Some days are good. Some days are bad. Some days need to be forgotten. And then there are days which are etched into you—this was one of those.
Stan grew up in the north, one of Canada’s first nation’s people. He went to school, for a while, but he had dreams like a lot of young Native men. Here in a town of less than 500, he wanted out. There are jobs out there he heard—big jobs in the oil patch. Make lots of money; buy a car, then buy some freedom.
He left at 16—caught the bus to somewhere—and when he got there this somewhere was so big. Buildings were so high they covered the sky he thought. But dreams of bigness are dwarfed in a white man’s world for a young Native boy.
His accent is thick. His knowledge is poor, and out here, a Native boy doesn’t get a second chance in a white man’s world. Lost jobs combined with bad choices lead nowhere fast.
When he left the reserve, his grandmother said, “When people leave they don’t come back,” then she cried.
Tonight, Stan is 18. He has no money, no home, just a plastic bag soaked in gasoline stolen from a pickup at a bar.
Struggling through the fog of dying brain cells he looks for a warm grate to lie down near to sleep.
Minus-17 tonight means Stan won’t wake up and his grandmother will be right; you don’t go home.
◊♦◊
A million miles away in Syria, Ruzgar a 12-year-old boy is heading home. His family are some of the lucky ones. They got out and into a refugee camp near the start of the war.
They tried to get to another country, to move away from the madness. His father, a technician, was seen as an economic refugee, and “for God sakes, they are Muslim,” said those who oppose refugees.
Border doors were locked as white leaders from big, rich countries said no. Now, the refugee camps are pushing the people to go back home.
They walk carefully along bombed-out streets. When you are gone two years nothing looks the same. Ahead of them, a walker steps carefully. Walkers are men sent ahead to scout for IUD’s—mines to us—they find the safe path, most of the time.
“BOOM” that’s the first thing Ruzgar hears, then it’s painful screaming like he has never heard. His eyes bug out as the smoke clears. The man, the walker, is 20 yards from where he was before the explosion, both legs, and one arm are gone, just bloody stumps remain. He screams.
Ruzgar’s mother grabs him, tries to shield his eyes, but the screams… Ruzgar screams, too, maybe to drown out the dying man screaming.
Nobody can help the walker now; it’s too dangerous. So, as the screams continue, they turn and head another way. Eventually, Ruzgar will stop screaming, but he can’t stop shaking—perhaps for forever.
“This is an economic refugee, send them back,” I hear. “Send them back. It’s not our responsibility.”
◊♦◊
Here in Sydney, I visit the shelter I help at once in a while. Val should be in the kitchen I think. Val is an aboriginal woman who works and lives here.
When we first met, she kept her distance—why wouldn’t she? She was part of the stolen generation, taken from her parents and her home by white fellas. She went through foster homes and bad adoptions—it was my race’s way of making these people better.
One day Val shows me her back. It is covered in burn marks from cigarettes and scars from lashes from a belt foster parents left.
We became friends over music one day—a song played, we both started singing the lyrics—then broke into an impromptu dance. She laughed. I laughed. She later called me the palest black fella she’d ever met.
She’s had a bad back this year, as it got worse, we tried to talk her into going to a clinic. She wouldn’t. You see white people’s institutions haven’t been good to her; she’d rather suffer a little pain.
She wasn’t there today. I haven’t been there in over a week. Billy tells me she just died in her sleep one night. She finally went to a hospital, this time for an autopsy.
We won’t look after them alive, but we sure will when they are dead.
“Cancer got her,” Billy told me, “all the way through here,” he said pointing to body parts. “Normal people couldn’t live that way,” he went on. “She must have suffered a long time.”
All her life, I thought.
◊♦◊
Now, in 2018, I am reminded that the great war ended 100 years ago. It was the war to end all wars—to end tyranny and suffering.
100 years ago, the battle of Cambrai had ended. Allied forces were starting to get the upperhand. William was the son of a baker who enlisted in the British army. He married Olive just before leaving for the front. He loved her as much as a man could love any woman.
And even as the atrocities of war bore down upon him, he kept his hope alive, that he was part of something better. Where freedom would be found for all, where this war would create joy, happiness, and opportunity for all men, women and little children.
From the front of a rain-soaked trench, he would write beautiful prose to Olive. But as the dead bodies mounted, he realized the vanity of war had a broken mirror. And from his favorite book by John Keats he sent this poem.
“I have been astonished that men could die martyrs
for their religion—
I have shuddered at it;
I shudder no more.
I could be martyred for my religion.
Love is my religion
and I could die for that.
I could die for you.
My Creed is Love, and you are its only tenet.”
He never came home—and now, here, 100 years later—I think about his hopes, wishes, and dreams and realize 100 years later they did not come true. And I cry for him, as I cry for Stan, Ruzgar, and Val—because I don’t know what else to do…
