Everywhere war

https://pixabay.com

---

The mountains of the Dent Du Midi, the Auguille Verte and Mont Blanc look down at the pale faces that emerge from behind blankets that line the corridor of a sanatorium.

On the first floor of the luxurious hospital, the corridor with its carved balcony appears isolated. The balcony juts out from the side of the hospital building and seems to float in the air.

Rows of wool blankets in red, green, dark brown or white are completely motionless. The pale faces that emerge from behind their layers show a shining gaze. Silence invades the rows of easy chairs. Someone coughs. Then nothing more is heard except the sound of pages being turned, and even then only occasionally, although not infrequently, the weak voice of someone asking something in an unclear tone is heard, which is then answered by a whisper from one bed to the next. Or sometimes, from the edge of the balcony, the flapping wings of a flock of crows are heard flying free in the air, chasing the trail of one of the group who flies apart, creating a string of black beads in the middle of the empty sky.

That silence still haunts me. The people lying weakly wrapped in blankets were rich and independent people who had come here from various parts of the world. Affected by the same misfortune, they now rarely talk much. They can only harbor feelings and think about life and death.

A maid entered the hall. Her steps were slow, her body clad in white. She carried a stack of newspapers that she distributed to all the patients.

“Well, we are finished,” said the first patient to receive the newspaper. “War has been declared.”

Although it was not a surprise, the news was still disturbing to those who heard it.

The patients who now lay in the hall of the luxurious hospital were educated and cultured people whose minds were full of human suffering and contemplation. They seemed detached from everything, even life, and far removed from society in general; as if they were in the midst of a future generation, far away, where people lived in the midst of mass madness.

“Austria has committed a crime,” said an Austrian patient.

“France must win this war,” said an English patient.

“I hope Germany will be defeated,” said a German patient.

They tightened the blankets that wrapped their bodies, their heads resting on soft pillows, their faces looking towards the rows of mountain peaks and the expanse of blue sky. However, the purity of nature that was presented so beautifully before them could not dispel the anxiety that hung on their faces. The silence continued to haunt them. The news rang in their ears.

“War!”

Some of them finally broke the silence and repeated the words breathlessly. This was the greatest event in modern times, or perhaps of all time. And the announcement made the beautiful scenery before them seem gloomy, confusing.

The expanse of the valley was so calm and wide, dotted with rose-pink countryside, built on loose soil. The lines of the mountains, the black shadows of the pine trees, and the white expanse of snow seemed to be overflowing with human life.

So many people were crowded down there. On the battlefield, soldiers continued to advance with their attacks, like endless waves, before finally the activity stopped completely; houses were emptied like people whose guts had been spilled, and cities were emptied like abandoned buildings; villages melted into the white snow and brown soil as if they had been dropped from the sky; piles of corpses of soldiers and wounded victims had also changed the shape of the plains.

You can see how mass murder devours the borders of each country, uprooting soldiers from their homeland. Their energy is exhausted to fight, to the last drop of blood. Your gaze also cannot be separated from the red-drenched rivers, full of death.

In the north, south and west, the battle looks increasingly fierce on all sides, in the distance. You can look here and there; there is not a single place in the world that is free from war.

One of the pale-faced men lifted his body while leaning on his elbow, counting and calculating the number of soldiers involved in the war: 30 million people. Another man said in a trembling voice, his eyes full of despair:

"Two armies fighting on a large battlefield is the same as one large army committing suicide."

"They shouldn't do that," said one of them, whose voice was heavy and low.

But then another patient said:

"This is like the French Revolution."

"Be careful, nobles!" whispered another patient.

And a third patient added:

“Maybe this war will end all other wars.”

“Maybe this war will end all other wars.”

Then all was silent. Some eyebrows were raised, their faces pale and sweaty from struggling to overcome insomnia all night.

“The end of war! Is it possible? The end of all wars! Humans on this earth will never be able to escape suffering, don’t you know that?”

Someone coughed. Then the calm that enveloped the meadow under the hot sun — where the light-skinned cattle glistened, interspersed with dark woods and green grass, and blue skies — dimmed the shadows, extinguishing the light of the fire that devoured and destroyed the old world. The boundless silence swallowed and drowned the whispers of hatred that spread throughout the world, also drowning the suffering of those who were forced to live in the darkness of the world.

The patients who had been busy talking now also fell silent, returning to their contemplation, busy thinking about the condition of their lungs and their own health.

But when night was about to fall covering the valley area, a storm shook the area above the peak of Mont Blanc.

No one was allowed to go out on a dangerous night like this, when everyone could feel the howling wind blowing hard under the balcony, right under the floor where their beds were arranged in rows.

The patients could only stare blankly, confused. Those who had only been used to contemplating their own misfortunes were now absorbed in the gloom of the news of war. They saw how lightning split the dark sky, right above the mountain peaks, lifting clumps of clouds like the surging sea with each jolt of electricity dragging a long column of fire and cloud.

Their faces were pale and their cheeks were too sunken. They stared at the direction of the flight of a group of eagles circling in the sky, as if looking at the destruction of the earth from the height of the fog that enveloped nature.

"Stop this war!" the patients complained. "Stop this storm!"

But they could only observe from a distance, regardless of political desires or interests, regardless of prejudice, blindness and the shackles of tradition, and see how simple this world was, while hoping that time would fix everything.

One of the patients who was at the end of the row of beds shouted:

"You can see something bubbling down there!"

"Yes ... like a living creature."

"Like a plant ..."

"Like a human being."

Now, in the midst of the cynical storm light, under the dark clouds, which were dragged and spread across the earth like cunning angels, they seemed to see a pale white land expanding before their eyes.

In their view, there were creatures rising from the white earth, creatures formed by mud and water, gripping the surface of the earth, blinded and crushed by the wet soil, like victims who had just been rescued from a shipwreck. These creatures were soldiers. The plain was vast, divided by a series of canals that ran parallel to each other and dotted with water holes, and the soldiers who looked as if they had just survived a terrible disaster were trying to wriggle out of it, with all their might…

But the 30 million slaves who had stretched their lives in the midst of a fierce battle with the mud puddles then raised their faces. This was the reality: The future was in the hands of these slaves, and the old world was experiencing the turmoil of a great revolution fueled by a global society whose numbers would continue to swell, whose suffering would never know an end.