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To
Shirin Ebadi
Author Paulo Coelho wrote the following to Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate Shirin Ebadi. It was read at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert 2003.
As the Persian poet Rumi once said: Life is just as if a king had sent you
to the country to carry out a specific task. You go and perform a hundred
other tasks, but if you neglect the particular task you were asked to
carry out, it is as though you had done nothing at all. A man comes into
this world to perform a specific task, that is his purpose; if he does not
do it, he will have done nothing.
To the one.
To the one who understood her task and her purpose.
To the one who looked at the road ahead and understood that it was a
difficult journey.
To the one
who did not make light of those difficulties, but, on the contrary, made
them manifest and visible.
To the one
who makes the lonely feel they are not alone,
who satisfies those who hunger and thirst for justice,
who makes the oppressor feel as bad as the oppressed.
To the one who always keeps her door open, her ears listening, her hands
working, her feet walking.
To the one
who embodies the verses of another Persian poet, Hafez, when he says: Not
even seven
thousand years of joy are worth seven days of sadness.
To the one who is here tonight,
may she be one with all of us,
may her example multiply,
may she still have difficult days ahead, so that she can do whatever she
needs to do, so that
the next generation will not have to strive for what has already been
accomplished.
And may she walk slowly,
because her pace is the pace of change,
And change, real change, always takes time. |
