Happy New Year without fireworks

In the first night of every year the sky is let with wonderful and colorful lights to announce that the New Year has just arrived. It is the best time to think about new colorful ideas for the New Year, a new beginning removing all bad memories of the previous year and setting a new picture for the new coming year… a new life!

When I was a child, I used to run out to the streets or to the window or to the top of our house to enjoy fireworks scene, I wasn’t alone; all the neighborhood’s children were also running to the streets or windows too, so we enjoy this scene together. People in my country use fireworks in every occasion not only in the New Year’s nights, so I carry the picture of a colorful sky from my childhood for many wonderful memories.

Now, everything has changed, I hate fireworks, I even close my eyes and ears not to see or hear them… they are not wonderful anymore, I hate fireworks. When the year 2009 started, yes, it announced new life for the world but death to Gaza people… there were many fireworks in Gaza sky but they were completely different totally opposite to the world fireworks we used to see and enjoy!

Gaza fireworks were not colorful; they were white, shinning white phosphorus comes not from ground to sky but from sky to ground, announcing death instead of life… Gaza fireworks were proudly made in Israel and used only by them; they change Gaza people life and turned all my childhood memories that are connected to fireworks to bad memories.

It was ironically New Year beginning in the world…. I hate fireworks and don’t like them anymore; I suffered from many nightmares which were full of scary scenes of death… I hate the many occasions in which people use fireworks in it… I hate the nights of the New Year… also I close my window and try not imagine the picture of dead children and people of Gaza every New Year.

Why we don’t use white balloons instead of fireworks, as what Japanese people did at the new year of 2010, white and clear balloons carrying the messages of love, peace and respect to all humans and to nature at the same time and allowing them to swim peacefully in the sky.