Nomad's Pub

A Question of Peace

Picture for a moment, if you will, the violence you have personally borne witness to in your life. What images does your mind draw?

Any?

One or two?

When I was somewhere around the age of sixteen, I was walking home from the market with my sister. As we neared my house, a bloodcurdling shriek rent the air and a man burst through iron gates just down from the corner where we stood, transfixed. He wore a white t-shirt, and his strength seemed quite unchallengeable to look at his muscles; at the breadth of his chest; at the set of his neck and the baldness of his head. Yet, the scream that froze us to the ground exploded from his mouth.

And as we stood there on that corner, we saw him slump against the black car parked along the road. Saw two equally large men dash out the gates behind him, fury in their every move. One held a closed umbrella like a weapon in his fist—no ordinary umbrella; but a giant beach or table umbrella. And they both jumped him and pounded him. They dented the car with him and the weight of their blows.

Another scream of sheer, agonized pain and, perhaps, rage, and my sister and I scrambled off the corner and across the street. Not a moment too soon, either, for the man unpinned himself from the car and staggered to where we stood but thirty seconds earlier. We ran as fast as we could towards our house; somehow managing to simultaneously watch our feet and the unfolding scene.

He stumbled across the street on the other side of us, the two men right behind him. Still beating him. Screaming obscenities and calling curses upon him. As my sister and I burst through our own gate and dashed up the stairs to our flat, we looked behind. Saw the men leaving him; triumphant. Saw him slumped against the wire fence, his dead weight sagging it low towards the ground.

He turned out to have his arm broken in at least three places; his head cut, badly bruised all over, and his back bloodied through the remnants of the once white t-shirt.

That is the greatest picture of violence I have borne personal witness to which comes to my mind. Viewed from somewhat of a distance, acted out on someone I did not know. And see how much I remember, even all these years later? Do you see, too, all the words and feelings and horror that I could not put into words? Do you smell the smells and find the associations which I will never forget? Never separate from that moment in my history?

Now, take that, or take your own story, and multiply it. See how that one impacted you? Impacted me?

Here in Kigali, I meet peers every day—students much like myself or young adults the same age. And they have not just my one story. They have even up to fifty stories, or even more! Fifty personal horror stories—most of them acted out not on utter strangers such as the man in mine, but on family. On parents, grandparents, spouses, siblings, and children. On friends and teachers and schoolmates and neighbors. On people whose faces are dear and whose dying moments can never—will never—be forgotten.

Do you feel—can you begin to grasp or understand—the trauma? The heartache? The wondering… why did I have to survive!

Here I stand in the midst of it all; and I do not dare even begin to claim that I might understand the depth of pain. The depth of horror which must be worked through—silently, so silently! Each person alone with his or her memories. Some of those killed; others of killing. Many with both.

And the shame! The pain, the grief, and the shame. What if you killed your family in order to stay alive? How come you did not get out of the country earlier with your loved ones—they might still be there! What do you do with the burning shame that you were raped? Or that you turned the hunted away for fear of being caught yourself?

What happens when you smell that same smell again which was in the air when…it happened?

What happens when you see…that face again. The killer’s face. The rapist’s face. The face of the person who turned you away?

What happens when you see someone holding a shiny object?

I have had panic attacks before. I have even had panic attacks because something happens which happened in nightmares I used to have, and it all comes back to me and I remember… remember what? A dream? These people, they remember a reality every single day. They walk through the pain and the memories and the smells and the sights every single day!

Tell me how! Tell me how there is hope for peace, hope for hope in the face of such hideous horror. Such horrible pain?

I, 22 years old with one horror story barely my own; they, 22 years old with 50 horror stories directly related to and involving them.

There is no human hope for such inhumanity; no human possibility for reconciliation. And the idea of such atrocities finding redemption somehow—of those who committed such atrocities being redeemed—utterly preposterous!

So where is the hope in the face of hopelessness? Will there never be true peace—a peace in which people on both sides of clearly defined (but now technically illegal) lines stretch out their hands to each other in forgiveness, acceptance, and love? In which those lines are truly erased and not simply moved underground?

No government or NGO or any other body can dictate such a peace. No social strategist can arrange such a mercy.

Such a grace.

So can such a thing be achieved? Dare we dream for peace? Are we idiots who dare to hope for reconciliation? Who hope enough to strive for it?

Such a peace will not, ever, be spread from the pinnacles of government buildings nor from the darkest prison cells. But perhaps—yes, perhaps indeed—it can and will be spread one person to another to another. Spread by one who forgives and the restored forgiven in turn forgiving another. Spread in the manner of smiles—from one heart to the next until the country is infected not with the hate of genocide, but with the love of reconciliation and true peace.

And it is for this that we hope and we pray and we strive—one story, one person, one name at a time.

posted by Lada @ 10:57 PM