Freed At Last

  

The Book of Women 4:3

English translation by M. H. Shakir

"You can never be equitable in dealing with more than one wife, no matter how hard you try. Therefore, do not be so biased as to leave one of them hanging (neither enjoying marriage, nor left to marry someone else).... "

The viper that consumed her heart and her spirit, the adder that took dainty nibbles of her liver and her spleen, the asp that sucked the very marrow of her bones; defeated, all. Her vital organs consumed, she has peace. Her agony of existence dissipated. She awaits the final release of Death. To be welcomed as a pious Muslim to her everlasting reward.

IN the context of proper attire and conduct, the Quran lays down one basic principle, namely, modesty which is stated in Surah 24: 30-31: Tell the believing men to lower their gaze (avoiding its concentration on a person’s body, or a certain part of it) and to be mindful of their chastity; in this they will be more considerate for their own well-being and purity, and surely God is fully aware of all that they do.
And tell the believing women to lower their gaze (avoiding its concentration on a person’s body, or a certain part of it) and to be mindful of their chastity, and not to display the charms of their bodies (in public) beyond what may (decently) be apparent thereof; hence, let them draw their head-coverings over their bosoms.
And let them not display (more of) their charms to any but their husbands, or their fathers, or their husbands’ fathers, or their sons, or their husbands’ sons, or their brothers, or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their womenfolk, or those whom they rightfully possess, or such male attendants as are beyond all sexual desire, or children that are as yet unaware of (the physical attractions of) women’s nakedness; and let them not swing their legs (or other actions in their walking) that may aim to draw attention to their hidden charms.

They too, are at peace, saved from themselves. They will be re-united with us. No vestige of the struggle will remain, between their unheeding denial of God's instructions and their final submission. That submission to His divine will complete, irrevocable.

Her inner furies erased by the grace of God, she is prepared to embrace them; her sister, her daughters. Compassion now replaces enmity. Calm resides in her breast; an hitherto-unknown quantity; a soul-restorative.

Allah absolves those who do His work. He takes them gently unto Himself, cradles their weary essence, brings them final comfort.

You it was he loved, not me. His choice was you, when he had from among so many to make his selection. In our tribal village, the dashing, handsome great grandson of the village founder, son of the tribal chief, an integral portion of the wealthiest local family; he chose you, Dahlia.

The homely one, his first cousin with whom he shared childhood memories. Quiet and unassertive, her only obvious quality one of kindness, warmth of presence. Her form dense, already matronly. Why her? Years passed and she did not conceive. Whispers ran through the village. His family took note, and became impatient, yet he begged them not to press him. When several more years passed it was clear she was barren, a disgrace to herself and to her family.

When he set her aside, gave her freedom to leave, her family would not welcome her return, they disowned her. And when his eyes turned elsewhere though his heart was heavy, he looked at younger women, and in particular one whose clear complexion, long, lustrous black hair, sultry eyes and vivacity marking a vast contrast to his cousin,e became his choice.

She, Amirah entered his life. And she made his life pleasant and comfortable so he might wish to remain with her. When her father informed her of Almadhi's interest she was happy beyond comprehension, and she was anxious for formalities to be concluded, for the ceremony of marriage to be done with, to have him welcome her into his strong arms. It did not take long for her to pridefully advise him and her family that she was bearing his son.

For a son it was; Alhusain, their first child. She had fulfilled his desires and his need to have a son, and there would be more children for she was fecund and more than prepared to do all that was expected of her.

When Alhusain was yet an infant her husband became restive, and it was clear he was dissatisfied with something. Her relief was great, but she came close to despair in any event, when he advised her he had begun proceedings to emigrate with his family to North America.

She dutifully made all the required arrangements on her part, and determined which of their belongings would accompany them. Drying her tears she did what a good wife must do to follow her husband. She was fearful of leaving her family, her friends, her village, her society. And then, a catastrophe; a fortnight prior to their departure, Almadhi claimed to have had a vision and in that vision he was instructed to bring Dahlia back into his household. She would, he informed her gravely, aid her in the raising of their children, for Amina was yet again gravid.

