hush O autumn breeze...

The onset of autumn is always accompanied by change, the winds change direction, trees change their color, the weather changes its harshness. A slow yet cool breeze unlike the gusts of summer blows, it carries with it the final marching orders of all those withering leaves, who for so long have clung on the branches with all their will and might. No matter how much they want to stay till spring gives them a new life, they have to go. They have to surrender their will and their existence to the flow of time, they have to become a memory of what once was for the greater picture to be completed. It is time for them to perform their final act and leave the stage, but the show must go on, it always does. Autumn tells us how every journey has an ending and how every ending leads to a new beginning!
   On a cold evening in Misrata, Colonel Gaddafi could have thought the same. He might have felt the winds change direction. Their slow dance might have signaled that times were changing, that a new spring for him was not meant to be but like every withering leaf, he held on! Wouldn't you, wouldn't I? And  then the time came when he could hold on no longer, what happened afterwards as they say is history!

  What is done cannot be undone, the leaf that has fallen cannot be green again. Libyan people danced, rejoiced and felt relieved that a great evil had ended, Libyan people cried for their hero had fallen. That is, and always has been the irony of life, one mans hero is another mans villain. People wrote that he may be a tyrant but he deserved a private death, others will argue that a public spectacle ensured that no one in future will question the wrath of the people. I cannot judge them, for i have not experienced what they have, i have not been through anything.
   But what i do know is that this end will lead the Libyan people to a new beginning. A new begging for all those who rejoiced over his death and all those who cried. Me and my countrymen have seen this scene played out so many times, yet we have but gone from one betrayal to another. Death has great power, it can either unify or divide, this divine force can either invigorate or silence all hope. Today the Libyan people stand at the very same point. When you throw a stone in a stagnant pond, all of a sudden waves appear but unless their a force sustaining them, all too soon they die down and once again the pond is stagnant and quiet. Today the Libyans face the same dilemma.
     A few years down the lane, when they look back at the cool Misrata evening, will they make the same decision if given a second chance. But then it would have been too late, what is done cannot be undone. The winds will blow and will carry marching orders every season for the withering leaves, spring will bring with it rebirth only if the tree lasts that long.
       When a few years down history lane, the autumn winds will blow once again in Misrata, Tripoli, Cairo, Damascus, Tunis, Lahore, Karachi and all over the Muslim world, will we be strong enough trees to shed a few leaves to make room for the fresh spring flowers? Or will we say ,

hush O autumn breeze

there exists no tree 

for whose leaves you call

"come with me its time for fall"

The decision is up to us all, i do not judge for time will reveal what was true and what was false!