Acid Reign II

Each year, we are told, more than one hundred women are victims of acid attacks in Pakistan alone (that is only the reported number), and until recently, there was no legislation punishing the cowards who effectively ended these women's lives without killing them. This particular gesture (throwing very powerful acid in the faces of women and girls) is reserved for wives who no longer intrigue their husbands, girls who refuse the advances or proposals of potential suitors, even in-laws as often other women will will sometimes employ this tactic on a sister or daughter-in-law. It is not unique to Pakistan, and is seen in countries as far away as those in South America. Nor is it a Muslim phenomenon, although that seems to serve the media best as an Islamic practice.  As I listened to the news today, I sat in silence as I heard of another woman here in the USA killing a pregnant woman for her unborn baby. This happens often, and in many cases, the murderer cuts the baby from its dead mother's womb. I hear all the time that we are a Christian nation, but I never hear those same pundits attribute this heinous practice to Christianity. Perhaps that is the benefit of our diversity - we are diluted (or deluded) enough that nothing we don't like sticks to us. But if we were more homogeneous, I would like to see the argument that correlates the brutal murder of a pregnant woman and the subsequent dissection of her body to extract a fetus to our Nation's faith. 

Zakia stumbled forward as she tried to hold her face together with a limb that no longer responded to her. In the second or so it took to collapse, her focus shifted from the incredible heat and pain engulfing her to her children - were they with her now, had they been hurt - she had no idea where she was or what had happened to her. She tried to call their names, but her mouth, like her dead hand, no longer obeyed her. Trying to call out increased her pain, and she compensated by lunging forward in her blindness to shield them from this horror. As she hit the ground, she curled  up instinctively desperately trying to stop the agony that seemed to be growing across her face like a living, hungry thing. She pressed what felt like the stump of her hand to her face, pushing as hard as she could. She heard muted voices and felt pressure on her body that must have been from other hands.  She didn't know if those hands belonged to her children, the monster who did this to her, or bystanders. Still trying to call out to her children, she lost consciousness.
There had been plenty of witnesses, many who saw the nondescript man in flip flops dash across the courtyard to the steps leading down to the street, with a small plain bottle in his hand, a glass bottle one would recall later. He had stopped short of a woman coming out of the court, and after a second of hesitation, he had flung the contents of his container towards her head. No one knew what was happening, no one had the schema for it. The also stood in shock as the woman screamed, clutched wildly at her face, then fell down in a heap making low and garbled noises. They did see the curious bit of smoke rising from her, and as they rushed forward and converged on her, they smelled it too. As they began to claw at her trying to turn her and pull her up, all but one shrank away as they managed to pull her arm up from her face exposing a sick and messy mixture of blood, muscle, bone, mucous, and concrete where her face seemed melded to the step.
These Samaritans did recover, and as they lifted her up from her repose, none noticed the author of this tragedy a dozen meters away, half smiling, watching in wonder at the drama unfolding.  Perhaps he really hadn't thought this through - perhaps he knew he would take away her face, but hadn't imagined the entire process. There would be no way to know what was behind the smirk, maybe just the assurance that he had done what he needed to do, and no power on earth would punish him. He stood there as they carried the remains of his wife, the mother of his children, down to the street to shove her in a taxi. He glanced down at the stain on the step that had once been her face, blinked a few times, and turned to head home without much thought, most likely a hero.
She came to in a rush of noises, smells, and the feeling of being buried. She had no way of knowing she was in the back seat of a cab with three men holding her urging the driver on to the hospital frantically. Her remaining ear was pressed down into the seat, as well as the sole eye she now possessed. She couldn't see or hear clearly, and when she tried to move her numbed arm all she felt was resisting pressure. She muttered a few prayers until she remembered her children and began to trash wildly. The more she fought, the more weight she felt down upon her. Eventually she gave in, trusting that Allah had tended to her children. She became aware agian of the pain in this moment of resignation, and redirected her resolve to manage it. She still did not know where she was, where she had been, or why she could not hear, see, or feel anything. Perhaps she was in hell, she really did not know.
The darkness crept in again, and she felt the beginnings of a dream - she had no word for hallucination in her language, and embraced the familiar escape, no matter where it lead her. She dreamt she was fighting with her husband, or at least, fending him off.  He had grown more violent lately, as she could no longer give him enough money for his habits, and the combination of drug addition and spite had made the beatings more vivid.  At 39, she had learned to absorb his anger but it was taking its toll. On this occasion, he had knocked her to the ground and was beating her savagely in the head. She could feel her face coming apart, could feel the blood spraying everywhere. But it was a dream, and when she woke she would be sore, but whole again - at least what passed for being whole in a living nightmare worse than the cruel imagination of her dreams.
To be continued.....

