By the river in the returning rainforest, the camp stands empty, its ghosts cautiously creeping toward daylight like flowers on the razor wire. All conflicts end. But only after their suffering has become intolerable and indefensible. By then, too many lives, too much potential has been lost. The carnage cannot easily be undone. The old growth forest may have been replanted after clear-cutting but untold generations need to pass unhindered to recover what’s now missing. Generations of temptation to forget and resume that grim harvest, likely over some perceived or prejudicial slight. The distrust between trees and axmen run as deep as sap and steel. But columbine doves emerge from eagle claws in the artificial alpine meadows. Their green now camouflages the assembly ground between the towers even as their purple occasionally brightens or bruises the mounds tucked behind the weatherworn barracks, depending on the light. In the same shifting sense, the truth of what happened here remains as difficult to establish as reconciliation.
Witnesses needing answers to unlock their lurid past tour
the inhumane monument which whispers: Are you seeking me? Are you seeking the
key? For some, entry remains locked and barred behind an iron door of denial.
For others, the maze of collapsed tunnels beneath the wire confuses them. Did the
prisoners tunnel out or did we eventually tunnel in? Did the monsters reside
before or behind the wire? Did they don the uniforms we remember, or simply raise
hands to temples as blinders against the dirty, anguished faces they never
seemed to see in some kind of informal salute? There is little beauty in this
truth, and little truth that acknowledges their victims’ beauty. The ode
inscribed above the entry celebrates artifice over artistry, a cruel joke cast
in statutory iron. If that gateway opens into a gallery, it’s a theater of
performance art. The somber enforced silence in the audience chamber echoes
like a tomb.
Masked by greasy smoke, shrouded by dirt like a fresh laid
grave, some look but cannot see as history complains: Your delusion's killing
me. Distant visitors cast their eyes about in righteous pity, certain in their
hearts nothing like this could happen where they live. They would never starve
a population into subjugation. They would never abuse a child for the
circumstances of her birth. They would never torture a woman to make an
ideological point. They would never eradicate entire peoples to attain a little
cultural living room. They would never claim their former friends and neighbors
as anesthetic vermin or chattel. But they would fight. Always, they say they would
fight. They would never board the buses quietly, only reddened tooth and nail,
at least until instructed to rejoin the tour. Or they would stand to be
counted, damn the cost, damn the consequences, damn their unrelenting
cowardice, just like their mythic, iconized ancestors. Conveniently, they avert
their eyes from the looking glass of their own past, too dark, distant and tarnished
to be relevant. Empathy remains elusive. It’s easier to sympathize with pain
received than to ponder pain inflicted.
In the shadows of misty killing fields and murky crematoria,
the pain isn't real unless you invoke it, like the memory of a people's loss. Pain
begets pain more often than its stepchild solace. Our pain is ours alone, not
shared to be comforted. The specters of our allies become suspect because of
they lack the magnitude of our suffering, the depth of our ragged scars. Never
mind that they stood beside us against the advancing shield wall while most
merely watched from darkened alleyways behind that thin blue line. Life feeds
on life. Only fully sated does it pause to mourn what’s missing. The spell of
each epileptic episode endures, casting an illusion over the landscape,
softening its edges with night and fog. Phantasms move in moonlight, some
heroes, some villains, some shifting between, often indistinguishable by the
shadows they lay down. As we stand chained in the center of the maze below,
they are all we have to distinguish their true nature, good from evil, right
from wrong. Until we unbind ourselves from the blank wall before us and turn to
face the fire behind. Momentarily its brilliance might blind us but eventually
our eyes adjust.
Like the diamond that cuts the knife, the image of a mound
of moldering, headless dolls slices through the gathered ignorance of men. Here
lies all that remains of a generation of mothers and their daughters, a
post-modern gravestone. Here their captors offhandedly piled the magnitude of
their loss. Each girl had been allowed only one to give her comfort and keep
her quiet through her journey to the underworld. What became of the doll heads,
none of the meticulous ledgers say. Perhaps the oppressors feared those heads
would speak and bear witness where none of their victims could. Perhaps they
were afraid they concealed unclean thoughts that might be passed to the next
generation. Perhaps they served as a warning only a child would understand. Or perhaps,
like their owners, their usefulness was done. With no eyes, they cannot see.
With no ears, they cannot hear. With no mouths, they cannot scream.
Tattooed by scars that will never fade, bystanders emerge
into the light of reconciliation understanding the future belongs to the brave.
Some testify against erstwhile friends and neighbors. Some recount small acts
of kindness, the everyday heroics that offer hope. A few bear witness to missing
martyrs, joining in collaboration to piece together the puzzle of their
fractured lives where no one else remains. The most courageous admit their guilt
and seek mercy but not through understanding. Their bare their shame for all to
see like a red triangle pinned upon their chests. Their belated tears cannot
wash the landscape clean. Even heavy rains now only muddy this once fertile
ground. Unsatisfied with their suffering, the righteous mob exhumes stones from
the exercise yard. Eager for retaliation and retribution, they mirror the
other's tactics. Stained glass houses shatter like fragile crystal throughout
the night.
Crucified by nails of complicity and silence, they swear an
oath of Never Again, knowing promises, like lives, can be bought so very cheap.
But each generation slips a little further from the memory that spawned that
vow. First the survivors, then the witnesses, then the daughters, the
granddaughters, all the aunties and the children who listened enraptured on
their knees. Until the past shifts restlessly in its grave like a creature
neither alive nor fully dead. We attempt to enshrine these events by erecting
holidays as sacred monuments, convinced that one day, the oppressors will all wake
up on the wrong side of history. Or, alternately, that one day we will all wake
up in shallow graves.
But we have to ask ourselves, do we remember to help stoke
the hatred of our enemies? Or do we remember to fill the holes in our hearts because
of the pictures in our heads? If the latter, we will heal through our
compassion. If the former, we would be better off burning this wine-stained
book.
