So, as I had a difficult childhood without any money, when I went to university, I got a grant and I bought myself a motorbike. Brand-new! I was the first person to start it up. I was the first person to get on it to go home. When I felt the wind whipping me as I rode along, I knew that I'm not on someone else's motorbike. It's my very own motorbike. I arrived home, and to get to sleep, I put the bike in my bedroom and I locked myself in with it. That way, I could smell the hot engine. The smell of the engine, the new bike smell. And when I turned the light on, I could see it was my very own bike. I couldn't put the bike on the bed, under the covers, but it's what I wanted to do. Yes... I felt it. Yes. That was a moment of great happiness for me.
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Happiness is the children coming home. That's a mother's happiness. It's when my husband comes home, smiles, and kisses me, after 33 years of married life. That's a woman's happiness. Happiness is hearing my grandchildren saying: "Grandma!" When they say that, you feel older, but that's happiness, too. It's also meeting colleagues who are happy to see you. They think: "She's here, let's talk." That's happiness, too. It's getting up in the morning and not hurting anywhere. That's happiness, too. It's the rain which is the promise of a good harvest. There are many kinds of happiness, but at the same time, there's only one: you're alive, so you're happy.
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Just my experiences from being in a wheelchair and traveling the world in a wheelchair, I've seen life from a different angle, and that's taught me on a spiritual level, to just accept and to be happy, whatever's coming next. I'm so mentally strong. The only reason is because of losing my legs physically. My eyesight's sharper, my ears are... I can hear much better. So, that's on a physical sense, but I feel I'm lucky, as in I don't analyze or question life too much. I can cruise through life and always be in the right place at the right time. I always have amazing things happen to me. I'm really lucky in that situation. But that comes from believing in luck, or believing in the power of attraction, or believing in attracting the goodness into one's life. And I think that can be seen as luck. So, if God Himself jumped down in front of me right now and said to me: "Bruno, I'll give you back your legs, but I'll take away all that you've learned in the last 13 years." I'll tell God: "Keep your legs."
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On the 16th of January 2007, an Israeli border policeman shot and killed my 10-year-old daughter, Abir, in front of her school in Anath where I live. She was with her sister and two friends. 9.30 in the morning, in her head, in the back from a distance of 15 to 20 meters, by a rubber bullet. Abir wasn't a fighter. She was just a child. She didn't know anything about the conflict and she was not part of this conflict. Unfortunately, she lost her life because she was a Palestinian.
I'm an Israeli who lost his daughter to a suicide bombing on the 4th of September 1997. And I am a product of... of an education system. These are two societies at war. They socialize the young generation to make them able to sacrifice themselves when the time comes. This is true to Palestinian society and this is also true to Israeli society.
Because we are human beings, sometimes you think: "if I kill the killer, or anyone from the other side, from the Israelis, or maybe ten, this will give me back my daughter.” No. I'll cause another pain, and another victim to the others. I decided to break this circle of violence and blood and revenge, by stopping killing and supporting revenge by myself.
My definition of "sides" has changed dramatically. Today, on my side are all those who want peace and are willing to pay the price of peace. On the other side are those who do not want peace and are not willing to pay the price of peace.
Many people told me: "It's not your right to forgive in her name." And the answer: it's also not my right to seek revenge in her name. I hope she's satisfied. I hope she rests in peace.
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Here's what happened: a German officer in an SS uniform entered the ghetto one rainy night. My mother told him: "Take my daughter." She lifted the wire fence and handed him her baby, me, a Jewish girl 2 and a half years old. And with a heavy heart, she put me in the hands of a wonderful man in an SS uniform. I now know that this man, Alois Pleva, served in the German army and lived near the German border. This man put me in his coat. He hid me inside his coat and took me to the border between Germany and Poland to his parents. They passed me off as his daughter. They raised me in the purest Catholic tradition until the end of the war. What a gesture! What magic, this outstretched hand! Like sparks of light in what we call human folly. Sometimes a question comes to mind. If I had been in a situation like that, would I have acted in the same way as that German officer? How can I answer such a question? I don't think I would have had the moral strength to do it, in all honesty. Maybe. Did he know he had the strength? How can you know? How can you recognize the moment of truth when you can sacrifice yourself, sacrifice the only life you have for someone else? There's no answer to that question. Or a question others can answer. But this question must be asked.
