Wherefore art thou, Guantánamo?
While the Hobbit learned to speak Spanish this morning, I sat in a cafe reading about the last days of the Guantánamo prison camp. It was an article in the SF Weekly, and actually it was as much about the first days of Guantánamo as the last. The first days, the first months, the first years – when torture was the norm and the Bush Administration was totally out of control. The dissonance between the clink and clatter and thrum of the cafe, and the descriptions of the abuses at Guantánamo was so great, I had to keep setting the paper down in order to keep my mental balance. And each time I did, I thought, Guantánamo, Guantánamo. Why, why, why?
As my mind wandered, I thought of the men who’d been held there. Who are still being held there. Of the people who’ve been guards there, of Abu Ghraib, of the veterans coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq and the suicide rates among them. I thought of the prisons scattered all over this country and all the violence and degradation they contain. And I thought about my little Hobbit. My sweet little creature, who knows nothing of violence and degradation.
I couldn’t help wondering, What will I tell the Hobbit about Guantánamo when he’s older? How will I explain how we let it happen? How I, who have worked with torture victims, listened to their stories and helped them put their stories down on paper; who knows something of the lasting harm that torture does and the utter uselessness of it – how I have done nothing, other than cast a couple of votes, to stop it?
I don’t know, I thought. I really don’t know. And then: Perhaps now is a good time to do something more.
Katie — there’s no good way to tell your kids about this kind of stuff, except to be matter of fact about it. There’s other topics that are worse — indian killing, slavery, segregation, lynching, Japanese internment… to say nothing of the worst events of other lands. How does one possibly explain something like the Holocaust, even to an adult?
In general, it’s harder to answer the “why” questions than the “what” questions. I got into that this weekend with Io, when I told her about Chinese footbinding, and tried to explain to her about the apparent paradox that, in fact, it was only “rich and privileged” women who got their feet bound. But explaining the inevitable “why” question was even harder — the women did it… to show the world… that their man was so powerful that he would always make sure she was served….