SHARING STORIES
...there are millions of you...
I imagine in my experiences in life, they are not so different to many other peoples,
in that I see, hear, read something. It touches me. A day or week or whenever later, I encounter another person or event. That encounter leaves signs, mists, distant proverbs and somehow they mingle with earlier events or encounters. So often this happens to me, embracing a sentence here, a poem there, a beautiful film or heartfelt encounter.
In regard to the above I want to share this story with you. This is a true Latvian story told to me by a Latvian nurse who had previously worked in emergency wards in her country. She told me she had seen the best and worst of humanity.
“An old grandfather of a beloved 15 year old Granddaughter was told by her mother, his daughter, that her child had been raped by a farmer in their area.
Grandfather had fought in World War Two as a young man and was still strong. He said the farmer must be arrested and went to his friends in the police department to ask if they knew anything. They said they knew who it was but had to wait for the granddaughter to confirm it was that man.
Granddaughter did confirm it but hours later committed suicide. Grandfather roared and demanded the police arrest the farmer. They said that without the granddaughter in court they would never gain a conviction.
Grandfather, having fought with homemade weapons against the Nazis, constructed a Molotov Cocktail in an empty wine bottle and marched off to the guilty farmer’s house. Gripping the bottle ready to toss it, he pounded on the door. It was pulled open by a child he knew from the neighbourhood, wearing a princesses’ tiara. She looked up at still strong Grandfather, smiled and said he must come in and celebrate her birthday.
Grandfather looked beyond the child into the house and saw the guilty farmer dancing with a young woman amongst many other people. He looked again at the child, staggered back from the door, struck by a pain through his neck, radiating across his.
His rage for revenge and his guilt over the possibility of hurting innocent people had torn his heart apart. He dropped to his knees, cradled the bottle to be certain it was safe, laid down seeing the sky and died.”
And then this too, I want to share, as somewhere in my imagination, these two things are a part of the same sphere of life.
THE WEIRDEST CREATURE IN THE WORLD
“…
What a pity,
you’re not one or five,
there are millions of you.
Brother, you’re like sheep,
when the cattle-dealer, dressed in sheepskin, raises his cudgel
you join the herd at once
and you run, almost proudly, to the slaughterhouse.
All this means you are the weirdest creature in the world,
you’re even stranger than fish
that knows nothing of the sea although it swims through it.
And the tyranny in the world
is all because of you.
And if we’re hungry and tired and drenched in blood,
and if we keep getting crushed, like grapes to provide your wine
it’s all your fault
its hard for me to say so
but much of the fault, dear brother, is yours.”
Nazim Hikmet (1947)