THE QUIET IN THE NOISE
Anne Collins
At this point in time it is worth reminding ourselves of our privileged place
in the world. Most of the time we assume our relative good fortune is
somehow natural, dare I say, and with this short-sightedness, we perceive the
rest of the world.
The recent swoop of terror on the United States has disturbed this false sense
of equilibrium and we have been made to sit up and pay attention again, made
to notice what's going on in the
rest of the world. Our wealth, security and peace now stand on guard, seen anew
in this precarious moment. If we choose to turn away from the daily news of
all those others burdened
by terror and disaster, and seemingly so far away, we turn away from their inextricable
link to us and our common future. In doing so we deny the inherent, long-term
danger in such a choice.
I live in Tasmania, an island state of Australia. As I write spring offers a
satisfying texture of colour and complexity, a diverse celebration of life.
A paradise of sorts seemingly at peace with itself. In this corner of the world
we are grateful, for a change, to be that much more removed from thecentres
of power and action. But all is not what it seems. The beauty of a Tasmanian
spring masks the story of those indigenous peoples whose world was once invaded,
changed forever by terror and almost wiped out. My garden grows cheerfully over
this older story, known quietly as genocide, a story still fighting for recognition.
Although our ancestors knew about it then, although we know about it now, it
is still a hard story to reckon with. We seem too ready for argument, to trade
insult and semantics, too ready to compete for truth. It is especially hard
to listen knowing so much good fortune has come at the expense of so much misfortune.
We'd prefer to cast our human natures in a better light.
Often it seems in these post-modern times there is too much to know about, too
much to register in our hearts at any one moment. In any one day wemight be
asked to consider an array of oppressive human circumstances: the living conditions
of people in Nigeria; the appalling restrictions imposed by the Taliban on the
women of Afghanistan; in the west the cynical exploitation of women by the advertising
industry; the fact that number of people living below the international poverty
line on less than one dollar per day grew by 200 million between 1993 and 1998;
the growing numbers of homeless on our own streets. The misery it represents
is brought to our comfortable lives by television and made unreal by it, colonised
by it as Zadie Smith recently wrote. So that current affairs too is served up
as entertainment to be consumed while we eat our dinners. When we can't watch
anymore, we turn it off. This is our choice and sometimes it seems we have to
do it. We reach saturation point, say enough is enough. In any one day our consideration
of the issues has its limits. But the misery continues.
For those few of us on the planet who understand the privilege of having enough
food, freedom and shelter, as well as the opportunity to live a fulfilling life,
we feel at the very least we are obliged to listen. We
listen, then we tell others about our listening, not knowing how much good it
will really do.
The listening will never be easy while the few continue to enjoy luxury at the
expense of the many dying of hunger and preventable disease; while this wealth
is seeded in destruction and the powerful obfuscate and manipulate the powerless.
Pick any handful of stories about the corruption of power in the third world,
see its links with the so-called civilised first world and you see why people
are so angry with the west. You see why it can't go on like this, ad infinitum.
How many more times do we need to be reminded? But how can our listening counter
the enormous forces of destruction? Not fall captive to cynicism? There are
no easy answers, still we listen. We listen to everything we can bear to listen
to, to everything intelligent and compassionate we can come across. We search
for the space in the confusion and note that empathy, as Robin Morgan recently
reminded us, is the most subversive of emotions. The listening will never be
easy while the words good and evil avoid the word why. They are such misused,
conceited words.
Why is not the continuing and calculated scourge of preventable hunger, exploitation
and disease, of greed and racism considered as evil as any fanatic driven to
smash planes
into buildings? In all cases thousands of innocent people suffer. In all cases
the violence is anything but random. Casting why as the voice of treason silences
us with expedient logic. Peace cannot be bought at such a price when there are
so many, apparently avoidable, bleak facts in the creation of human misery.
Something terrible has happened, said my partner the Wednesday morning here
that was the Tuesday night there. It's so chilling, emailed my friend from Canada.
Isn't it awful, said another, are you all right? Well of course, I thought rationally,
what have I got to complain about? But after so much listening, three days later
my body felt like it had been run over. I had listened and watched and read
and listened, glued to the vision of those planes crashing into buildings, those
mighty buildings collapsing, images played over and over for effect, feeding
some kind of obsession, lest we forget. Images absorbed by my muscles, my bones,
my stomach rigid and churning, my sleep fitful, triggering memories of my own
personal loss and delivering me to that core of mass grief held in the smoke
and rubble of New
York City.
Bosnia, Uganda, Rwanda, Hiroshima, Vietnam, Chile, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Palestine
. . . . the ghosts weep . . . at the carefree, insulated, indifferent golden
innocence that was my country's safety, arrogance and pride. Why should it take
such horror to make you see, Robin Morgan writes. In Australia we had our September
11th before the USA had theirs. In Tasmania, that morning, I attended a protest
against our government's appalling treatment of asylum seekers. Many come from
Afghanistan, the country that was to be on that day, thrust brutally into the
consciousness of the world. In just a few hours time here in Australia, the
word refugee would become knotted into the hysteria of the word terrorist with
all its racist overtones.