Acid Reign

It was a bright, clear day as Zakia emerged from the court building on the other side of her new life. The sun was warm on her face as she tried her best not to skip down the steps; she was still far too removed from a normal life to dare to have faith in a divorce to provide one for her. She had taken this first step, literally and figuratively though, and there was no turning back. She took a few more cautious strides down the steps, pausing to raise her chin up to the comforting sun, letting it embrace her coy cheek, an overture to freedom, a gesture to buoy her courage. This primer in emancipation would be short lived however, as she would have very little left of her face by the time she reached the end of the stairs.
When she woke earlier that morning, she wasn't sure if she would be able to go through with it. It wouldn't be easy changing the brutal cycle she had lived with for more than two decades. She did not feel good about her future, simply having gotten to the point where she preferred stepping over a cliff to returning to the misery she had endured so long, even a new hell looked appealing. She paced back and forth, watching the clock, trying desperately to find the strength to leave for the government building, finally settling on the picture of her two children. She would take it with her, for if she did not, she might turn back at any of the hundreds of opportunities in the next few hours. She would face these weaknesses one at at time, would walk toward her freedom even if it felt like it was her death. She no longer could imagine the difference.
She gathered the papers her aunt had helped her with, never having learned to read very well after she was removed from school at the age of eight. She could read many of the words in the Koran though, and drew great comfort from from their soft fluid shapes, their consistent rhythm, their firm but kind admonitions. She loved Allah more than her own life, of this she was certain. And if it was not for her faith in Him, she would not beg for the strength to persist even if only to provide for her son and daughter.  Not once did she ever question Him about her fate, wise enough to know that her resolve, her fortitude were His gifts, not the monster that had erupted into her life twenty years before. God's will, her children's picture, and a growing desire to emerge from her darkness were enough to push her forward this day when every muscle and every bone protested the act.
As she walked purposely to the bus line, she realized for the first time in her life she was going where she wanted, when she wanted, without care or culpability to her father or her husband. Both by the way, knew what she was doing, and she had left one and alienated the other to do so. Allah, the kids, and sunshine provided all the purpose she needed in life now, not two men. Not the man who gave her away to an alcoholic and drug addict, not the man who was more obligated to his friends' sense of his own faith or the man who had no faith until his delinquent pride needed under girding to survive her liberation. No, she loved a different God, not the one that told her father to leave her to her torment rather than face a community that would view her divorce as an affront to his family's dignity and honor. Not the God who granted her husband superiority and impunity even as he violated every decent tenet of the faith. She loved her God, who would see her through these worldly betrayals, the only one who knew her heart.
As she drew closer to the court, she walked faster, easier. She had given herself to this by now, and would leave everything in Allah's hands. Amazingly, she felt no fear as she entered the building, the the whole process, waiting in line, gathering signatures, waiting again for a stamp, lasted a few hours and it felt like minutes. She walked in, and it seemed, straight back out. Out into the sun. The simplicity of the sequence startled her, perhaps threatening to awaken too large of a dose of hope for her to bear just yet. The clerk had given her more papers, had made explanations she could no longer remember, and looked on impatiently as she seemed reluctant to turn and leave as she should have. She was numb or she was alive, she really had no gauge to tell.
The steps confronted her as she left, and she paused at their summit not knowing where the frontier of her fear would give way to her future. She was half way down when she noticed a familiar form darting into her periphery. It did not startle her, nothing this day could. Still, she turned, ducked, and covered the side of her face that was in peril. It was not instinct, it was practice. The dull, brutal thud that would rattle her head never came though, and she peered up under her elbow almost curiously. He had stopped a few feet from her, and was tossing something at her, almost comically. Water she thought as it hit her, warm water. Perhaps in those moments, she was dreaming - the day was unreal, and his aborted attack was beyond her experience. This thin strand of speculation was cut short abruptly as the acid began to dissolve her face.
The wet warmness exploded, as did all thoughts of the day, all notions of a better future. The pain stung right through the left side of her face, though her skin she thought, straight into her skull. She frantically clawed at her cheek, as if she could pull the horror off of her face. As her hand met what was left of the tissue between her eyebrow and chin, the agony threatened her consciousness as dead fingers pried unfeelingly at flesh falling away too readily - cartilage, bone, and sinew tangling in a shock induced silence, as her screams found no voice. Cruelly, just as a new and merciful darkness was washing over her, she realized she lost control of herself and was collapsing in a desperate clutch of blood, urine, scorched flesh, and resignation. She reached into her pocket with a hand she could no longer feel, hoping to connect with the picture of her children.  Nothing else mattered at that moment. Melting she knew, as the remains of her face kissed the concrete, should not be this painful.
To be continued........... 

