You don’t need me to tell you what a battle is going on for this flotilla…and I am doing little but watch from amongst my textbooks and stethoscopes. I am sorry I have not given you my usual updates, but I know you will do perfectly well without me. I think I am just still at sea (ha) in many ways, and watching is all I can manage.

Speaking of which.

Al Jazeera made a documentary about Vik and ISM’s Gaza work, and Adie has just told me that you can watch it here, where you can also see the times it is on the telly this week, if you get Al Jazeera.

Vik had two dreams: to become a writer and to get back to Palestine after Israel refused him entry. He achieved both, and no matter how impossible it is for me to believe I will never share an evening of shisha and mojito with him again, I do actually see his life as complete.

As all our hearts follow the 2011 flotilla, named “Stay Human” in his memory, I want to give you my own translation of the first words Vik posted to his Italian blog after he and I and our comrades arrived to Gaza on our two little boats on August 23, 2008.

“History is us.

History is not cowardly governments

with their loyalty to whoever has the strongest military

History is made by ordinary people

everyday people, with family at home and a regular job

who are committed to peace as a great ideal

to the rights of all

to staying human.

History is us

who risked our lives

to bring utopia within reach

to offer a dream, a hope, to hundreds of thousands of people

Who cried with us

as we reached the port of Gaza

…Our message of peace

is a call to action

for other ordinary people like ourselves

not to hand over your lives

to whatever puppeteer is in charge this time round

But to take responsibility for the revolution

First, the inner revolution

to give love, to give empathy

It is this that will change the world

We have shown that peace is not an impossible utopia

Or perhaps we have shown that sometimes

utopia can be possible

Believe this

Stand firm against intimidation, fear, and despair

And simply remain human.”

– Vittorio Arrigoni

In the words of Vik’s mother, Egidia Beretta:

“This lost child of mine is more alive than ever before, like the grain that has fallen to the ground and died to bring forth a plentiful harvest. I see it and hear it already in the words of his friends, above all the younger among them, some closer, some from afar…we were a long way from Vittorio, but now we are closer than ever, with his living presence magnified at every passing hour, like a wind from Gaza, from his beloved Mediterranean, blowing fierily to deliver the message of his hope and of his love for those without a voice, for the weak and the oppressed, passing the baton.”

Aren’t we lucky to have a vision that is worth all we can give it – even our lives?