What is the whole world coming to?
This line from Burt Bacharach and Hal Davis’ classic, “The Windows of the World,” sang lyrically by Dionne Warwick, was what came to mind after being shocked by the recent mass murder in Nice.
And it had to happen on Bastille Day, when France and the whole world revels on liberte, egalite, fraternite, on that day when ordinary men and women decided to write finis to the notion that some mortals could invoke divinity to make their megalomania an immortal right.
Promenade des Anglais is one of the most beautiful walkways on earth. Would that our own Roxas Boulevard (which Rodrigo Duterte still refers to by its old name, Dewey Boulevard) had been as preserved. It is your principal go to in Nice, the acclaimed heart of the French Riviera, with a view to the Mediterranean as breathtaking as the cliffside sight of it from nearby Eze on the way to Monaco.
At daytime, the wide pebble beach recessed from the promenade is filled with bodies soaking the sun in bronze splendor. When the sun sets, everybody from tourist to long-time resident descends upon the Promenade to just sit and watch perhaps with a glass of wine from a nearby bistro, the end of another day and the start of a night of revelry a la sud de France.
As this is written, 84 men, women, even children are dead, with 50 more in its throes, and more than a hundred injured by one man’s sudden seizure of madness. Whether it was just a fit of one’s lunacy or a carefully-planned attack by soldiers of some demented cause, the mass murder at the Promenade recalls to mind several other incidents of terror: The most recent being the bombing of the Ataturk airport in Istanbul, the economic capital of Turkey now convulsed by a failed coup. Before that, the same tragic airport assault in Brussels last March, at the height of our own electoral frenzy.
In November last year, we were shocked at the news coming from Paris, about how more than a hundred were killed at Bataclan Theatre in a series of bombings that reached up to the stadium near St. Denis. Paris was bleeding, even if it had yet to emerge from the tragic memory of Charlie Hebdo, when some Islamic cultists decimated an entire editorial staff of the French satire.
Of course these things happen. They occur daily in Syria and Libya, and in Iraq since George Bush decided to impose “freedom” upon Saddam Hussein’s “tyranny.” Children in these countries live in daily trauma from the horrors of civil war. They happen in some parts of our very own Muslim Mindanao, from the tragedy of Mamasapano in January last year, to the banditry of the Abu Sayyaf, to the never-to-be-forgotten massacre of journalists and innocents in Maguindanao years back.
And in a larger scope of mayhem, to Nine-Eleven, that unforgettable Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Centre was demolished by the mad followers of the Al-Qaeda. All these are images and memories of a world gone mad.
“The windows of the world are covered with rain, What is the whole world coming to?
Everybody knows when men cannot be friendsTheir quarrel often ends where some have to die;
Let the sun shine through.”“The windows of the world are covered with rain,
There must be something we can do Everybody knows whenever rain appears
It’s really angel tears How long must they cry? Let the sun shine through.”
My children and their spouses were with me enjoying the crisp autumn breeze wafting from the sea at the Promenade in early October of 2014, watching how la belle vie unfolded through the night. One of the dreams in my bucket list is being strong enough to yet bring my grandchildren through a stroll in the same place. Their grandma and great grandma had enjoyed the same leisurely stroll with me in our younger days.
Now this. Madness. And it is getting to be commonplace all over.
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On happier note, one must congratulate the new government for its sober approach to the “victory” at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague Tuesday last. No gloating; no victory chants. Just a proper assessment of where we are now in our relations with China, and where we ought to be in the years to come.
Watch how Rodrigo, the avatar against drugs and crime, plays the calculating diplomat from here on. And pray that God grants him the wisdom and sagacity to navigate the now troubled waters of the West Philippine Sea as it embraces the South China Sea.
Take note of the words “navigate” and “embrace.”
