Syrian ceasefire

As of this edit, one hour and nine minutes ago a ceasefire was supposed to start in Syria, after five years of horror.

What are fighters in Syria thinking right now?  Dear God, sitting in the dark, wondering what will happen I a few minutes.  It is unimaginable.

Are some planning a surprise strike?  Do any dare to imagine the possibility that no one will be shooting at them tomorrow morning?

Are commanders preparing them for a brief lull, using the opportunity to rebuild and restock?  Are some commanders touting the real prospects and hopefulness of  a ceasefire?

What is happening in the dark houses and holes and buildings and bunkers?  Are many simply sleeping, letting the morning tell them whether “ceasefire” was just a dream?

Are some imagining what their life might be like in a few days if the ceasefire holds?

Are some so scarred and bitter that they do not want a ceasefire, but want to go on killing?

Are some so jaded that they do not care?

Has any word reached the civilians under siege?

Will this be the longest night or the shortest night?

How far into tomorrow morning, into next week, into next month, will the fighters have to wait before feeling some sense of relief and hope?

When will the first sound, the first pop of a gun, the first reverberating base vibration of a shell, shatter the hope?

Does anyone, at this moment, think in terms of holding their fire even if they hear that first pop or rumble?

When the sun sets tomorrow will there be any hope left?

Who will still be left alive tomorrow?

What hope or pessimism resides in the hearts of the millions of refugees?

It has started, the declared ceasefire.  Thirteen minutes ago, the guns and bombs were to be silenced. 

Somewhere a shot rings out.  But perhaps, perhaps, somewhere a breeze is the loudest sound, or snoring, or the opening of a food package.

What could better capture the razor edge of the human disaster and human hope than the minutes preceding and following the declared start of a ceasefire. …Midnight the designated time…..  Ceasefires almost always start in the dark of midnight.

Someone somewhere is at this moment making a choice. 

How many will have no choice?  How many will give orders out of duty and desperation?  How many will obey orders out of duty and despair?

There on the frontlines, on the razor’s edge of darkness, breathes the human condition, the prospects for disaster and the potential for greatness.

The fate of innumerable individual lives, the fate of the world, will be decided by a few actions in the coming hours.

The great tides of conflict and cooperation inexorably move through human history, as relentless and inescapable as an artillery shell already fired.  But then come moments, moments in the darkness after midnight, when Choice hangs heavy in the air, the fate of someone’s child, the fate of nations, precariously balancing on the needle point of someone with a gun, someone with a grudge.

Ceasefire…….how curiously difficult to get people to quit killing each other.

Ceasefire…….a word of suspense and uncertainty.

Ceasefire……the lives of millions pivoting about that midnight moment decreed by diplomats to be a new beginning.

Ceasefire……will bullets remain in chambers, even as bitterness remains in hearts?

Ceasefire……opening the door to the Choice, the Choice we all make every day, the Choice between pulling triggers – literal or figurative -  or praying for peace – in whatever secular or sectarian form our prayers may take.