Quiet Moments of Giant Transformation.
” The sun is setting on Lac Léman. From the terrace of a palace in Caux, it looks like it is on fire. The air is purple and orange. It smells of orange as well; the fruits we just peeled and shared. We: Lebanese, French, Swiss, German, English, Indian, Moroccan, Ethiopian, Ukranian and a Bob-Marley-guitar-playing-Dutch-Hawaiian-Palestinian.
On a table to my right, two coffees in porcelain cups are getting cold; two men face each other over them. They come from war. They were making war, not long ago. Here, they pass the cream. Here, they must talk. Here, between them, sugar, a plum, some bread. The table creaks with their stories, each true and personal. The past, hurts, prejudices, fears. I came here with my own: 25 June 2010, a shipwreck of a girl.
I stepped off the mountain train with a heavy blue suitcase; I was angry and tired and grieving. I was 21 and had lost so much. I had not had lunch, or much sleep. I had no expectations. A stranger took me to an empty dining hall and offered me a sandwich.
I found myself suspended between the blues of lake and sky. I spent the rest of the month serving meals to hundreds of people. I also dined with rebels, musicians, students, activists, coffee bean farmers, priests, sheikhs and a former Vice-President of her country. I folded linen, washed plates. For the first time in my life, I was quiet.
The wars inside me went quiet too. This place taught me to breathe, to see, others and myself. By the time I left, I felt so light I could have flown to Montreux.
But my story is not special, or mine. It belongs to this conference centre. As I write, in 2021, it is 75 years long and contains hundreds of thousands of train rides, walks, talks, teas, conversations and quiet moments of giant transformation.
Seventy-five years. Seventy-five stories, of so many. Throughout 2021 we celebrated the anniversary by sharing stories that took place in this palace on a mountain, one for every year since the first gathering of Initiatives of Change here in 1946. They first appeared online: now we have collected them into a book.
In doing so, we look forward, and up, at the blue and years ahead.”
– Yara Zgheib
Photograph of Yara Zgheib.
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