Like rain, like bullets

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So you think you finally know what's going on, that you've begun to grasp a new place in a real way, when suddenly the frame of understanding slips and the word careers into a strange place....

You're driving along the road at dusk on the outskirts of town when, with a violent sudden-ness, a man with a large stick steps out from the darkened verge and begins beating the driver in the car in front, through his open window. You catch your breath as you register the same is happening to the car on the other side. Your own car slows. In the culminated head-lights you see a man in uniform with a gun. Shining flecks of rain falling around him like tiny silver bullets. Now you realise they're pulling all the cars over; 3 small mini-vans full of scared compliant people. Your own driver hunches down in his seat and quietly, submissively, pulls the car to the side. This is no time for talking - you cannot lose in translation what cannot be put into words. Time slows, your heart beats in your head and the lights reflected on the wet dark road shine blurred.

The man with the stick, sweaty from his labour in the hot night, finishes with the car in front and moves to yours. Next! He's a jumped-up young guy wearing a T-shirt with the Eiffel Tower emblazoned across it -a landmark he firmly believes is in Greece. I know this because I spoke to him in the chemist shop only 2 weeks ago. My French flatmate had had palapations at his allegation but we laughed about it later. He seemed pretty harmless then, but now his ignorance has become a weapon in the hand of someone he doesnt even know is using him, and he's laying into people with just as much blindness. And now its your turn.

As he approaches your car, you slowly but obviously move your white face closer to the glass. He peers in, face screwed-up...and then he smiles.

Somehow your foreigner-face has won you the right for him to relax, to lower his stick and instead of hitting the driver, use it to hit the back of the car in approval...sending you on your way before he turns to deal with the car behind. So the car lurches forward, relief fills the air and you slip back into the night, back into the world you thought you knew.

And how often does this happen, in how many countries? How often do the terms of recognition shift in ways that make a mockery of safety and dignity of everyday people? How often do normal men take up sticks and misuse a law, taking their portion of power in one bloodlusty moment, subjugating others to feed their own starving insecurities?

And we, we who are not usually privy to such things - how do we deal with being the bystanders, those who pass through unscathed, blanketed by our foreign-ness, the fates of other's reflected on the glass?

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Comments

[Kalsang]

lucky you
hey, you are lucky because of being inji (and your white skin)...haha. anyway, just to tell you that "everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves."