2:05 PM - 24.10.04
Washington
I was thinking of Margaret Hassan today. She's the Irish lady who married an Iraqi. She has lived and worked for humanitarian agencies in that country for the past 25 years now. She is the one that was kidnapped by fundamentalists a few days ago and who has been forced to plead to the British government for her life on video. Isn't it odd that it is the British government who is being held responsible for the abuse she is receiving.
Being Irish means that there was likely never full acceptance of her as a British citizen to begin with. That accent, don't you know. Ditto for anyone from Scotland or Wales. Both nations have just been accorded the right to hold their own parliaments again independent of the British. Canadians aren't even seen as on the radar screen as part of the Commonwealth either even though our Head of State is the Governor General (Queen's representative)when the Prime Minister isn't available. This lady has fully committed her life to her husband and to his country. Yet even a generation later, all that she has contributed to the improvement of living conditions in Iraq and respect for the Arab culture isn't enough to prevent her from being punished for wrongs that have nothing to do with her.
I read "Great Expectations", by Charles Dickens, in Grade 8. All I recall of my reaction at the time was hating the negativity and meanness of the key character. You know - Miss Havisham. She was the one who was jilted by her fiance on their wedding day. Decades later she still hadn't removed the wedding dress she had been wearing or put on the second shoe that she had been preparing to don when the news was brought to her. She had stopped all the clocks at 8:40 and left the wedding feast on the dining room table where it still was sitting and rotting when the story took up. Her whole purpose in life became to punish all other men for her humiliation and hurt. She chose to adopt and raise a young girl, Estelle, turning her into an object of revenge on said men, thereby destroying Estelle's ability to participate in or enjoy a normal life as well.
The story revolves around Miss Havisham's abuse of the orphan Pip, a young boy from a "working class" background, using Estelle as his tormentor. The context of the story is supplied by the class system of Victorian England that had the same effect on it citizens as racism does in others. Instead of colour, faith or ethnicity being the excuse for abuse, one's birth parents, accent and where one lived were the criteria. When Pip tried to "cure" his deficiencies by becoming all the things Miss Havisham said were necessary to become worthy of the hand of Estelle he learned that no quality he had nor no effort he made had any effect on his "place" in that society. The supporting cast of characters provided even further illumination of this point where both Joe and Biddy, who were hard working, intelligent and charitable people, were barred from enjoying the fruit of their labour or entry into a more comfortable way of life because of their "station" at birth. No amount of effort on their part could change that. When Pip mysteriously came into a fortune, thereby being able to buy all the outer appearances and mannerisms of the "elite" class, the barrier was still there for him as well.
People such as the fundamentalists who kidnapped Mrs Hassan are just like Miss Havisham. They are frozen in past injustices and pain and they do have every right to resent those who inflicted that on them. However, they become the people who hurt them by turning around and punishing others they perceive as having "similar" characteristics - their definitions and stereotypes - in an infantile attempt to gain mastery over their pain. It is a common phenomenon that is also seen in children who have grown up in abusive situations. As adults they will recreate the scenarios that traumatized them. As adults they trade places to become the perpetrator, forcing people they lure into their psychodrama, by making them think that they love them or are their friends, to play out the victim role they held as children. Often the people trapped in the roles of victim don't understand how or why they were suckered in, because they have no knowledge or experience with the type of background that the abuser came from. They rarely have any emotional or psychological defenses because of their innocence, thinking only that they are trying to help someone they care for. That is a normal, functional human response that is exploited by the abusers. Often the abusers will state that the very fact that the victim cares for them proves that they deserve the fate that has been laid out for them - that they've "asked for it" - by the predator; for such has the original victim become at that point.
Can such people be reached or awakened to the fact that they are now who they say they most hate? It's just an observation, but when I had a near death experience at 19 the most noticeable thing I remembered was that the living souls I encountered had no colour or physical definition, nor do I recall any accent since communication was between minds. No material goods and no difference of "class" crossed the barrier of death either. What differentiates one from another in this life is only our own projections of our own qualities on others. Those are usually hidden aspects of ourselves that we fear to look at directly, attacking their expression in "the other". So how does one reach a person like the fundamentalists who kidnapped Mrs Hassan? I think Booker T Washington may have said it most eloquently "Long ago ...I resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him." Only when abusers decide to honour their own internal integrity and personal dignity then they can be reached.
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