While I was offline last weekend, a
parolee in Oakland shot four policemen to death before getting killed
in his apartment. MacArthur Boulevard and 70th Avenue, thirty-five
blocks from my house. I was oblivious because I didn't even turn on
the radio or television all Sunday.
On Monday before I logged on, four
Palestinians in a car leaving the refugee camp in my ancestral
village in South Lebanon were blown up by a roadside bomb. My
relatives' homes were rattled by the explosion. The road where the
men died is visible from the back window of the home I lived in as a
girl.
I started this blog in 2004 because
of a vision I had at the beginning of the Iraq war, April 2003. It
was spring in California and we were visiting the Central Coast.
Orange poppies bloomed on the hillsides. Our San Luis Obispo hotel
was empty except for scores of middle-aged Army reserve officers who
drove up in their mini-vans and family cars, wearing shorts, khakis
or jeans. They changed into military uniforms and drove off to a nearby
Army camp.
In the evenings when they returned
from training, there was a feeling of camaraderie in the air. TVs
in the lobby and bar blared Fox news. One middle-aged guy, thin and fit, with
the face of a dentist, paraded around in a teeshirt blaring FDNY:
NEVER FORGET. He was going to avenge the dead New York City
firefighters of 9/11/01. To do this, he was going to rehearse for
battle in the gentle hills of the Gold Coast of California, among old
cattle ranches and new vineyards; he was then going to ship out to
Iraq and kill some terrorists. He, like the other officers, smiled
kindly at my toddler boys, petted them, beamed at us. Our young
family was the reason for their effort, in their minds. I guessed that seeing us,
they thought of their own families left behind in suburbs all over
California.
They didn't know and I didn't tell
them that I am an Arab-American and against the invasion of Iraq. I
believed they were going to war for a lie and I didn't want them to
kill Iraqis.
Those officers didn't know and I didn't tell them that I had lived
in sight of the World Trade Center for many years, that I saw the
lights go dark the night it was bombed for the first time in '93; nor
did these suburban officers know that I had grown up in the shadow of
Mieh-Mieh refugee camp, haven of revolutionary Palestinians and later
revolutionary Islamists, that some of those fighters had killed my
grandmother and sacked my village in 1985. Those American warriors
didn't know that I had witnessed more destruction already than any of
their families ever would.
I did not tell them on the patio at
evening barbecue dinners that I thought their cause was a mistake. My
toddlers ate hot dogs and ran around the pool fence, accepting
caresses from men with short hair and smooth faces, men who looked
like accountants, real estate agents, building contractors. I felt
horror at what was happening in Iraq and what I feared would come.
And I felt compassion for these men who thought they were going to
face death, who thought they were sacrificing themselves for their
country and for my children. They believed they were avenging the
deaths of September 11, 2001.
Later that week my family drove to a
gorgeous public state beach west of San Luis Obispo: Montana de Oro,
Mountain of Gold. The name derives from the orange-yellow poppies
that blanket its hillsides in spring. Sitting on the sand, watching
the enormous blue ocean at mid-day, I felt utter peace. War throbbed
on television, in the hills to the north of me, and over Iraq, but
where I was, all was calm. I knew in that moment that there were
places in Iraq, too, that were just that peaceful, right then. No
matter what bombs, guns, explosions, tanks, fighter jets disturb the
peace, somewhere there is always a center of silence. That center
might be deep inside a woman's heart. It might be at a fountain in
the heart of an old mosque. It might be in a date palm grove
abandoned to birds, mice and the wind. I felt kinship with and solace
from the sand and the sun and the ocean, and I told myself - this is
the true reality. Whatever the warriors and fighters are doing, they
are simply mistaken, and their wars and their dramas are not the only
reality. This peace is here, it is unending, and it is real.
Now it is morning in Oakland. I took
a walk around nine a.m., down to MacArthur Boulevard and along the
street for a few blocks, to 39th Avenue. Nothing was happening. A man
in an orange vest swept trash from the sidewalks. A gentleman in a
nice suit parked at the KFC and went into the funky coffee place,
greeted a lady in high heels and business dress; we were old, young,
middle-aged, black, white, Asian and mixed race, all in the cafe
drinking tea or cappucino. On the way home, my neighbor was pulling
weeds in the front yard and happily gave me a sack full of lemons and
a few heirloom Chinese snow peas. Birds sang, sun shone.