She knew, even before they left, that Almadhi would be visiting Dahlia in the night-time hours, for he was permitted as many wives as he could afford to support, and he could afford to support more than merely two wives. From scorning the woman who she had replaced, she turned to detesting her and spoke harshly to her, although Dahlia made no protest.

When they settled in their new place on another continent and Atifah was born, Dahlia held the child as though she were hers and hers alone. She brought Atifah to Amina to be nursed, and did everything else for the baby, leaving the care of Alhusain to his mother.

Amina resented Dahlia on the one hand, but was grateful that she was spared having to look after an infant and a baby on her own. She was unrelenting, however, in her spite toward Dahlia and would never permit her to forget that she had been the spurned one and it was Amina who had brought honour to Almadhi's family, not she. Dahlia would never respond, merely dip her head in assent.

And then two other babies were born in fairly short order, two more girls, Daniyah and Bhashira, and Dahlia opened her great heart to the new babies each in turn, while their mother turned away from them. The three girls felt Dhalia to be their mother, for it was she who comforted them, encouraged them, supported them. With Almadhi's approval, Amina focused on their son, and Dahlia on the three girls.

And Amina's hatred for Dahlia, even while she gave up maternal custody of her three girls to Dahlia, festered and caused unrest in the family. Almadhi chose to ignore the tension, and he continued also to take his conjugal rights with Dahlia, far more often than with Amina, which she knew, and which drove her to a frenzy of raging acrimonious execration.

Dahlia deftly, in their large spacious home, kept to her own apartment, and it was there that the three girls spent most of their time at home, as well.

Almadhi's business continued to flourish, and life was good to the family. Their circle of friends and acquaintances remained firmly within the Muslim community where they were well known. Dahlia, however, was open and committed to casual friendships with those of their neighbours who were non-Muslims, and this too infuriated Amina, and she demanded that Almadhi do something to discourage this un-Muslim-like behaviour, one that their regular Muslim cleric, the respected imam of their mosque warned against.

As the children entered adolescence and beyond, the girls began to emulate their beloved Auntie and became freely engaged outside the confines of their home, with their peers who were not Muslim. When this became apparent to Amina, she railed against the girls' behaviour, warning them that their father would not approve of it.

And when she informed Almadhi of the girls' indiscretions he became more alarmed than she might have imagined. He brought the girls to his study and lectured them sternly, and later spoke privately to Dahlia, forbidding his children to mingle with non-Muslims in any kind of social situation.

As the years passed and the girls became older, one 18, the second 15, the last 13 years of age, tension in the household increased. Particularly as their mother announced she and their father had decided their girls would now not only wear the headscarf, but also begin wearing an abiya.
the girls were horrified and Dahlia was distressed for them.

As soon as they left the house they would discard the abiya, push it into their school bags, to be retrieved when departing school for the return journey home. But Alhusain, witnessing this, reported it to their father. And reported also that his sister Atifah had been seen speaking to non-Muslim men.

The household became a hothouse of accusations, denials and counter-accusations. The girls were desperately unhappy and their aunt became extremely worried for them. Nothing was resolved despite the threats of dire punishment, for the girls became more defiant, refusing to even wear the abiya on leaving home and Dahlia tried to explain to Almadhi who was not closing his mind yet to her, and to Amina, who loathed her, how in their new country the girls were being influenced by other social mores that would not impact deleteriously on their personal faith.

Almadhi became furious with Dahlia, something that had never before occurred. And Amina watched, fascinated, as he set Dahlia aside, refusing to hear her out, shunning her company. And it was when Almadhi approached Amina, together with Alhusain, and, face stone-hard, infused with an anger they might never have suspected resided in him, said they must take steps to save their family's honour.

So it was that a dreadful accident occurred, when one of the family vehicles driven by Atifah, with her aunt sitting beside her and her sisters Daniyah and Bashirah seated in the back somehow managed to plunge into a wintry-icy canal, in the city where they lived. The submerged vehicle and the four dead bodies were discovered by a police patrol, for their family had reported them missing.