The dramatic images from New York took us straight to the hearts of its people
and we rightly felt an emotional obligation to respond appropriately. Yet at
the same time, here in Australia, images of refugees in rickety boats as real,
live hurting people who sometimes drown in their desperation to get here, were
being censored lest we forget our fears and open our borders instead. Nevertheless
some of the stories have found their way through freedom' s grey zone. Refugee
equals terrorist? Just imagine if a modicum of truth were allowed to take root
in the collective consciousness, like refugee equals largely women and children.
Would we then be treating them as an enemy, using our navy to round them up
and dump them on poor island countries all over the Pacific? The lack of moral
intelligence contributing
to this shameful episode of Australia’s history is astonishingly obscene,
if not an example of evil in its most banal form. So here we are back again
with that word evil. It's difficult not to use it at times when you feel something
really deserves its cold, hard ring, especially when that something calls itself
civilised.
Three weeks after September 11th as I sorted through my stack of newspapers
ready for recycling, I was still stunned by the individual stories that have
become New York: the look of bewilderment on a firefighter's face inside one
of the buildings before it collapsed, the true fragility of bravery somehow
captured on camera; the woman who survived after being buried for twenty seven
hours under slabs of concrete and glass; the man who made it to the bottom carrying
three women on his back. The falling ones, falling from so high up ... for a
few seconds I look at them close, turn the photo upside down
to see if the person is a man or a woman, to see if their hands cover their
eyes; for a few seconds as I gaze out onto my garden, I imagine the feel of
the wind sucking past, the noise of it as they hurtle downwards, their screams
stuck in their throats, lost to the atmosphere. I am stilled by these images,
knowing their particular power has to do with the fact that those office workers
and airline passengers were so clearly like me. The aggression that brought
them to such an unsuspecting and terrifying end was never deserved, regardless
of what may need to be said about the political transgressions of the USA or
its unwillingness to see itself through the eyes of others.
The images of a crumbling New York also find a place in my heart because I visited
the city not so long ago and discovered how much I like it, how humane it felt
despite its violent reputation. I was relieved to discover how much low rise
existed and surprised to see that skyscrapers, like the Chrysler building, could
be beautiful. But on my last morning there I stood directly beneath Tower One
of the World Trade Centre and bent my head back to look up at its disproportionate
vulnerability, way, way up in the sky, too high for me I decided then, too high
even for Superman it seemed.
Countless other images from around the world continue to fill countless newspapers,
week after week, year after year, images of havoc and suffering, pitiable, horrifying
in their cruelty, disturbing all sense of hope in humanity. There's no doubt
these images get a grip on me too and over the years I've had to be careful
in my handling of them lest they steal my dreams. As far as war and politics
goes, the twentieth century reeks of its rotten causes.
On Mondays I practise Spanish conversation with an acquaintance from El Salvador.
That week in September I tried to tell him why my body had absorbed, so intensely,
the trauma of the events in New York City. I am like a sponge, I said wondering
how well this expression would translate. My acquaintance is a refugee who refers
from time to time to la guerra in our conversations. La guerra seen close at
hand rather than on television. La guerra that caused his family and him to
leave their country. How does he see my emotions? My acquaintance is a generous
person who refers only occasionally to the dead bodies he saw in the streets
of El Salvador. There were El Salvadorians who worked in the World Trade Centre
he informed me. He has seen the wrath of the USA, he has seen things I've never
even dreamed
of. He never dreams, he tells me.
Then there is my student. I teach him English. We talk about the terrorists.
As a boy my student fled Laos with some of his family because his people, the
Hmong, were being persecuted by the communists for co-operating with the CIA
during the Vietnam War. After the war, he explained, the communists came to
kill us like animals. As a boy he hid with his family in the jungle for four
years, scraping to survive. He is not a critic of the USA . He appreciates the
freedom he has in Australia. And even though he still has family in a Thai refugee
camp, he believes our government is right to be careful about who it lets into
the country. I try to understand his point of view. Unlike me, he has experienced
a real enemy who threatened his life. We read about Laos in an old encyclopaedia.
My student asks me to explain the meaning of the terms left wing and right wing.
Where to start, I wonder. How to explain that their meanings grew from a framework
now largely obsolete, yet still so apparently influential if the responses to
the events
in New York are any indication. These old divisions still distort our discussions
as we line up in our respective camps and try to argue about the meanings of
the attacks on the USA. It's much harder and more confusing to abandon those
camps, but more necessary than ever if we are to further our understanding.
My student tells me if he could, he would go to war with the Australian forces
who have gone to Afghanistan. I ask him why. There is no euphemism or linguistic
disguise in his simple English.
I think war is exciting, he tells me. Why? I ask incredulously. You get killed.
People suffer. You know that, I want to add, you are here because of war. My
uncle say war is exciting. Why? I ask again. There is more to this that just
conversation practice. There is here a raw admission, rarely heard. Oh you know,
he continues, because you fight and then boom! boom! He laughs. My student has
a pleasant smile. He is not an aggressive person. Men think that, I say. He
looks at me not disagreeing, perhaps a little embarrassed. My wife wouldn't
let me go, he adds smiling again.
