it may have taken until the last group process, but we got to where we wanted, so it was for the rest of the program’s duration to put it all together.

So for two days in Mostar, and one last day in Neum, we felt it out and tried to figure out just what all of us wanted. Frankly, moments like this are rare. We spend so much effort trying to get to this place, we weren’t sure what to do when we got there. And the question was brought into the open by one of the Jewish women: “What do the Palestinians want us to do?” The response to them was basically, “That I cannot tell you, young grasshopper, for you already must know it.” Yeah? To be honest, that response irked me. I felt there was a great opportunity passing by, and I was eager to just seize it.

Ultimately, I was humbled; there was wisdom in that response. Because if there was to be any real progress this time, the side in power must look for itself to see what needs to be done. This would be an honest effort. I know it sounds very metaphysical, but I think that with some time, it’s a practical response.

According to Roman myth, Janus, the god of doorways and transitions, has two faces, one out and one back in. So this was one end to the program, looking out to our schools and our communities, and to where we would take these lessons. But we stopped fast at one point and looked back in to all that we’d said during the program, and wondered how that would affect us. There was a real fear rising, particularly among the Palestinian students, regarding safety, and how their words and ideas could be used against them. And during the last hours of the program, there was an agreement reached regarding confidentiality. This was a major, major point for us, and now it’s for the next few months to see exactly where it goes. The fall is the next big step, and my instinct is to keep the focus outward—on the future of the fellowship, and on the new potential we all have."

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper - On the road from Belgrade to Srebrenica (7.11.06)

|2008-04-07 19:18:57

This was Elias' first entry on the 2006-07 Vision Program student weblog. Our group was on its way to participate in the commemoration of the genocide that took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Balkan wars of the 1990s (in particular the Srebrenica genocide of 1995). This essay reflects the nuanced perception through which Elias approached events such as this.

"The group is now on its way into Bosnia-Herzegovina, to attend the memorial service for Srebrenica. Only, it's apparently not in Srebrenica, but in Potocari. The war's effects are still there; in terms of some leaders' goals, it may be construed as a gruesome success. I wonder whether what I'm expecting out of Srebrenica is true to what the feel really will be. I imagine ourselves as somewhat separate from the mourners there; their deep grief is something we can barely imagine.

When I picture us there in my head, I fear that the background to the picture is a bit too beautiful, a bit too sunny. Ghosts of the past seem to wither life trying to renew in any place, so why is it that the Balkans are so lush? I see us as by standers to the ceremony, with the weeping, the sobs, the curses, as if looking into a fenced off group. And the rest of the picture? Clear, partly cloudy, 39 degrees, slight chance of rain. That's it. No overhanging clouds, no thunderstorms, no night, just a good Mediterranean climate. I must've gotten accustomed to the juxtaposition earlier on in this trip.

It is a true irony of our relationship to the natural world that some of the most beautiful places on Earth are also some of the deadliest. This place, the Holy Land, Colombia, the Congo—in all these places nature seems to take a defiant attitude, smugly rising above our stupid, stupid conflicts. Some of these hills remind me of upstate New York, some of Northern California, some of the Central California plain, and some of mountains right near my house. It makes me wonder whether I'll be able to look at those places the same way anymore, or wonder just how easily these things can happen.

So what do I expect of Srebrenica, then? Yesterday's film, Cry from the Grave, gave me some idea. It will be hard, that's for sure. Aside from that, well, I expect it to be very intimate. The recentness of and the close personal connections to this tragedy ensure we'll see quite a bit of emotion. As for size, well, I can only imagine it as the size of a group of women in the film yesterday. For some reason, I only see it as a small gathering, but with the size of the tragedy, I know that can't be true. It's going to be a few thousand families there, but I still see it as private, intimate, closed.

The video prepared us for what to expect emotionally, but I find I didn't really have any strong emotional reaction to its stories of loss coming from them town's widows and orphans. The skeletal remains they showed were difficult to picture as people, and the stories were saddening, but didn't give me a gut reaction. What really does get to me is any sort of back-story, or sacrifice, or heroics, but this one has pretty straightforward story lines to it. And names. Those always get to me, because I feel that the full name, a birthday or place of birth, maybe, is the biggest thing to make this man or that man a person, a being, someone who, unlike the remains I saw in the body bags, had a full name and birthday just like I do."

3.20 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."