A truly dreadful tragedy. The three remaining family members went into deep mourning.

It is in a jail operated by infidels that they now await trial and judgement by kuffars; completely unjust, without divine guidance, meaningless. 

Then, On The Other Hand

 

Does there exist a social phenomenon
exemplified by adolescent angst
more fraught with adult irritation?
Children's propensity to view their
inner landscape as needful beyond
the grasp of parents' realization
exhibit a profound sense of self-
entitlement guaranteed to be met
with perplexed bedevilment.

Surely this emotional affliction
besets only offspring of socially
emancipated, economically-advanced
countries whose children have never
experienced deprivation and the
compelling drive toward advantage
leading inevitably to survival...?

Children who cannot conceive
of the desperation of endemic, deadly
disease, malnutrition, a stifling
of the yet-hopeful human spirit.
Little wonder exasperated parents
would admonish and remind their own
of starving children abroad. Witless
young remain fixated on their boredom,
not the distant reality of a workhouse.

Perhaps, on reflection, this malaise
is in truth a gift of nature's design.
Cleverly imposed and engaged to release
from the frustration of stasis, the
creative genius of a Socrates, a Galileo,
a da Vinci, an Einstein. Towering figures
of human intelligence and unsurpassed
achievement through creative drive.

Humankind designed in nature's image.

 

 

Last Night, This Morning

 

 

Last night the huge velvety vault
of the sky was aglow as rarely seen.
Dimpled with hugely-gathered
snow crystals becoming bright
sparks of crystalline, light-refractive
distractions billowing languidly.

Softly evanescent clumps of snow
crystals languorously drifted
through the earthly atmosphere
luminously illuminated by ambient
sky-diffused light from the
vastness of the cityscape below.

In bright, soft shadings of melon,
mauves and pinks, shedding their
own borrowed brilliance, the
binary snow-gatherings made their
journey, finally assembling into a
vast, all-encompassing comforter
contouring the landscape.

As dawn sent its dim waking light
over the horizon and into the
soft new arras, birds stirred,
lifting heads from under recumbent
wing-havens to view their
brilliantly altered landscape.

 

 

Duty Above All

 

May 31st, 1884 The gale continued all day and was accompanied by a heavy snowstorm. We were not only held close prisoners in our shelter, but also in our bags, as drift over a foot deep covered us. We were unable to cook and consequently had nothing to eat during the day, not even a swallow of water. Of all the days of suffering, none can compare with this. If I knew I had another month of this existence, I would stop the engine this moment. *

 

 

He might never have been able to imagine, even in the most feverish of his dreams, that he would himself experience such desolation, fear and privation. There is nothing, he thought grimly to himself, like living through such a nightmare to bring a human perspective to the heights to which human resources might aspire, and the depths to which the human spirit could plunge. It was only through the desperate cauldron of facing death on a daily basis that each man’s strength and weaknesses surfaced, so one could finally know what lay beneath the carefully maintained and structured façade of civility that society demands of its creatures.

This was a society he was familiar with, not the kind which also existed in the world of those with scant resources, ruled by tyrants who made short shrift of human values and rights belonging to others. In his world, occasions abounded for individuals to recognize and make the best of their opportunities, and those who strove to find satisfaction in their lives thrived, while those who merged their inertia with society’s constraints remained maladapted to the vision of their very future attainments.

For him that vision encompassed adventure, glory, serving his country as an educated, astute military man gifted with certain attributes that made him the perfect selection to help lead an expedition into the frozen distances of the globe where animal life abounded despite the severity of the atmosphere, the geology and the weather, but human life could not.

So here he was, on Ellesmere Island. Two winters of it. That was the assignment. Collecting weather data, scrupulously reporting on atmospheric conditions. So his country would have a record and an understanding of conditions there to advance the science and knowledge of the geography and the hostile-to-humankind-environment. It was past time they left.

The understanding was that after the two years they would be relieved. Short of food, their equipment in a failing state. Tired of waiting. No option but to have faith, to hope for relief. Stoicism was their current lot in life. One that began slowly ebbing, as some among them became ever more disoriented, dysfunctional, minds and bodies severely malfunctioning.

