The Poetry of Life | Taher Adel | TEDxMoseley
Transcriber: Marcos Vinícius Melo da Silva Reviewer: Claire Ghyselen (Applause) In one single minute, by the time this introduction ends, I would have breathed 10, 20 times. My heart would have pumped 1.5 gallons of blood and my eyes would have blinked 20 times like wings of birds flying through the clouds of my subconscious. And 12 quadrillion signals would have been sent throughout my brain, coupled with 6.000 joules of energy enough to light a bright light bulb quite literally. In one single minute, your mind would have accepted my voice, sent brain signals back and forth, adjusted your biochemicals like an army stationed at your mind’s door. In one single minute, I would have rewritten, rewired, repatterned the journey of your thoughts. In one single minute we became a living miracle. So now that we know what a minute can do, how often do we ponder about the minutes that we cannot see? We are so focused on spilling our own tea that we don’t think or comprehend the minutes that we don’t see, the minutes of those who are struggling, those who are living on the challenging ends of fate and destiny. Of those who could have easily been you or me. So roll me a dice, roll me a dice and tell me what my chances are if I’m born a thousand miles away, placed into malnourished hands, too light to be weighted. Fed by donations, squeezed through blockades, lullabied to the white noise of war, gunfire and air raids, Rocked to a firework display. A mother’s hungry snuggled skin eventually coated with struggle. Born to survive and make joy of what remains, broken wishes and a future built from rubble. Roll me a dice and tell me what my chances are if I’m born a different shade. The odds stacked against my back. The white board pieces maneuvering the black on names left blank, on itinerary lists, on ancestral ships. Squeezed out of there because of skin, choked out of a future because I’m richer than you in melanin. I can’t breathe, I’d say, I can’t breathe, I’d say, I’m only human. Roll me a dice and tell me what my chances are if I’m a young woman trapped between the forgotten crevices of war. A face seen but not heard, traded and sold, then once that’s done, I'm exchanged as emotive currency for the world. A viral news piece to shock and stun, forgotten in a month. But where am I to flee to? I can’t escape, I can’t outrun the barrel of a gun still pointing right at me. Roll me a dice and tell me what my chances are if I’m a young man, young boy thinking I have to fight in my father’s boots because the world has told me to. Bcause I’ve seen the worst of man, the man who fights, the man who kills, the man who chooses not to help. And worst of all, the man who records it to take home to spin his web of deceit. So tell me what my chances are if I grow up knowing no seasons but anguish. No colors, no warmth, just shades of pain and heartbreak. Roll me a dice and tell me what my chances are if I grow up born into a different faith and end up unmasked and killed in mass graves. Roll me a dice and tell me what my chances are if I end up in a different faith and end up in a mass grave. Lost in a sea of unknown limbs, but where am I to sit when bodies are scattered side by side, the deck of cards laid down, an abandoned magic trick. Loved ones recognized by a jacket torn or distinguished by a fairuz ring. And others are only known by the shapes on the bullets on skulls broken in. Roll me a dice and tell me how many you can kill with just one bullet. One bullet does not make one dead, one bullet makes orphans. One bullet shakes innocent children awake, drags them out of beds. One bullet does not make one dead, it penetrates like an epidemic. One bullet spreads, one bullet does not make one dead. It kills widows because absence is a serial killer and one bullet never weds again. One bullet does not make one dead, one bullet becomes a tank, one bullet becomes a war plane flowning overhead, one bullet becomes embargos, one bullet means I'm never fed again. One bullet does not make one dead because one bullet means we can’t roll the dice again. Thank you. (Applause)