While the bombs drop, voices cry out for the need to respond to violence with
something other than the same. These voices, many of them women, continue to
swim against a tide of revenge and political cliches that call this option naive.
But if we are to survive as a species how can it be anything but necessary,
even though it is undoubtedly complex and contradictory. Twenty years ago many
of us thought we were all going to die in a nuclear war. That time has passed
to see us grow older in a world no less dangerous.
The week the world changed I attended the launch of a new book of poetry. A
local publisher sensitive to the moment, celebrated the work of a nervous, sensitive
poet. The poem he read couldn't have been more apt in the way it captured, almost
prophetically, the sentiments of that particular week. Then they would take
their freedom with both hands/ and eat it like a sacrament/Then they would care
about the Middle East/. The crowd in the book shop was as silent as a congregation
in need of comfort. Poetry of the kind celebrated that night is as essential
as air.
Our papers keep saying the day the world changed but the change really only
came for the USA and countries like it. For too many the world changed long
ago. Chile’s September 11th came almost thirty years ago and the man responsible
for its crimes, now deemed too old and sick to pay for them, is free to enjoy
the convenience of an old age that dissolves his guilt in memory loss. But there
remain people who will never forget and who can teach us something in their
remembering, if we listen. As a Chilean acquaintance, a refugee from Pinochet's
terror, said recently, there's this quiet in the noise of burning buildings
and people dying, there's this quiet in the noise of disaster. To speak the
truth, to question why is not to demonise or justify. To state one fact is not
to deny another. We need to look back in a way that allows us to go forward.
To speak the truth is to desire survival. Otherwise, as Akbar Ahmed recently
said, we are condemned to the brutal finality that denies dialogue, so dramatically
represented by those planes crashing the World Trade Centre.
Very few of us . . . were aware of history, said a Vietnam veteran recently.
You become wiser, you look at history and you see many more pieces of the jigsaw.
To understand the jigsaw that is the world today, we have to understand that
the picture is complex, contradictory, full of shades and nuances. The pieces
represent a mixture of prosperity, poverty, freedom, suppression, ignorance,
education, hypocrisy, friendship, all mixed up by the dirty hand of politics.
The pieces won't fit together if we force them, if we refuse to see the underlying
colour, the pattern at the edges, if we can't first admit all is not what it
seems. We are being told that it takes a certain kind of self-respect to say
we have met an enemy. We are being told that a cunning enemy will not be persuaded
by a pacifist morality and will exploit the openness of societies like the USA
and Australia. But what kind of enemy are we talking about and what kind of
defence is needed? As Edward Said recently said: "Islam and the West are
simply inadequate as banners to follow blindly . . .demonisation of the Other
is not a sufficient basis for any kind of decent politics.
It is now mid-November. The current news reports the fall of the Taliban and
that in celebration some men and women in Kabul shaved their beards and lifted
their burqas. But the victory of that country's Northern Alliance, aided by
the recent US bombing, looks sickeningly blood thirsty if the photographs printed
by our salacious media are any indication. The Afgani women's group RAWA is
warning us about these victors, saying their past crimes make them an unacceptable
alternative government. So what sort of government will be installed in that
war-ravaged land and what will it mean for its future? And what will it mean
for our future? And will we get enough food aid to Afghanistan before it is
crushed by mass starvation in a harsh winter? It is despair that feeds fanaticism
said Tariq Ali. We cannot afford
to forget this. Will the devastating selfishness of the affluent world be at
last ameliorated by, at least, some sense of global self interest?
Since September 11th I've been turning on the radio again and again, hoping
to find hope in the words of the most well-informed and compassionate, hoping
to see a pause amidst the rage of the mob, hoping the men of this world can
stand back a little from their hell-bent course, infinite in its revenge yet
so short on justice. For as Robert Fisk said, it has come to this. It has come
to this and we have to be extremely careful now, in a new, creative and seemingly
impossible way. For we have no choice but to try for a new type of courage,
for a renewed wisdom and for that heightened awareness that comes from the quiet
in the noise.
Anne Collins
November, 2001.
1 Zadie Smith, 27th October, 2001. "This is how it feels", in The
Age
newspaper, Melbourne, Australia.
2 Robin Morgan, September 18th, 2001. Article emailed to Australian
Feminist Policy Network email list.
3 Anne Kellas, 2001. Poem titled "The Square Black North" from Isolated
States, Cornford Press, Tasmania, Australia.
4 Akbar Ahmed, 22nd October, 2001. Professor of Islamic Studies at the
American University, Washington interviewed on Late Night Live, ABC Radio,
Australia.
5 Peter Michelson, 2001. Quoted in article "Going Back" in The Age.
Good
Weekend magazine November 10th, Melbourne, Australia.
6 Edward Said, 2001. There Are Many Islams, article emailed to Australian
Feminist Policy Network email list.
7 Tariq Ali, 2001. Will Pakistan Jump to US Demands, article emailed to
Australian Feminist Policy Network email list.
8 Robert Fisk, 2001. The Wickedness and Awesome cruelty of a Crushed and
Humiliated People, article emailed to Australian Feminist Policy Network
email list.