It’s not easy living with that kind of cold. It is a beautiful environment. Aloof, pristine, lovely beyond belief. But even a clear day with full sun does little-to-nothing to alleviate the dread cold. The men are tired, underfed, on the verge of starvation, ailing and desperate. Some of them lie in their virtually warmth-useless sleeping bags, refusing to rise. Preferring to invite death through surrender of their imprinted imperative to survive. They have admitted to themselves that they are incapable of flailing against imminent death.

They are, however, my responsibility, he sternly reminded himself, and one I do not take lightly. I go out every day and do what I can to obtain some element of nutrition to help keep us all alive and hoping for another day. I am by no means the only one to attend to these mutual duties, but it has fallen to me and me alone to gather as much shrimp as I can manage with my inadequate nets and failing store of bait, to keep death at bay.

June 1st, 1884 Breakfast consisted of three ounces of shrimp and a cup of weak tea to each man. We were without food for thirty-six hours. Lieut. Kislingbury became unconscious at 8 a.m. and breathed his last at 3 p.m. Before he lost consciousness he begged piteously for a drink of water, but this the Doctor denied him. He then sang the Doxology in a clear but weak voice and, falling back in his sleeping bag, was soon in the embrace of Death. *

We’re all progressively weaker. But some of us do our utmost to remain of good cheer in this cheerless atmosphere, despite the beauty surrounding us. Some of the men, those whose physical condition is far worse than those of us who still go out every day to find edible mosses and lichens, or shrimp as I do, say nothing, do nothing, appear to have closed down their minds.

Awake, they lie limp and unresponsive. Some have close at hand photographs of wife, children, mother. And stare at these photographs unceasingly. Occasionally mumbling names and perhaps reminiscing about happier times. They have utterly given themselves over to the prospect of never again seeing their loved ones. The visages of their wives, mothers, children, will be the last their eyes see before they glaze over in death.

June 2nd, 1884 Salor died at 3 a.m. I was lying by his side in the same bag at the time. Not having the necessary strength to remove him and not feeling inclined to get up, I went to sleep in the same bag with the remains and did not awake until breakfast was announced at 9 a.m.
Doctor Pavy was making some rather absurd prescriptions this evening and talking incoherently.
For weeks I have noticed Linn’s feet protruding from the gravel heaped over his body. Day by day the elements have reduced the scanty covering until Linn’s feet are fully exposed to the gales sweeping over Cemetery Ridge. I have often thought that I would replace that which had blown away, but my waning strength has caused me to defer this for so long that I cannot think of attempting it now. *

Each dawning day appears more beautiful than the one it succeeds. In any other circumstances, we would be transfixed with awe at the wonder of nature’s paint brush. This morning there is but little wind, a decided relief from previous days’ incessant blowing. We have had good hunting today for a change. Along with the shrimp I have managed to gather, a dovekie was shot, and it will be cooked slowly to produce a hot, nutritious soup for all of us. We require something like that to restore a trifle of capacity to our failing bodies and a modicum of hope for the near future. For if we survive the near future it is entirely possible that the ship will sail through and bring us the relief all of so dearly hope for.

Some of us have been able to eat the rock lichens that have been collected, and found some nourishment in them. Others, however, suffer greatly from the after-effects of eating these unpalatable lichens.

The Sound, because of lack of the usual high blustering wind storms, looks calm, smooth and wonderfully blue. A calming, restorative sight for weary eyes, tired of tearing from the cold and the wind.

It’s come to this; our medical man is so weak and dispirited we may soon lose his professional capabilities. He refuses to any longer partake of our communal shrimp stew. He will now agree only to taking weak tea and as anyone might know, most particularly a man blessed with medical knowledge, no human body is capable of surviving long without adequate - or even in our parlous state - a minuscule amount of nutriment.

