"The first words a person's face says to another is, 'Respect me.' " - Fr. Christian, quoted in The Monks of Tibhirine.

"The whole world from a great distance means less than one long look into a pair of human eyes." - From one of Carson McCuller's novels.

A REFLECTION

Little One, I look into your lake like eyes filled with a future that I cringe to even think about. Intense conversations happened in my part of the world, in a country where an unduly elected president poses to bomb the ever-loving wits out of you. In the state where I live, Maine, life and death conversations took place on radio airwaves; people attempting to deal with what some call the inevitability of war. Perhaps for the first time in memory folks through out this state had their opinions aired uncensored. Most tried to come down on your side little one. Thousands heard testimonies of citizens fasting in front of weapons of mass destruction at Bath Iron Works; civil disobedience in the office of Senator Snow in Portland, a people trying to deal with the human dimension of life in the first three years of this millennium. And having to weave into their lives the impact of war which increasingly takes its toll on civilians, most children.

The day I took your picture on the famous "street of books" in Baghdad where you live, a plethora of images gushed before me that hurled me into parts of the world where children like you face an indefinite future, especially those under the age of five - the most vulnerable of the planet. Most of the children of the planet have no food security. You were fortunate you made it through the first five years. Diarrhea didn't down you. Nor did meningitis, or polio or diphtheria as a result of drinking filthy water. You survived. You weren't one of the half-a-million children mostly under five killed due to sanctions imposed by my country under the aegis of the UN.

Sanctions: they've come down hard on you. They have also struck others your age. I saw kids dying of cancer. They have little hope. Defiant opposition by the United States prevented medical equipment from entering the country and offering promise to children on cancer wards. Seeing bald headed children, hearing nurses say that blood tests have become near impossible due to sanctions became increasingly difficult to bear. Yes, I wept in the presence of doctors and nurses whose capacity to care and heal became practically paralyzed due to sanctions. But they also come down hard on your parents who hope for a different future other than that offered by my government. It was never easy to walk through a cancer ward and see kids your own age dying because the hospital lacked medical equipment to deal with it.

Now you wait. This waiting falls upon me, for I too wait. We wait together. Because you crossed my path that waiting intensifies. I bear a responsibility to you. I bear responsibility to your people. I bear responsibility to my own people, to our God because I encountered your face. And in you, your people have become not an abstraction but real, claiming responsibility on my part. You are brother; I celebrate your existence now threatened by weapons of mass destructions in the hands of my own country.

I owe it to you to do all that I can to ward off the warpath my country decided to take. A decision to intensify a war that has already come down hard on you and your family took place months ago. Millions of people all over this planet oppose that decision and in opposition to it illustrate that an affirmation of our humanity rather than inhumanity lays the only course to take if we wish to stand with you in this hour. Paz Little One.