Standing in the Shadows of the Holocaust

I remember watching a documentary about the American Neo-Nazi rally in Skokie, Illinois in the late 1970s being very touched by the reactions of Holocaust survivors who vehemently opposed the march. I could see the shadows of their decades old horror in their eyes as they protested what they said was a familiar echo of the cycle of hatred reconstituting itself unimaginably once again in their lifetime. Even as an insulated eighteen year old, I could feel their pain, recognized the efficacy of their admonitions, could see the foundation of hatred trying to set itself, trying to harden and cure in front of my very eyes. I wasn't pro Palestinian, wasn't pro Israeli, probably wasn't pro anything at that point. But I could sort out the rhetoric of evil, could perceive the mechanisms of hate, could feel the chilling penumbra that would chase away the light.
Thirty years later, I would stand in those very shadows that I had gleaned in the eyes of those survivors all those years before. The fragmented and jagged shadows that ripped across my shirt as I walked up to the gates of the barbed-wired enshrouded refugee camp inside Jerusalem, heading into streets heaped in garbage, and into schools with virtually no resources warning the promise of the classrooms. The darker, humiliating shadows inside the covered street just outside the Mosque of Al-Aqsa, where a young man in a earth toned uniform held an automatic weapon carelessly as he forced me to recite Koran in a language he disdained, knowing no matter what I did, he was going to refuse me entry and insult the woman at my side just because he could. And the shadows that literally dwarfed and engulfed me as I stood at the base of the wall built in Bethlehem, a drab and forbidding structure obscuring the setting sun, marring it profanely in a place that others found holy, foreshadowing the barren and lifeless shell of Hebron that lay on the other side. A city draped in desolate and empty shadows, the scars of hatred and division.
I suppose I can understand how these shadows look to a new generation of Jews, maybe they are the necessities of security and the bleak under girding of a defiant survival in an age where austere strength subjugates virtue. I can understand this. But what about the eyes of their parents, their grandparents? What do they see in these shadows? No familiar ghosts? No portents of a race poised to lose its soul in the death of another? Not one cry, not one protest, not one shudder?
I have stood in the shadows of the Holocaust, but not in Germany or Poland - they have radiated malignantly to a land bereft of clouds, towering trees, or imposing mountains, nothing now but hate to hide the sun.

I have employed this metaphor before, a reference to the Holocaust that gathered some indignant rebuttal. I have been informed, in no uncertain terms, that I hold no claim to this term, that it is owned by others. But when those custodians overlook these shadows, when they can no longer see the brooding evil lingering there, they have bartered away their tenure in a profane and pragmatic bargain.

Balance Shmalance

I did something today I rarely do, I went to a conference session that I wasn't at all intrigued with. It was a presentation about how to balance your life - work, family, and play. I chuckled as I entered the room, knowing I was an interloper, the only one in the room who wasn't searching for more balance, the only one blissfully happy out of balance. Perhaps I went to understand these people, having encountered them lately, mostly to my detriment. Twice in the past three years, I have been in a job interview process when I have been asked what I do to create balance in my life - when I chortled, things went downhill. Evidently people have a strong bias about such things in their lives, and unfortunately, in the lives of others. I would go so far as to say there are quite a few balance fascists out there.
I did enjoy the session, not finding any particular insight into the construct, but having an hour to contemplate things that are important to me, things that I am passionate about.  Not that it is rare that I think about things, but I had the context and license to explore them indulgently was nice. I started contemplating what drove me, what made me want to do the things I do for a living, for my vocation. It was clear to me almost immediately that it came easily down to two simple things: jobs and dreams.
I didn't have the greatest childhood (didn't have the worse), but I have never had a job I hated that I thought was inescapable. I did jobs in college that were not very appealing, but they were transitional situations and I knew that. Everyday here in the US, I see adults stuck in jobs with not much hope for better futures, and it saddens me greatly. That is why I think I work with at-risk students here in my own country, knowing how much I get out of my work, hoping to give that gift to my students - the hope and freedom of a great job.  I take it for granted too often, but when I work with students, I realize how blessed I am, and how important their careers will be for them.  I try to help them develop the habits and skills they will need to chase those positions, to get them, and to keep them. But more importantly, I try to help them develop the cultural capital to appreciate those opportunities.
When I work overseas, I think more about dreams - once again, being and American is wonderful for a dreamer - literally anything is possible here, and conceivable too.  Not so in many other places of the world.  I want those other children to realize a broader set of possibilities, a broader set of freedoms, two things I also take for granted.  Education is the obvious key, and for me, helping their teachers is my best tool.  Jobs and dreams, dreams and jobs, new horizons, expanded possibilities - these are the things I think about daily when I look into the faces of people I work with 12-16 hours a day.  These are the concepts that motivate me, haunt me, and occasionally reward me. To be honest, I can't think of anything else to plug into this equation to balance it.

