Wednesday, October 04, 2006

On the foot steps of a suicide attacker

On the foot steps of a suicide attacker is the social story of a young man, confused and lost in the bloodshed and war.
The child was born and raised in the trenches without sufficient food and water. The belligerents were doing their job, by serving their country or battling the evil or making a better future for others. For everyone else there is a short trip between war and peace, hardship and pleasure. but for a suicide attacker it stays in his heart, his soul, his memories, his habit, in everything...

It’s the feet of a little infant walking on a paved street. Followed by Red army marching boots and vows and prayers of Soviet soldiers. The farewells of sons, husbands and brothers, then destruction and killings of Afghan sons, husbands and brothers.
Every time a son, a husband and a brother is killed, intentionally, or not. The border between peace and war grows larger for the child. Every time a village, a nest, a bridge is blown up the child has less places to go.
He is grown up now. He is walking with wounded feet. He is walking bare feet on the dust and ashes.

American soldiers arrive, with good will and intention to help - just like any other fighter.

Life is now a fragile social accommodation. With very little places to go and very few friends and family. The child is living a strategy of keeping everyone very close.
His steps are tired and weak nevertheless he continues to walk. He walks from place to place and country to country in seek of sanctuary and comfort, somewhere to sit down and let his tired feet relax.

He arrives somewhere nice and quite. the apparent is feels familiar, but he takes a walk and then he finds the walk strange. His feet doesn’t feel very of his own. he feels utterly exposed. he see people looking at him and ticking off their mental boxes: 'Asylum-seeker - maybe; unemployed - probably; sponger - yes; breeds like a rabbit - maybe; Muslim fanatic - probably.’ Then they are confused and curiosity is engaged and ask themselves: “What the hell's he doing here?” he learns something new. He learns to cry.

Too much crying takes the will to live. he starts to walk again. This time with tight steps. He has a pure belief now and uncompromised by politics. A belief to cure the wounds that socialism, Mujheeden anarchy, Taliban radicalism and western reconstruction has failed to heal. He is angry but powerless in his own country. He is raped in changes, seeing different subjective views. He doesn’t hold one. he doesn’t see himself as a terrorist or revolutionary or soldier. Though he has a lot in common with other men through history, he is pushed into action by the simple human need for justice. He goes to Madrasa with other men who had experienced brutal repression; some were simply drawn to bloody chaos. In the Madrasa there are reformers and there were nihilists. The dynamic between them is irreconcilable and self-destructive, but repression is making them take steps faster, so fast that it is almost impossible to tell the philosophers from the sociopaths.
He straps explosives around himself and then jumps into a foreign APC. A big bang inside and soldiers climb out, they are on fire and they are running. There is blood on their footsteps.

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