I found this week’s readings to be like scenes from a movie — introducing the reader to an alien land far, far, away. They showed a reality few outside the couple million who are compelled to live in it will ever experience, exposing both the cost of war on a very individual level for some and the privilege of indifference afforded to others. Whether it is following the dancers, whether it is the garbage collector, or the Afghan refugee, these stories show a world and a life foreign to most of the intend readership. So, I wonder, how differently the people in these stories maybe experiencing the same events?
I don’t mean to undermine this form of journalism, it’s incredibly courageous, and offers insight to the reader that they wouldn’t otherwise see — but it attempts to capture the experience of a people it need not understand. In a world where power is inherently imbalanced, the experiences of some lives are inherently given more attention than others — perhaps this is the closest mainstream media will get to understanding a foreign (in every sense of the word) experience.
In the story with the dancers, the woman’s need to keep her own daughters safety tucked away and educated using money obtained from selling someone else’s daughter and herself aptly underlines the theme of degradation of morality as a consequence of war present in the piece. From being in a nightclub, to the consumption of alcohol and drugs and sex, and the act of doing “business” in such a setting shows in some way that fleeing a war leaves people with few options for leading a life.
The story of the garbage collector gives an avenue into the state of dysfunction in his society, from the double standard in sexual expectations to a glimpse into a traditional household. And finally, In Naked don’t Fear the Water, the story of Aikins following his translator Omar on his journey to Europe, as Aikins himself notices, there is a disconnect in his Aikin’s expectation of what Omar should react to being given his fully paid opportunity to going to Europe and from what Omar actually reacts like. As Jessica Goaddeua puts it, “Omar is not a stock character — the revolutionary hero calculated to rally Western sympathy,” what Aikins expected Omar to be, “but his friend, sad and homesick.”