We continue to realize that one among us is a predator, caring little for the common weal in our miserable situation. Lieutenant Greely, after some brief consultation has been forced, by unfortunate circumstances, to issue an order:

Near Cape Sabine, June 5th, 1884 To Sergeants Brainard, Fredericks and Long:
Private Henry having been repeatedly guilty of stealing the provisions of this party which is now perishing slowly by starvation, has so far been condoned and pardoned. It is, however, imperatively ordered that if this man be detected either eating food of any kind not issued him regularly, or making caches, or approaching any article of provisions, you will at once shoot him and report the matter to me. Any other course would be a fatal leniency, the man being able to overpower any two of our present force.
(signed) A.W. Greely, Lt.5th Cav.A.S.O.& Asst. Comdg.Lady Franklin Bay Ex. *

We simply have no other choice but to this grim task of sentencing one of our own to death in the hopes of securing the lives of others of us. I find, despite my assiduous attention to the tedious work of fishing for our little life-saving shrimp that they are no longer taking to the bait. My strength is steadily diminishing and I have little appetite for further strenuous attempts beyond my present state of energy-depletion.

As it is at the present, it is all I can do to muster the energy required to stagger toward the shrimping grounds, remain there for the hours required to attempt to fish out a goodly portion of what remains and then painfully pull myself back up with my catch to the camp.

My mind and thought processes are dulling. My brain appears to be refusing to work as it should. I cannot recall what I should automatically be doing in the performance of my duties. My obligations to the men partially under my command are foremost in mind, but what, precisely, I should be doing, to ameliorate their condition, is now eluding me.

This is a most unfortunate situation. I cannot quite conceive of the reason why our rescue party has been so agonizingly tardy. Surely they must realize the situation we are in? Surely they have some intuitive knowledge that our situation is parlous? Perhaps it is better that we do not torture our minds by these useless conjectures.

We must acknowledge that something disastrous may have occurred to our relief party. That, or somehow conditions leading to their being able to reach us have somehow conspired to leave us in our present state, and they in a worried consternation over our situation.

Near Cape Sabine, June 6th, 1884 Sergeants Brainard, Long and Fredericks:
Notwithstanding promises given by Private C.H. Henry yesterday he has since acknowledged to me having tampered with seal thongs, if not other food at the old camp. This pertinacity and audacity is the destruction of this party if not at once ended. Private Henry will be shot today, all care being taken to prevent his injuring anyone as his physical strength is greater than that of any two men. Decide the manner of death by two ball and one blank cartridge.
This order is imperative and absolutely necessary for any chance of life.
(signed) A.W. Greely, 1st Lt.5th Cav. A.S.O. & Asst. Comdg. L.F.B. Ex. *

This is a sad and sorry business. But duty insists it must be met. As honourably, given the circumstances, as humanly possible. No one is the better for the situation.

After the execution was accomplished, a search of the poor man’s effects revealed him to have availed himself of a pair of seal boots, a coil of seal skin thongs, various knives and other items, some of which could be rendered down to edible product, some of which could be silently chewed in his sleeping bag in the dark of night, empowering him to a greater state of bodily comfort than has been afforded the rest of us. God save his soul.

We do know, however, that his was not the only such sin among our desperately suffering men. There are others suspected of indulging in the same, or like conspiracy to obtain for themselves certain advantages toward prolonging their lives.

Had we a trifle more strength between us we could undertake to bury the most recent dead. It is not at all decent that their bodies lay there, just beyond the camp where we have managed to drag them, away from our immediate presence, frozen and silently condemning our inaction in providing them with a resting place where they may meet eternity with equanimity.

June 7th, 1884 Biederbick and Connell gathered a few lichens and a little reindeer moss. This evening we dined on a stew composed of a pair of boot soles, a handful of reindeer moss and a few rock lichens. The small quantity of shrimps which I furnish daily is sufficient only for the morning meal.
We dressed the bodies of Dr. Pavy and Bender for their graves, but were unable to bury them. *

It is simply soul-destroying to witness the swift deterioration of the men’s earlier inspirational will to live. We who are in relatively better health than those gravely ill unto death do what we can to instill a little bit of cheer by commenting about the break in the weather and the beauty of the sky and the full sun, the import of which confuses us as we derive no benefit from any of it.

But there we are, all things being relative; we can, should we wish to do so, drink in the loveliness of our surroundings in this brief respite between storms.

Scurvy is plaguing the men, and little wonder. We celebrated the birthday of one our men by permitting him - and he alone - a spoonful of rum. Spirits are normally retained for other, more medicinal purposes. It was hoped that allowing that poor man a respite from his misery by a mere taste of what in other circumstances is taken for granted and taken in abundance, will momentarily bring cheer to his fading life. And he but 32 years of age.

We have found black rock lichens stew up nicely enough. Certainly not to everyone’s taste, as the result is rather gelatinous and tasteless, but we are certain, possessed of slight nutritive qualities. Everything we can manage to recognize as possibly nutrient-rich in some manner helps. We have taken to carefully and slowly chewing bits of seal skin cut from garments. This is not possible for those with advanced scurvy, and their end, we feel is lamentably nigh.

June 12th, 1884 We had only a cup of tea for breakfast. I found a new shrimping place this morning near the tent. After several hours’ work I returned with two pounds. Our evening meal - a few boiled lichens and a cup of tea.
Connell’s face appears full and healthy, but it is only swollen. He expressed a wish to work, cook and live by himself. This request Lieut. Greely would not grant.
Gardiner died at 5 p.m. Patience and fortitude have characterized his sufferings. He clung to life with a wonderful pertinacity and only succumbed when physical weakness had crushed his will. *

I try not to think overmuch of what I cannot do much about. We fumble and stumble through the long days of agonizing descent into hopelessness. What we remain aware of, those of us still capable of some minimal functioning, is that we must not convey to the others whose state of health is extremely delicate, our own sense of descending hope. We do what we must. And we do what we can to ensure that a small glimmer of hope remains in the wounded minds of our men.

The high winds have finally resumed. Resulting in our having had to remain close to camp, rather than venture further in our everlasting search for nutriments. I have been unable, of late, to catch more than a few ounces of shrimp. I did construct a nominal net to replace those washed out by a brief but sturdy spurt of ice-melt swelling the stream, but somehow lost the shrimp caught in it. And watched, helplessly, as they washed out of the utterly useless net and made their way downstream, depriving us of even that small portion of food.

We have no more tea left to us. We must now consider utilizing some of the lichens as the stuff of tea-making. The taste of which will doubtless be unpleasant to those still anticipating our own tea of a morning.

June 17th, 1884 The sense of hunger appears to have disappeared. We eat simply to preserve life. Crumbs of bread at our winter quarter which are occasionally exposed through the melting of the snow are picked from heaps of the vilest filth and eaten with relish. Henry ate ptarmigan droppings; Bender ate caterpillars, worms, etc. Saxifrage, lichens and other vegetation together with the intestines of animals would now be luxuries. I worked several hours in the raw, chilling winds and caught little more than a pound of shrimps. *

Some things are indescribable. How to describe to an interested ear the folly of a venture to which no ending can be visualized, but which must be embarked upon to obey orders from superiors who have their own reasons for the successful completion of a venture they themselves will never have to suffer the hardships thereof? In any event, those who have never undergone the travails which we have been exposed to, can never imagine how dreadful the assault on human endurance can conceivably be. Even those who have experienced such deprivation and exceptional danger to body and soul and survived the ordeal, cannot find words adequate to paint a picture with complete verisimilitude.

Perhaps this is just as well. For if those whose spirit takes them toward exploration and the adventure of discovery, those who fall under the spell of that great white presence of the frozen north were to completely understand what lies awaiting them, why they might never venture into the enterprise of discovery. And then, perhaps, the world would be a poorer place for lack of intelligence relating to the data thereof derived.

Now, to other more intimate things. Which have been gently pushed aside in my mind, heretofore. For I now find myself in that situation where I too, must think about that which is most precious to me.

What will I say when I greet my beloved wife? I will look deep into the wells of her soft eyes and I will absorb her love for me into the wellsprings of my soul. I will feast my tired eyes on her loveliness, her familiar face and presence. I will breathe the fragrance of her hair, the aroma of her being, and fill my tired lungs with her essence. I will carefully listen to the soft, sibilant tone of her voice expressing her undying love for me. I will embrace her and hold her and tell her I shall nevermore leave her.

