In Search of a Shining Moment
By Anne Sigmon
We all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits. ―Michel de Montaigne, The Compete Essays
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. ― Martin Luther King Jr., speech in St. Louis, March 22, 1964
The front page pictured a lifeless Syrian child, dusty limbs splayed in the gray rubble of Aleppo. I felt cold and lost. That poor boy might be a little brother, perhaps to one of the mischievous kids I saw roistering on the playground when I visited Aleppo in 2010, not long before war overwhelmed the city. He could be the son of the jovial grinder in the bazaar—the boy who giggled at me when I stopped to have my pocket knife sharpened.