- 14 Sep 2008 20:55
#1633405
Sorry if this is out of place - it's not really a Middle-Eastern affair, only slightly political, not really news, but certainly not Gorkiy Park material. This is really just personal reflection, but I will appreciate some responses, though I am not aiming for sympathy.
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You don’t seem to understand. I’ve been living war, carnage and violence since I can remember myself. It wasn’t anything special, overdone or super-imposed, either. It was the most natural turn of events you can imagine.
I had my home city and its surroundings – hell, the whole country, bombarded with SCUD missiles when I was four and a half. We fled to the northern parts, and I watched the bombardment on television. I was made to wear a gas-mask when the sirens went off, and I knew why – nasty materials inside the missiles, and I couldn’t understand what good are the masks, if those materials could burn through my clothes and flesh. We had to seal the windows with duct-tape the best we could, and everyone knew it wouldn’t last, and I can’t say I was reassured. Still, I thought it was all pretty fun, all that togetherness with my family, donning rubber masks and looking at my relatives and neighbors doing the same – all of it looking pretty damn crazy and goofy. I still remember, very fondly, the smell of that rubber. I wore those masks on many occasions later in life, including my military service. I still have them somewhere – I keep them just for the smell.
We were instructed, as young children, to look for improvised explosive devices. Those were often concealed as toys or regular, every-day objects, bags and the like. We were told not to approach or touch them, as they may explode if vibrated. We were told to keep ever vigilant. They told us some explosives were placed in trash-bins, so we should be careful when lifting the lids off of those, too, or when we throw in the litter or candy wrap.
After discharging fire-arms, throwing hand-grenades and stabbing became redundant and not nearly effective enough, our enemies turned to suicide bombing, which proved frighteningly disastrous. We were instructed to be constantly wary – look for the potential suicide bomber. Is he wearing a coat in the middle of the summer? Does he look anxious, nervous or tense? Are his hands concealed? Is his stride fast and strenuous? Are there any wires around his form, coming out of his bag or clothing?
I became a profiler, not out of choice, and I never got paid. I did, however, get to witness the end result of these bombings. Many happened very close to where I live – close enough for the sound of the explosion to rock the windows, for the screams and ambulance sirens to be very, very near. I saw people-bits, people’s hands and legs and heads, wounded women and children like myself, dead babies and torn bodies. When I walked there, maybe a day later – not looking for trouble, but because it just happened to be on the way to school, family members’ houses or just the mall where my mother bought me clothes, I could see the black ash and soot where the explosion had occurred, and I knew this is where I had seen all those dead people and crying wounded not a day or so before – an unpleasant experience, to say the least. Merely stepping on the ground seemed to defile everything, imagining the blood sticking to my shoe-soles. Riding the bus or walking down the street became a full-blown military operation, and it wasn’t anything like the games we played or the movies we watched – it wasn’t much fun, really, nor did we ever get to fight back the hidden, concealed enemy.
I don’t know if children can get shell-shock or post-traumatic stress disorders. Maybe I’ve got it all, and I don’t realize it, and maybe I don’t. I don’t feel bad or like I’ve had the worse deal, though. I know what my grand-parents had to go through, and I know how lucky I am that I was born into a free, sovereign country. I’ve got no right to complain, only things to thank for.
We are a shell-shocked, paranoid, ultra-violent and unrelenting nation. We wish for some peace and quiet, but we know we’ll never get it. I wrote songs for peace back in 1993, and had people blowing up all around me just three or four years later. It wasn’t an easy realization for a hopeful boy – and maybe that’s what hit the hardest, that sensation of hopelessness, that there will never be peace, and that no peace has bloody, awful results.
This is just a small bit, and only my own, private experience. I haven’t had the worse, by far. So, no, I haven’t fired a fire-arm before I was sixteen, I didn’t know how to align the sights, I never shot a deer, and I never went to the firing range before my service. Sadly, there’s a lot more to war than firing guns, and by the time I became a serviceman, I was already an expert on those things. The service merely provided me, finally, with the proper tools for dealing some back. Eighteen years I’ve waited for that chance – and I wasn’t the only one.
The American jet aces, US Marines and even the German Luftwaffe master-pilots all wanted to know why they lost so bitterly to us in training – they, the best of the best, experienced professional soldiers, tested and hardened. Everyone wants to know our secret, how we’ve mastered the military arts. The simple answer is we’ve no other choice. There was never any other way. When you are born into something, when you live it, when it is ingrained into your very being, every fiber, every muscle, every neuron and every brain cell – you are it, and it becomes you.
We are the diseased, rabid, zealous modern-day Sparta. Conflict is in our everyday life, our every breath and every action. Most of us don’t even realize it – and those that do, are hardly surprised.
My dad always hid his gun from me, explaining it was an instrument of death and that kids have no business messing around with that.
