Immediacy and Horror

I had a nightmare this morning. Most of the details are unimportant, except for these: my parents were hiding the town’s children in their house, bad men wanted to take and harm the children, and my parents’ home was transplanted to Africa. At some point in the dream, my mother and I realized that the bad men recognized that our house was the safe-house and we began shuttling the children out. Eventually, the only person who remained in the house was my father, who stayed for a short time to maintain the illusion of normalcy. In the dream, my mother and I watched through binoculars, waiting for some sign that the bad men knew we had left, searching outside the safe-house for my father.

Suddenly, the men waiting outside the house turned, pointed at the house, one laughed, and they opened fire. My father, hearing the popping sounds, ran outside toward the gunfire. He was immediately shot, and quick, red blood burst across his body, ran down his face, over his ribs. I screamed, “Daddy!” My brother screamed, “Daddy!” We kept screaming.

Eventually the bad men stormed the house, and once they were inside, my father stood, stumbled down the street toward the safe-house. Yards from the front gate, he was tackled. He was held down by other parents, other townspeople who didn’t want him to give away the hidden location of the children. It was too late. My family, in horror, fled the house and ran into the street, screaming for him. Now his pursuers fell away and he crawled, slid toward the gate, but could not get through. Soon we were all sprayed with bullets, and I watched him fall to the ground.

I woke up sobbing. My husband told me over and over “It’s not real.” Silly enough, I believed it for a second. Of course, my own father was not brutally killed this morning. But I think it’s no mistake that my subconscious put that dream in Africa. That’s where horrific things happen, where children watch their fathers die, where parents watch their children raped and murdered. It’s distant, unreal, and it does not rip at your insides like watching your own father riddled with bullets.

I wonder why.

Reading history, I often find myself shocked by the detached behavior of those in power, of the common folk living in the wealthier nations—those who heard stories of unbelievable violence, took a moment to intellectualize it, and moved on. Here in the US, and at the UN, people debate the application of the terms torture and genocide. Empathetic creatures cannot reduce atrocity to a dialogue concerning the proper application of a term. Human beings with souls cannot hear about mass murder and do nothing.

We must have no souls.

There is something so distant about Darfur, about AIDS in Africa. God, yes, it’s here, but not like it is there…and so we can buy a T-shirt at the Gap to prove our care, but does a damn T-shirt prove anything other than another new marketing ploy has been effective with America’s monster-consumers?

I watched the New Hampshire debates this weekend, and what failed to shock me at the time, but what now has me stunned, is the moral authority with which the candidates spoke about giving tough love to the Iraqi people—and their inability to deal with terrorism with any comment more nuanced than, “I would seek them out and end them.” What are we that this has become an acceptable way of speaking in public? Why can’t we understand the Iraqi government’s ineffectual predicament as anything other than a natural response to horror? Every day people are EXPLODED in the streets. This has been happening for years. Brutality is commonplace, and even though I recognize that our American response to news of this brutality has been a careful stomaching of the truly terrible, those without distance surely cannot swallow so much. The Iraqis cannot do very much for themselves because they are busy watching one another die—fearing for their families. We let the violence in Darfur roll along merrily (pretending to debate sanctions on China, threatening to protest the Olympics because the Chinese support the murderous regimes in the Sudan—but we all know we won’t. God love synchronized swimming).

I am left wondering why seeing my father blood-soaked in a dream (an unreality) rattled me, when countless photos of others dead in heaps does not anymore. Surely my father matters a great deal to me, but why don’t these other people? Last night I re-watched footage of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination—saw shots fired and, I know, human beings blowing up. And I munched potato chips while I viewed the carnage.

I wonder if all human beings cannot help but be like this, if it’s just me, or if I can safely blame my culture for making me this way. I have volition; perhaps I could have chosen to better fight the directive to numb myself to others’ misery. It must be better to feel it though—that at least, is real.