Sura Al Kinani's Commemorative Address at the Dawn Service

Port Macquarie News

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.

Transcript

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.

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