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The magic moment that I had with my grandfather was right after my grandmother died. I went to go see him. I knew that he was hurting, but I wasn't sure what kind of state he would be in. And she was his partner 65 years as well as his driver. I said: "Grandpa... How are you doing?" And he said: "Did you know that for 4 dollars, I can get a shuttle anywhere in the city?" I said: "Wow, that's great, Grandpa." He said: "Well, I went to the grocery store, I went to the woman behind the counter and said: ‘I have this list of things. Could you help me find them? My wife has recently changed her residence to heaven.’" And I said: "Grandpa, man, you always help me see the glass as half full." And he leaned back, looked me in the eyes, and he said: "It's a beautiful glass."
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No, I never thought about it. I wouldn't have liked to be a man. Because men have an easy life. Too easy. And easy lives are boring. It's easy professionally, maybe even easier to attain their sentimental prey. For women, everything is more difficult. But there is also the appeal of attaining your goals despite the difficulties. Without question, I prefer being a woman.
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I feel powerless when, say, a very small woman enters the store, sees something high up and says to me: "If only a man could get that..." You don't have to be a man. Jump up and grab it. You have two hands. Why a man? Whatever next? It makes me so angry. I really don't like it when women... I hate it when women are discriminated against.
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This year, I was covering a very severe drought in western Maharastra, in this country. And on the one hand, I was looking at people facing destitution due to a water crisis. On the other hand, I was looking at multi-story buildings coming up with a swimming pool on every floor. We're not talking about buildings with 3 or 4 floors. There is a plan for 2 twin towers in Mumbai even now under construction, 37 floors each, which means there are 74 swimming pools. It's a twin tower. And then, I went and looked at who are the people doing the construction, these laborers. All the laborers were landless laborers and marginal farmers who had left their villages as refugees of the water crisis and they're in the cities building our swimming pools. The sheer humiliation of it, the sheer injustice of it! I think the fastest growing sector in India is not software or IT. It is inequality. So, yeah, it makes me furious. It is completely unacceptable to me to see how closely the affluence of the few is tied to the misery of the many. That's unacceptable.
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Now I'm living in the jungle of Calais. The police come and disturb us: "You have to leave the jungle." I said: "Where I have to go? Show me the place. We want to go to that." He said: "You have to go back to your country." "Where is my country?" I don't have a country, man! It's a killing ground! It's a ground of killing the people. It's a ground of fighting. It is not a country! Afghanistan is not a country now! It's a killing ground, man. 37 countries came to control that country, but they cannot control these people. The UN cannot control these people! How can you send me back to that country? I lost my family in that country. How can I go back to that country? I was a refugee in Pakistan, a refugee in Iran, a refugee in Dubai. I was a refugee in Turkey, a refugee in Bulgaria, a refugee in a European country, in Greece. And now I'm a refugee in France. But let me live, man. I don't want anything from you. I don't want eating from you. I don't want anything from you. I don't need help! But let me live.
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I am poor. I will define poverty now. What poverty means to me. It's when I have to go to school, but I can't go. When I have to eat, but I can't. When I have to sleep, but I can't. When my wife and children suffer. I don't have a sufficient intellectual level to get us out of this situation, me or my family. I really feel poor. Physically poor, mentally poor. And you rich people who listen to me, what do you have to say about your wealth?
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What would I like to ask? What the hell I'm doing here. Why can't I be where you are to see what the hell is going on? Let's switch for a minute. Let's switch! You come here and be me and I'll go there and be you. We'll meet up in the middle line on the Equator and we'll play golf.
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It doesn't matter if I'm the president (of Uruguay). I've thought about all this a lot. I spent over 10 years in a solitary confinement cell. I had the time... I spent 7 years without opening a book. It left me time to think. This is what I discovered. Either you're happy with very little, without overburdening yourself, because you have happiness inside, or you'll get nowhere. I am not advocating poverty. I'm advocating sobriety. But we invented a consumer society... which is continually seeking growth. When there's no growth, it's tragic. We invented a mountain of superfluous needs. You have to keep buying, throwing away... It's our lives we are squandering. When I buy something, or when you buy it, we're not paying with money. We're paying with the time from our lives we had to spend to earn that money. The difference is that you can't buy life. Life just goes by. And it's terrible to waste your life losing your freedom.
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Sometimes, I think of a phrase I heard as a boy, a friend who said: "Life is like carrying a message from the child you were to the old man you will be. You have to make sure that this message isn't lost along the way." I often think of that, because when I was little, I used to imagine fine things, to dream of a world without beggars in which everyone was happy. Simple, subtle things. But you lose those things over the course of life. You just work to be able to buy things. And you stop seeing the beggar, you stop caring. Where's the message of the child I once was? Maybe the meaning of life is making sure that this message doesn't disappear.
HD
