I am happily walking around Singapore, complaining bitterly about the rain that might just spoil an afternoon at the pool, making plans for the future, joking with friends – and the most severe worry I entertain I whether I can make it back home without getting wet. In Madrid hundreds of families are mourning the loss of a loved one, and thousands of people are injured, traumatized and receiving care.

At first, it is simply difficult to accept this kind of reality, to let the inevitable fact sink into your disrupted system of values. Incredulity can last only for a short period of time.
I have friends in Madrid. I want to know if everyone is ok but I do not even know what I can say to them. Would they prefer to be left alone, or would they prefer to receive a note from me?

I cannot understand this violence. I cannot comprehend that anyone could even imagine such a horrible scheme. Someone once told me that Christianity created sheep that violent people take advantage of. This might well be true. But if anyone was a sheep, there would be no violent people, there would be no one taking advantage of anyone else.

I guess violence surrounds us in our daily lives. Some of it just seems pointless, random, and un-necessarily cruel. Although most people come to terms with mortality, there is something special about dying young. It leaves a “what if” question on your mind; an uneasy impression of injustice hovering in the air. There is something equally bad about dying innocent, about being killed – about a life that is taken when it had no right to be.

My words have a voice that you can see from far away. They have a voice that feels inadequate. They have a voice behind the doors, a voice which does not turn around to look back. It would come back with silences. Or questions no one can answer. Today, my words are a scream that has no peer; a beaten heart on fire; I write like boiling water.

My words are a bird. Let’s bring this bird to the window, let’s invite him for dinner, let’s make a world out of him. Where this world lives, there is always enough ink for writing. And for peace to re-establish itself.