The Remains of this Day

It has been a very busy day, one of many to come. I am wrapping things up at one job, getting ready for the next, preparing a conference presentation for later this week, wrapping up the details for new living arrangements, trying to get back on top of my Academy obligations, waiting for a student to come in later tonight for tutoring, and letting some old memories roll by gently, no longer trying to exorcise or excise them, just letting them warm me for the moment.  I am happy with the body of work behind me and excited about the challenges and tasks in front of me. In a very stressful time, things are settling languidly and I am grateful for my blessings. Alhamdulilah

Barbershop Wars

It struck me today, while waiting for a bit over an hour for a haircut, that I have had a life-long war with barbers. I hadn't thought too much about it in the past, and if I had, I probably would have conceptualized it more like a truce, or a non-aggression pact at the very most. From the moment I walk into the shop until the moment they spin me around and ask me what I just may consider the stupidest question in the history of mankind, "How does it look?", I am perpetually at unease.  I think I rather prefer my ventures to the dentist office to tell you the truth.
Getting a haircut is a no-win proposition from the beginning - there is no way to make my head look good, and this is compounded then by the fact that people know you have just been to the barber and you don't look better. Maybe it is because I have a big head, lots of scars, vacillating cowlicks on either side, and hair that has been graying longer than I care to remember. My best expectation for one of monthly excursions is more of a medical mode - "do no harm."  Lately, it seems that there are two choices available, looking like a 14 year old or an octogenarian when I leave - nothing seems possible in between. Alas, I have long since resigned myself to a poor haircut, but there is more to the experience that I dread, much more. Today was a great example, visiting a local community barbershop in West Virginia. You see it seems to be every barber's mission to talk my ears off why he/she trims the hair around them (and sadly, lately, in them), and it is my fervent desire to be left largely alone.
I walked into this local tonsorial parlor in a good mood. Once inside that buoyancy evaporated immediately as I recognized I was fourth in line, and dialogue was part and parcel of the ambiance. There was a middle aged woman holding court, while cutting hair and pontificating with the senior citizens in the room. Each customer had his own particular palaver, and she went toe to toe with each of them. I listened as they debated the merits of a four-quart versus six-quart pressure cooker, canned green beans versus Kroger beans, Douglas MacArthur and Afghanistan, the proper dosages for various acid reflux medications, various banking vagaries and bounced checks, the time of life when ear hair began to grow faster than head hair, and a few other streams I couldn't quite follow. Somewhere in the middle of my wait, it struck me that when I got to the chair, I would be interrogated and would need to feed a particular parlay with something interesting or appropriately sensible - my mind went blank. I think I even dreaded my moment to rise and mount the chair, contemplating letting the next in line go ahead of me. I shook this off, and bravely stood up, put down my Field and Stream magazine, shuffled across ten feet of scattered hair clippings and sat down unceremoniously.
The previous occupant had not finished his business however, and stood at the door finishing his end of the great heartburn debate for several minutes. This gave me time to rehearse the obligatory directions I would give my hairdresser, and I settled on "just clean it up a little, get it off my ears, and I bring the top straight down." She said ok, and I waited for her first foray into a dialogue. Amazingly though, I was rescued by a regular perhaps sensing my reticence, who started into a story about a local publisher who had just released a new book on beekeeping. Feeling like a man who had just been given a reprieve of another sort from another kind of chair, I smiled, hunkered down a bit, and prayed for the efficacy of apiary anecdotes. The chatted about bees and honey and books right up to the time she spun me around and confronted me with the redundant question, asking for approval well past the point of any return.  I had managed to get through the whole ordeal with those simple initial directions and a few grunts.  I was happy.
She was a nice lady, and so, apparently, was her mother from the few stories she shared. I thought while she was chatting and clipping, about why I did not like to talk while in a chair as someone was hovering over me with scissors and electric clippers. I wasn't afraid of them nipping me, nor am I always taciturn around strangers or in new situations. I guess I figure that these professionals have a nearly impossible job in the first place, and I really don't want to distract them from their work. Oddly though, I also considered that my refusal to engage them in the obligatory banter might even irritate them leading to worse contingencies, but I figured it really didn't matter. I smiled as I responded "just fine" despite not looking up to verify the assertion, and I tipped her two dollars as I left.
The spring returned to my step as I walked out to the my truck to return to work - I had survived a trip to a down-home barbershop with minimal discourse, had explored a few new avenues of human nature, and I knew whatever had happened to my head would be irrelevant for me for awhile, as I planned no visit to any mirror anytime soon.