He was right – kids really shouldn’t be exposed to such things.
-------
You don’t seem to understand. I’ve been living war, carnage and violence since I can remember myself. It wasn’t anything special, overdone or super-imposed, either. It was the most natural turn of events you can imagine.
I had my home city and its surroundings – hell, the whole country, bombarded with SCUD missiles when I was four and a half. We fled to the northern parts, and I watched the bombardment on television. I was made to wear a gas-mask when the sirens went off, and I knew why – nasty materials inside the missiles, and I couldn’t understand what good are the masks, if those materials could burn through my clothes and flesh. We had to seal the windows with duct-tape the best we could, and everyone knew it wouldn’t last, and I can’t say I was reassured. Still, I thought it was all pretty fun, all that togetherness with my family, donning rubber masks and looking at my relatives and neighbors doing the same – all of it looking pretty damn crazy and goofy. I still remember, very fondly, the smell of that rubber. I wore those masks on many occasions later in life, including my military service. I still have them somewhere – I keep them just for the smell.
We were instructed, as young children, to look for improvised explosive devices. Those were often concealed as toys or regular, every-day objects, bags and the like. We were told not to approach or touch them, as they may explode if vibrated. We were told to keep ever vigilant. They told us some explosives were placed in trash-bins, so we should be careful when lifting the lids off of those, too, or when we throw in the litter or candy wrap.
After discharging fire-arms, throwing hand-grenades and stabbing became redundant and not nearly effective enough, our enemies turned to suicide bombing, which proved frighteningly disastrous. We were instructed to be constantly wary – look for the potential suicide bomber. Is he wearing a coat in the middle of the summer? Does he look anxious, nervous or tense? Are his hands concealed? Is his stride fast and strenuous? Are there any wires around his form, coming out of his bag or clothing?
I became a profiler, not out of choice, and I never got paid. I did, however, get to witness the end result of these bombings. Many happened very close to where I live – close enough for the sound of the explosion to rock the windows, for the screams and ambulance sirens to be very, very near. I saw people-bits, people’s hands and legs and heads, wounded women and children like myself, dead babies and torn bodies. When I walked there, maybe a day later – not looking for trouble, but because it just happened to be on the way to school, family members’ houses or just the mall where my mother bought me clothes, I could see the black ash and soot where the explosion had occurred, and I knew this is where I had seen all those dead people and crying wounded not a day or so before – an unpleasant experience, to say the least. Merely stepping on the ground seemed to defile everything, imagining the blood sticking to my shoe-soles. Riding the bus or walking down the street became a full-blown military operation, and it wasn’t anything like the games we played or the movies we watched – it wasn’t much fun, really, nor did we ever get to fight back the hidden, concealed enemy.
I don’t know if children can get shell-shock or post-traumatic stress disorders. Maybe I’ve got it all, and I don’t realize it, and maybe I don’t. I don’t feel bad or like I’ve had the worse deal, though. I know what my grand-parents had to go through, and I know how lucky I am that I was born into a free, sovereign country. I’ve got no right to complain, only things to thank for.
We are a shell-shocked, paranoid, ultra-violent and unrelenting nation. We wish for some peace and quiet, but we know we’ll never get it. I wrote songs for peace back in 1993, and had people blowing up all around me just three or four years later. It wasn’t an easy realization for a hopeful boy – and maybe that’s what hit the hardest, that sensation of hopelessness, that there will never be peace, and that no peace has bloody, awful results.
This is just a small bit, and only my own, private experience. I haven’t had the worse, by far. So, no, I haven’t fired a fire-arm before I was sixteen, I didn’t know how to align the sights, I never shot a deer, and I never went to the firing range before my service. Sadly, there’s a lot more to war than firing guns, and by the time I became a serviceman, I was already an expert on those things. The service merely provided me, finally, with the proper tools for dealing some back. Eighteen years I’ve waited for that chance – and I wasn’t the only one.
The American jet aces, US Marines and even the German Luftwaffe master-pilots all wanted to know why they lost so bitterly to us in training – they, the best of the best, experienced professional soldiers, tested and hardened. Everyone wants to know our secret, how we’ve mastered the military arts. The simple answer is we’ve no other choice. There was never any other way. When you are born into something, when you live it, when it is ingrained into your very being, every fiber, every muscle, every neuron and every brain cell – you are it, and it becomes you.
We are the diseased, rabid, zealous modern-day Sparta. Conflict is in our everyday life, our every breath and every action. Most of us don’t even realize it – and those that do, are hardly surprised.
My dad always hid his gun from me, explaining it was an instrument of death and that kids have no business messing around with that.
He was right – kids really shouldn’t be exposed to such things.
_________________________
When fighting monsters, be wary not to become one... When you gaze into the abyss, it also gazes into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
When fighting monsters, be wary not to become one... When you gaze into the abyss, it also gazes into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche