 |
| Humanism sees all the pieces of a being, and most importantly, all the potential and all the goodness. Love can shine a light into the darkest corners and breathe in new life and new dreams, like glue to gather all of our broken pieces. PHOTO BY SHAZIA ISLAM |
Today, I printed out the photo above to send to my friend to cheer him up, give him an opportunity to see another side of himself, not knowing that he was gone. I had sent him an earlier photo before taken by another very good friend of mine of a rainbow poised in a graceful arc above a small idyllic town. When my friend received this photo, he wrote to me and said it was the most beautiful thing ever, and that it was what he would look at during those dark days in solitary confinement.
I couldn't find the address information anymore of the correctional institute where he was being held. We had been emailing earlier, but I had received a notice from the administration of the prison a few days ago that my friend was no longer on the email system. So, I decided to send him another letter as I had done the first time we made contact last fall in 2013. I would have included the photo of the shiny disco ball. He would have seen parts of the park outside my office window. He would have seen the light reflected from the ball in the shape of diamonds on the ledge. Another rainbow effect with the idyllic scene in the background, and the shining presence of this beautiful ball of mirrors. What would he have thought?
But when I looked his name up to locate the address, I discovered the news of his passing. Nothing much was said about him that humanized him and his life. His past actions had rendered him unworthy of any kindness from the press, and this, I do understand. The people who had been tragically impacted by his actions also needed kindness. But the press did not honour either side - the victims nor their perpetrators; the coverage was just one long gratuitous interlude of the violence that would continue to resound in press articles to come. No critical analysis of or action against the horrific nature of war, and the debilitating effects of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and how young American men and women from lowly backgrounds are often recruited to be sent off across the oceans to fight and kill people who they have been brainwashed to hate - their learning devoid of any understanding of people's histories, livelihoods, and communities. They maim and kill with the same ferocity that they blame "the terrorists" for showing, and justify their armed invasions all in defense of freedom. Operation Desert Storm was nothing more but a replay of the age-old crusade of the West to divide, conquer, and destroy the brown-skinned Muslims. And so the destruction continues, not just in Iraq.
My friend was one of those young recruits. With already a troubled life, the officers paid no mind. He was another body/boy to be shipped off to the killing fields. Killing he witnessed, and killing he did. When he was discharged, he was charged shortly after, and sentenced to life without parole. From then on, everyday became work to pay his dues and right the wrongs he had committed. But those memories stayed fresh in his mind, like a festering wound coagulating into daily terrors with other inmates who knew of his crime and gave him no peace. People will ask if he deserved any peace. I ask, how else can one heal if not out of a place of peace, and not misery? But then people will say, he didn't deserve to heal. I ask, why do we judge the wrongs of one being while turning a blind eye to the society that created him?
I know my friend committed atrocities, but I also know of his profound guilt and sorrow in the brief letters we exchanged before his death. He was on a mission at that time, to procure some semblance of friendship and understanding in his life, with someone who represented the enemy he had been taught to hate. That photo of the rainbow had caught him by surprise. He never expected such a thing to happen, that someone from across these stolen and plundered landscapes would reach out to him to tell him that there were other dimensions of his spirit he could reach into to find that rainbow.
I hope my friend finds that rainbow in the life beyond, for it is always somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, where that land of lullabies offer glimmering sights and sounds of a once loving and playful child.
"Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raajioon"