Reticent Reflection

Bemused, this was another day he mused that his only purpose was to somehow manage his way to his own death. It wasn't a pathetic ponderance, nor was it a melancholy mood. Simply the conclusion of a lifetime of catching up to the rest of the world, the abandonment of any desire for a semblance of normality. It would be a long night of speculation, but a new sort, the kind not designed to produce answers or direction. It would be an honest recollection of where he had been, not where he was to go. He didn't care about that anymore, long ago realizing that there was no destination, no place to be.
It would be a night to decide how much longer he would challenge God to delay his death, how much longer he would fight each twilight without a compelling purpose or significant reward. He would leave the sleep aids alone tonight, the first time in several years. Sleep was no longer a diversion, escape, or relief - maybe just another sort of delay, another sort of wasted enterprise. It wouldn't be a desperate debate, this reckoning with himself, just a long over due audit and the balancing of life and what was to be left of it.
There comes a time when mortality loses its luster, and relegated to a long list of things tolerated as there is nothing better to do. Not a prelude to suicide or anything that dramatic, ironically, that would require a reserve of purpose now nowhere in sight. No longer of question of finding meaning or realizing the potential of one's worth, merely the promise of entering the third act of a particularly poor play, too expensive to leave early, too fragmented and clumsy to end gracefully. And no, not a reaction or revelation from reading Camus or Sartre for the first time, that brand of epiphany long abandoned for a more pragmatic erosion. Existential angst is best served to the effete, not really enough to chew on for a man determined to end the anonymity of his life.
Philosophy though, might be a good place to start. He had always understood philosophy, could write papers that got As, could explain and teach it to others, but had never really thought philosophically. It amused him that he was quoted often, many times wondering if the attributed aphorism had ever even crossed his lips. True, he could label things, had a quick wit, and could put concepts together in glib bursts, but he was no philosopher. Philosophic questions held no enduring interest for him, his professors were too lazy hold him to the task, and the subsequent people he encountered outside of college never knew him long enough to realize the lack of depth in the attenuated gestalt of his life. If he had been a philosopher, he would have been more concerned with things, would have battled his circumstances more coherently and consistently - no, he was no philosopher, more like a mnemonic meme, moving across a universe unspeculated upon, connecting others with trinkets and party favors, destined for a benevolent, misplaced romanticism.
Back to existentialism though, and the inevitable search for meaning in his life. Like most things, he had this backwards too, this discovery of the relative meaninglessness of life. Most earn it honestly, working and plodding through life under a false guideline, a errant errand, only to discover much later that it was all a false scheme, an artificial emulsifier that can no longer bind the meaningful elements of their life in a culminating sequence. A cruel and catty cut, often terminal and insuperable. This was not his issue however, as he never owned such a compass, such a personal organizer or mantra. He knew the mores and levers that manipulated his early life were false, but he resisted the acknowledgement valiantly enough to emerge into manhood sufficiently stunted to avoid the issue for a few more decades as he sorted out the debris belying the efficacy of his relationships and his plans.
The first full challenge to this subtle diversion of any fundamental analysis of his life came innocently enough, certainly not in the pages of Nietzsche, Habermas, or Marx, rather on the Discovery Channel, or some other lesser-traveled cable choice. He had watched, probably out of boredom and procrastination, as a pack of wolves chased down an elk, deer, or reindeer (he wasn't paying that much attention). Not partial to carnage, he almost turned away as the wolves closed in on their prey, but he watched anyway, sensing something strange. And on cue, the cervine prize literally stopped in its tracks completely disorienting the schema of the wolves. They skidded to a halt, circled frantically, even snapping and biting at each other. This continued for a dozen seconds or so until the deer, or whatever it was, lost its nerve and bolted. The wolves recovered instantly and overtook it and ripped it to pieces. He recognized himself in this drama, not the victim, not the killer, but the pursuer. The biologic mass of muscle and intent, motive and movement, guilelessness and pursuit.
Challenge and transition had been the hallmarks of his life, the remedy for any harbinger poised to thrust speculation or dissonance in his path. He was not fleeing from, not fleeing too - not fleeing at all, that would necessitate a specific goal, a specific adversary (other than himself); no he was not fleeing, just avoiding the collection and coalescence of witnesses that would eventually manifest itself as a mirror, forcing the unbearable consequence of respite and reflection.
To be continued...