How Beautiful We Were(93)
Do you agree with me? I desperately hope that you do, as I’ve been musing on this idea for years, but it’s only now that I have total certainty that the Spirit has called for me to do it, for us to do it together.
I’ve discussed my vision with my friends here, and they’re excited about it. We’ve talked about past movements and the lessons I could gather from them. They’ve recommended books for me to read. One of them introduced me to his uncle, a man who was involved in a movement in America that led to the passage of laws that gave everyone in the country the right to be treated equally. The uncle said to me: if it can happen here, it can happen there; humans are mortal and so are the systems they build. Then, in a manner that reminded me of Teacher Penda trying to demonstrate how Americans talk, he added: you gotta never stop believing, baby. Change’s gonna come.
But Austin, whenever I discuss my ideas with him, tells me that I need to ignore the history of movements in Europe and America and instead closely study such efforts in countries that resemble mine.
What you’re proposing isn’t a small movement, he said, it’s a revolution.
Movement, revolution, I don’t care what it’s called, my country needs it, I replied.
But look at what revolutions have done to countries all around yours, princess, he countered. Look to the south of your country, a land where power once lay in the hands of a few. Good men rose up and fought so that wealth might be spread evenly. Did it happen so? Didn’t wealth simply pass from the hands of a few to a new set of hands of a few? Look at the country to the east of yours, where rebels stormed the presidential palace with guns given to them by their overseas backers. They desecrated the palace, sent its inhabitants into hiding. They put bullets in the chest of the man who for long had trampled upon them. They lifted their guns and cheered their new freedom: victory at last, victory at last. What happened next? Didn’t tribes turn against tribes, villages against villages, no strong man between them to force a peaceful accord? Look at how the children of that country are now wasting for scarcity of food. Look at how the women there have been turned into slaves for men who once fought for the liberation of all. If you were to ask these people, would they sing the praises of a revolution?
What makes you think your revolution will produce different results? he says. Why add to people’s woes with a pursuit that’s all but bound to fail?
It hurts when he says such things. It hurts more to know he’s saying it to keep me in America. I see the desperation in his eyes when he holds me and tells me that he can’t let me go. We’ve been together for almost eight years. It’s been wonderful, but he’s known from the very beginning that the part of my heart that belongs to Kosawa belongs to Kosawa only, though if any man could steal it, it would be him. I don’t allow myself to think of the day I’ll say goodbye to him. Just listening to him trying to dissuade me in an effort to protect me, wrong as I know he is, causes my tears to build up. But I can’t shed any tears. There will be no tears until the struggle is over.
I know what I’m suggesting in this letter sounds like a mission that will consume the remainder of our lives, but I’m willing to dedicate my life to it if you are. We might not live to see the day Kosawa or our country comes out of its darkness into light, but we’ll forge forward believing, because there’s no other way to live.
* * *
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There’s no other way to live, we wrote back to her.
What she was suggesting indeed sounded daunting, we said, but we’d rather fight and die than live as cowards. We would follow her and trust that whatever plan she had in mind would give us new lives—that was why she had gone to America, to bring back for our benefit what she had learned. We cautioned her that it was unlikely people across the country would share her enthusiasm for toppling His Excellency, not wanting to call his wrath upon their towns and villages, but we wouldn’t know until we spoke to them.
In her response, she said that she’d learned from Austin to focus not on what was or what might be but on what is. Still, she admitted that she had moments when she thought about her father and her uncle and all those whom Kosawa had lost, and she couldn’t help being afraid that our village might lose many more before this was all over. But the memory of our departed also gave her strength. She said:
Last week, Austin read me an essay he’d written as homage to men like my father and my uncle. In it, he spoke of how brave men were falling all over the world, the sacrifices of their lives going to waste as new forms of greed and recklessness overtake the old ones. What will become of those who rise to take the place of the likes of my father and my uncle? Flickers of progress are brightening lives in isolated corners of the world, yes, but a universal solution eludes us.
As much as Austin and I argue on how best to free ourselves and those around us, we agree on everything else. We agree that too many humans are losing awareness of their true nature, leading the most rapacious of us to see the rest as feasts to be devoured. I am consoled, and further broken, by what I’ve seen in America, by the awareness that Kosawa is only one of thousands of places to be so thoroughly overcome; that places mightier than us have been broken far more severely. I still attend meetings in the Village every week, and at every meeting we ask ourselves: What do we do now? What do we do after we’ve done all we can and seen no change? What will our children do after they’ve done what they can and failed, just as our fathers failed before us?