Sura Al Kinani spoke for six minutes at Port Macquarie's Dawn Service but her commemorative address will cause attendees to reflect on its meaning for a lot longer.
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00:00Good morning. At this hour, the world is colder than usual. It feels strange to be awake before
00:12the day begins, standing in the dark for something that happened long before we were born. But
00:18perhaps that's the point. This summer, this moment before the noise returns, this space
00:24we hold open for memory, for names we don't know, and for names we've inherited. Dylan
00:30Thomas, a lyrical modernist poet, wrote, and death shall have no dominion. It's one of
00:37those lines that appears on plaques and memorials, often without context. And when you sit with
00:43it, it doesn't feel triumphant, yet it's patient. It feels like a statement about memory, that
00:50even when someone's gone, what they meant to us still remembers.
00:57When I was younger, war seemed like something far away. It belonged to history books, movies,
01:02or parts of the news you muted because they were too hard to explain. But as I grew up,
01:07I began to realise that war isn't abstract. It is unfortunately so incredibly prevalent,
01:13making it not a page in history books, but instead yet a recurring motif. I witnessed this
01:19and felt this myself. My family is originally from a region where war isn't an event, it's
01:26an atmosphere. One of my grandfathers fell victim during the Iran-Iraq war. The other
01:31served in the Turkish fleet. My uncle was a prisoner of war, and my family in many ways
01:38was left irrecoverably broken. While my grandfather might have once been seen as the so-called enemy
01:46at Gallipoli, it makes you realise how easily we lose sight of the real adversary. Not people,
01:54but grief, and every other human capability for destruction. War shaped the rhythm of their lives,
02:02where they travelled, what they said, how loudly they spoke, and who they trusted. But they don't
02:08talk about it much. And when they do, they matter-of-fact. That's just how it was. But I think their silence
02:14reveals something. I used to think remembrance was about honouring sacrifice. I started to realise it's
02:21more about acknowledging cost. War always has a cost. Not only in lives lost, but lives altered. By grief,
02:30by silence, and by the weight that things are stroking. I only hope that as a young person, we not only learn,
02:37but advocate for a peaceful quiet of tomorrow. That's why Anzac Day matters to me. It gives us pause. We're not just
02:45remembering what happened at Gallipoli, or on the Western Front, in a jungle, in jungle trenches, or a desert
02:52outpost. We're remembering how war touches people, in hospitals, at home, across generations. In school, we
03:00often study the numbers. How many landed, how many came home, how many died. But numbers to me are the least
03:07interesting part. They don't tell you how someone felt standing on unfamiliar ground. They don't explain how letters
03:14were written, or what it means to laugh with your friends one night, and lose them by warning. Commemoration
03:21isn't just about preserving the past. It's asking what kind of future we want. It's about recognizing the
03:29difference between remembrance and repetition. Because if we only look back to admire, and never to
03:36question, we risk turning reflection into ritual. And rituals are only powerful if they remain honest. That's
03:43when Thomas' line returns again. And death shall have no dominion. It reminds us that while people
03:50die, meanings they leave behind her. But it also warns us not to turn death into something abstract.
03:58Not to romanticize it. And not to call it noble so we don't have to face how brutal it actually is.
04:04No one should be remembered as just a soldier, because there were people with fears, frustrations,
04:10bad handwriting, and inside jokes. The real honor lies in remembering them fully. Once my mother
04:17told me about a neighbor she had as a child, a boy named Kawa. He used to draw tanks in the
04:23margins of his school books. Not because he liked them, but because that's what he saw every day.
04:29He was quiet. He was funny. And yet he died before he turned 18. There were no services,
04:39no memorials, no medals, only the absence that he left. That story doesn't appear in any history
04:46syllabus, but it shaped the way that I understand remembrance. As something quiet, local, unglamorous,
04:52and deeply human. It's tempting to think of Anzac Day as purely national, but its emotional core
04:59is universal. It's about loss and how communities carry it. And about how we try to speak about
05:05it without dressing it up. And about how every year we keep trying to say something meaningful
05:10even when we're not sure what to say. In Arabic, there's a work.
05:16Sabah. It doesn't just mean patience. It means endurance. It means dignity and difficulty.
05:23I think remembrance is a kind of sabah. It asks us to sit with discomfort. To feel the weight
05:30of other people's stories. To resist turning pain into performance. And so as the sun begins
05:36to rise on us today, the world will fill with noise again. Cars will start. Coffee will be made.
05:43People will get on with their day. But something about this hour will stay with us. Not because
05:49we stood still, but because we stood still together. And death shall have no dominion.
05:55Let it remind us that memory is not just about looking back. It's also about carrying forward.
06:01About paying attention to the quiet moments. About saying, we saw what happened. We still
06:06see it today. And what are we going to do about it? Lest we forget. Thank you.