lapidary grief, all stone and silence

While we were at Mermaid, there was a fire at the university. We were getting ready to take the boat to the beach when Jenine got a call on her cell from one of the other teachers: “GET OUT OF THE BUILDING, FIRE, GET OUT GET OUT.” Click. Obviously, we were far away and safe, but we had no idea what was going on at the university. Fire safety has been one of the huge issues that everyone has been fighting for, because there are no fire escapes and the guards lock the doors, so none of us could get out of the buildings if there is indeed a conflation. Jenine and I were terrified, and couldn’t get in touch with anyone…we just sat and tried to calm down, and she chanted a Hindi prayer for peace and safety. It was almost surreal, the juxtaposition between tranquility and nature and the sound of the ocean and sunshine warming my skin, with the fear and worry and nausea of not knowing what was going on at the university…I started thinking about how fragile we all are, how human life is such a delicate thing that you can’t appreciate until it is put in jeopardy. This place makes you see it, you are slapped in the face with vulnerability, with how easily the body can be broken or maimed and emotions are even more ravaged. I feel like a raw nerve all the time here, sometimes I wish I could turn it off because it is just too much. While we were waiting to hear if everyone was safe, I couldn’t shake this image of all the people who are important to me in my life, twinkling like little ephemeral candles spread all across the world, and how far away I am from everything familiar and safe and how little control I have over my own safety or anyone else’s around me. I am sick of being scared here. Sometimes it is a little too much to handle, I feel it wearing on me…it feels like my consciousness has been rubbed with sandpaper and every fresh abrasion just cuts a little bit deeper. I’m nauseous all the time, and part of it is just my body shutting down from heat and exhaustion and insomnia and malnutrition, but a lot of it is psychosomatic. I just get physically sick when I see some things on the streets…when the beggars touch me with their crusted stumps for arms, I feel such revulsion and such guilt for it. When the dirty kids grab at me, I push them away, but that feels wrong. It is hard to look at these people—and they ARE human beings just like me—because their twisted limbs make me feel viscerally how much it hurts to have had your leg twisted literally behind your head and have to shuffle along in the dirt, dragging yourself by your gnarled hands…Jenine and I were talking about some of the mad women here, they wander around with wild hair and besmirched with dirt and pus and shit. They are barely clothed, sometimes naked, and often have chains around their legs. This is because they are chained to a wall and raped repeatedly. Jenine tried to give money to one, so that she could get some food, and the woman flinched away from it…the only solace I can find in thinking about them is that at least they are no longer in their bodies…they have so clearly left this world, they have no touch with reality anymore, and I hope that wherever their diseased and abused minds have taken them, they find more safety and solace there.
Once again, I find myself puzzling over how to deal with what I see and experience here. It is the hardest thing I’ve yet encountered, and I am heartsick and homesick a lot of the time. It also makes me angry in a way I’ve never been before, and I am searching how to harness that and channel it in productive ways. Sometimes I just want to lash out at the nearest person, because the men stare at me and they jeer at the girls and then even the administration has no regard for their lives and their safety (put some fucking fire escapes here! Just give a few less pamphlets to the rich donors, and stop with all the hierarchical academic bullshit, currying favor from big names like a dog while the focus drifts away from actual education). But, I know my frustrations are useless and toxic unless I take a deep breath and think about what I can actually accomplish. This place is a learning curve that is by necessity so sharp that you feel the drop in the pit of your stomach. My goal is just to retain the capacity for empathy and avoid constructing that protective shell, a wall that would turn me to stone so that I can’t feel for these people. And furthermore, speaking out against the unfairness, doing what little I can to alleviate it, and making sure it isn’t written off as yet another social problem that becomes distant and fades when people are ensconced in the comforts of America and academia and ‘normal’ life.
Sometimes I get really disheartened though. Last night I saw this little girl, she kept tugging on my arm, and I looked down and she had no feet. She had acid burns all over her legs, and she was tottering on crutches, barely supporting her own weight. It was like she was wearing high heels, but they were bone splinters instead. She kept asking for money, and I tried to offer her food instead, but she wouldn’t take it at first. It’s because she is working for someone, one of the slum lords who maim children to enslave them into begging, and reaps their profits…slumdog millionaire really is true. But finally, she and some other kids were willing to take food; Jenine and I got them ice cream. I know its not the healthiest thing, and they need vitamins and nourishment, but every kid deserves to have a treat once in awhile. And that was almost the hardest part, seeing this little girl laugh like a normal kid. And she is, she’s just human and probably seven or eight years old…And no matter what I do, what NGO’s I work for or articles I read in school or money I donate, I’ll never be able to give her a real childhood or her feet back or anything.