The Journey of Lady Peace

Once upon a time there was Lady Peace, who, always sweet and kind to everyone, was nevertheless tired of being ignored. No one noticed her work: the well-kept homes, the peaceful sleep, the full shelves at the supermarket. One day she decided to leave for a journey.

People woke up in the morning with an inexplicable unease. The sky was noisy, planes flew away quickly, windows trembled without wind! Traffic lights worked with an imperceptible delay and so people got angry honking their horns, hands gripped bags tightly, mouths were tense. Someone said: "It's the weather changing." But it wasn't the new season: Lady Peace no longer wanted to regenerate, to go beyond inertia, she had grown tired of throwing her heart over the obstacle. Yes, her courage was no longer there. Staying had transformed into absence. She who gave voice to all living beings, she who said goodnight in bedrooms, had left.

On her journey, on her passport, she accumulated painful stamps. In Gaza the stamp was shaped like a drone fragment: the sky was still sky and all the ceilings had collapsed. Among hospitals with sheets hung like curtains and empty gazes, they told her there was no room for her.

In Mogadishu, the visa was blurred like a photograph left in the sun too long, for 30 years. There she picked up a school notebook with unfinished alphabets: "Come back when we have time to study and not to fight."

In Kyiv they didn't even give her the stamp, saying that someone wanted to change it without permission. There Lady Peace touched the glassless windows of an abandoned house and saw a table set with fine cutlery, left there. "Stay," the chairs asked her. "But how can I stay if no one knows my name?" she replied.

In Tehran, among the ancient bazaars, an old woman whispered to her: "If her brothers Rights don't come, she can't be there either." And then Peace understood that only when every person can be who they want without blind obedience, could she walk with her hair in the wind, offering a wildflower.

Meanwhile, back home, cutlery clattered on plates, in apartment buildings no one greeted each other anymore, in offices emails replaced words. Peace was missing even in small things: in saying sorry, in saying thank you.

Lady Peace left notes in the places she visited.

Gaza: "I'll return when you have space for names, not just for the numbers of who killed the most. I'll return when corridors are streets again and sirens are lullabies."

Mogadishu: "I'll return when the sea stops remembering departures. I'll return when food won't be something to blackmail with, but normalcy at the table."

Ukraine: "I'll return when windows have curtains again and there are no provisional geographies."

Iran: "I'll return when no one has to ask permission to be who they want to be."

Back home: "I'll return when you remember that I'm not furniture."

At a station she sat on a bench with her suitcase full of dreams: hospitals without blood, open doors, squares with children playing. At that moment a sad little girl said to her "I'm alone," and Lady Peace replied: "me too."

Finally people understood: that unease was nostalgia for a good thing taken for granted. Someone proposed a ritual: every morning asking "What piece of peace can I make today?" A phone call instead of a reel, an extra chair at the table, a no to what excludes and a yes to what includes.

Lady Peace, who had remained motionless on that bench, heard her name called softly, by many voices. Then she took her suitcase and got up to return.

Lady Peace, come back to never leave again. Come back to Gaza, to Mogadishu, to Kyiv, to Tehran. Come back to our kitchens, to our offices, to our hearts. Because without you this world has nothing human about it.

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