The sun is still shining but the
police helicopters have come out now, an hour later. I presume they
are hovering over the funeral procession that will wind its way from
the murder site two miles from me, down to the enormous coliseum
whose lights can be seen from our upstairs on summer nights. Police
officers from around the country are making their way to the arena,
along with the governor, the mayor, presumably a senator or two. Some
of the helicopters will be news reporters; the national press has
been covering this tragedy.
In the last week Oakland's email
lists and comment posts have been full of people raging at the
violence. A common exchange: one person asks for prayers for all the
victims of violence, and prayers for the murderer too; then another
person demands to know why the first person is not lauding the dead
policemen to the stars, and does she feel as much sadness for the
murderer as for the officers? Where is the outrage? Then the two
parties argue about whether it's right to say any word of blessing at
all for the dead man who killed all those people. He was suspected of
several terrible rapes. Why does his family say they still love him?
Why do the black radicals call him brother and a resister? They are
horrible people.
Another line of comment runs like
this: those people in East Oakland are scum and should be
exterminated, cleaned up, wiped out. This sentiment is expressed
repeatedly in the comments section of the newspaper, or in email
listserves.
I am reminded of the days and years
after 9/11, when we heard frantic calls for extermination, for
cleaning out terrorists. "Let's make Asia a glass parking lot," a woman said to my mother. "Just bomb them all, I am sick of this."
There was also the
summer of 2007, when men inside of Nahr-al-Bared refugee camp in
North Lebanon attacked a Lebanese military post, killing several
soldiers in their beds. My own relatives had in-laws stationed at
that post, and I heard rumblings of the usual: exterminate them, wipe
them out. The Lebanese army did indeed flatten Nahr-al-Bared,
rendering tens of thousands of people homeless. Many innocent
civilians were killed or wounded, lives were disrupted. For what? The
murderers of Nahr-al-Bared were generally known to be outsiders. But
all the people of Nahr-al-Bared suffered. If I spoke in the blog or
among my Lebanese villagers of the travails of the stateless refugee,
if I mentioned poverty and the hopelessness of the refugee situation,
I was accused of being soft on terror, of enabling lawlessness and
massacre. I shut up.
Responding to violence with more
hatred and violence just keeps the karmic wheel turning. I got off
that wheel. Here in East Oakland the sounds of children playing at
recess float in my window. Below the window, the rose bush puts up
new buds even though the gardener clipped it severely a month ago. In
Mieh-Mieh right now I am sure my uncles are dozing on the balconies
or playing cards with their friends, and when the sun comes up, what
few songbirds survive will flit about the olive groves, heedless of
the conflicts roiling inside Mieh-Mieh camp.
Peace is always available. Peace is
always here. Mourn the dead, but work for justice for the living.
Poverty creates drug addiction, despair and violence. We don't know
exactly why that man snapped and killed all those policemen, but we
know that our communities are deeply wounded; nevertheless some of
our children survive. I know children who grow up on those very
streets where the policemen died last Saturday. They attend school
with my sons. Their parents and grandparents work and tend to them
and do their best to raise them well and give them what they need.
Violence does well up and threaten
to overwhelm us, whether in Oakland, New York, or South Lebanon. But
we don't have to give into it. We don't have to believe in the drama.
We don't have to let our neighbors incite us into mob action, or
massive wars of retaliation. We can keep tending our gardens, sending
our children to school, cooking dinner, converging in places of
worship or meditation or rest. If religions fail us then we can go to
the ocean and gaze upon her vastness. Peace is here. It never went
away. All we need to reach it is stop shouting and listen.
May the souls of the dead rest in
serenity, and may the hearts of the living be comforted in their
loss. And may the poor and the suffering find justice and harmony.
May our wounded cities be healed. I love Oakland, and I love
Mieh-Mieh, and I affirm that beauty and love triumph in both places.
