Building bridges and being able to cross them

As years go by it seems to me that it is easier to build a real bridge such as Le Pont des Anglais in Cairo or Le Pont Aléxandre in Paris or the great Golden Gate uniting two parts of a town or two cities than building bridges between cultures, races or countries.

It is saddening to see that. But people are more and more cautious of who they talk or give their trust to, let alone bonding with others.

When I was a child, I did not know I was building bridges. The entire world around me was a friendly place. My friends were respectively, Greeks, Armenians, Jews etc. At school we had Moslems, Catholics the rare Protestant, I even had a Chinese friend…

It is true that I was lucky to live in The Extaday Hotel where lots of people came to live temporarily during the hard years of 1948 and 1949. But we as children did not bother about the problems of the “older’ ones! War or no war, we played. Our only worry was to find the hiding place of one of ours when playing “cache cache” And we quarrelled as children do making it up very quickly as long as the adults did not add their grain of salt.

Today, January 27^th 2010 is the 65^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz that deadly, murderous camp in Poland.

The President of Israel was invited to the Bundestag and made a speech in Hebrew.

Talk about building bridges!!!

He is a fantastic man able to put aside the past and tend a friendly hand.

And it is what is lacking most in this troubled world, people who can lead us to peace.

As an elderly woman today I find myself yearning for the days I built countless bridges.

Maybe these days will come back.

In an ideal world we should hold hands and build these bridges together.

Suzy Vidal (Sultana Latifa)