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GOES TO WAR |
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Just a passing face
in a crowd of refugees
of TheColumnists.com
You appeared on my TV screen a few nights ago, trudging along in the dust of your homeland, part of a bedraggled stream of your countrymen leaving for parts unknown. How old are you? I can’t be sure, but I will count you among the elderly with myself.
The wrinkles had worked deep into unresisting flesh and left a story there. The lines were different from those etched in mine, not more, but in another pattern. The majority of mine are around the mouth, and fallen now from decades of smiling from pleasant times, not all, of course, just most. Yours etch crosses and tracks encircling the eyes and cutting across the forehead, miniature canyons tracing the pain and sorrows that fill the weathered creases.
Two women nearing the completion of their lives; one in comfort around her own home fires, with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to hug and cuddle. You were carrying one of your little ones on your shoulders with his legs hanging over your bosom…and you were sobbing as you shuffled away from whatever small measure of comfort you might have had. The camera panned up close and I saw you there, a victim of all the twisted, torturous misadventures of mankind.
It’s a framed picture I will never be able to turn against the wall.
Could I ever know you? Probably not. I am not sure the God that lives in your heart is as forgiving as the God that lives in mine. What place of tolerance could we find in one another’s neighborhood?
One of us has never suffered hunger or deliberate cruelty; never lacked for a home, or a spokesperson if we were legally wronged. That one has been free to question, to read, study, form opinions after examining both sides of a matter, and best of all, to speak them out as we wished. That one has had the advantage of the voting booth and an education on many subjects including the workings of her government.
The other woman was born into a society that spent her life like small change, a nurturer drained of the dignity of equality until there is not much left except the part that feels the crushing sorrow of watching the ones she loves suffer. She has had no honest information with which to make decisions in regards to philosophies and religions. She is limited to the point of incarceration…held captive by ideas and beliefs mapped out for her thousands of years ago
You looked so frail and tired there on my TV screen. Age had pulled you forward and stooped your back. You struggled so slowly along the road with the burden of the child. He was too big for you to carry in your thin arms but your shoulders had enough sinew left to bear your beloved.
This thing inside of you that loves your grandson to the point of distraction, this thing that will keep you moving on your long trek with love pressed against your shoulders is something we could know in one another…though such sacrifice has never been asked of me. On this subject we could merge and hold one another and cry together.
You are not my enemy.
©2003 by Audrey Yeager. The caricature of Audrey Yeager is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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