My destiny approaches but my ultimate duty yet awaits me.

*From Six Came Back - David L. Brainard

I Feel So Shamed

I waited till later that evening to go and see my friend. I wanted to take some flowers to her but the flowers there were too tiny to gather. I looked through all my things: I felt I had to take something to her as a token of my friendship. The only thing I had was an ornamental egg coddler. It seemed a ridiculous gift to give, but it was very pretty with delicate paintings of flowers and birds on it. I wrote a little note saying how very much I felt for her. I had not enough words in Inuktitut to tell her what I really wanted to say. I wrapped the small parcel in tissue paper and put it in my pocket.
Inside Nauja's house the children were playing quietly. The usually tidy house was littered with clothes and unwashed dishes. A spilt cup still lay on its side on the table, the liquid splattered over the plastic cloth. Cigarette ends strewed the floor and a few empty bottles were sitting in a corner.  The air smelt fetid.
I tiptoed into the bedroom. Nauja lay on the bed facing the door. Her jersey was stained with blood. Her eyes were open, but barely flickered when I approached. Her face was swollen and ugly. I could hardly recognize the attractive woman of whom I had grown so fond. I sat on the chair beside the bed and smoothed her brow. I had nothing to say, yet I wished to say so much. there was nothing I could do. I put down my poor offering and left. An impenetrable barrier separated me from my friend. She was the victim of the most dreadful violence and because of this she suddenly represented that violence. I felt utterly desolate. From: The Snow People; Marie Herbert

Her normally boisterous children became instantly deadly silent. Quiet pervaded the room. She tried not to look directly at the children, she focused in lock-grip, her eyes holding fast, captive with her husband's. His face the mask of drunken rage. His face suffused with dark, brooding red that boiled his blood and made hers run cold.

She heard the door click behind the children's backs as they silently fled. She had spent enough time in sober hours patiently repeating to them the necessity of leaving at the first sign of impending troubles.

He would be a good provider, her mother had tried to assure her, when she was informed of her father's bargain with the large, stolid hunter she and her girlfriends had giggled about, even in his presence. He seemed to take no notice of what silly young girls did, how they behaved.

So why had he eventually settled on her? Because, said her best friend, you are the prettiest among us. Because, said her mother proudly, you have been well schooled in domestic work. Because, said her father, I willed it to be so. What option had she but to submit?

Life was hard for everyone. Everyone suffered equally. And among them there was that social contract that meant no one interfered with someone else's business. Relief from the tedium and the hardship arrived once each month. And then, everyone -- almost everyone -- took refuge in that opportunity to briefly leave it all behind. In their insensibility they became other than what they were. Most, later, regretting that, but none willing to do anything about it.

In Thule, the 'disease' of civilization's evil liquor brought to the Eskimos is not so virulent as in other parts of Greenland. An otherwise-peaceful society becomes other once each month when authorities permit thirty points each month to each adult and there is a choice of a) 30 bottles of beer; b) one and a half bottles of hard liquor; or c) three large bottles of wine - or mix and match.

But that is the truth of our life here in Greenland. We worry for our children. We warn them of the dangers of the breaking sea ice. We tell them that our huskies are not playthings, even the pups; they are trained to be sled dogs, not house pets. Those dogs are supposed to be tied securely, tethered so they will not eat everything they come across; harness, leather mukluks. They are kept safely away from those places where children play, but even though they are warned, the older kids are so bored, not yet old enough to be independent; the girls with their own places, the boys out hunting with their fathers, they look for amusement. And they tease the dogs. How can you punish kids who have nothing else to do? 

 

We talk to them. That makes no difference, they get bored, they begin teasing the dogs again, laugh at their antics, at the dogs' frantic efforts to free themselves. They think the dogs want to play with them, and it's true, some may want to, but not all. They've forgotten what happened to Taitsianguaraitsiak's oldest boy, just six. Older boys, it was rumoured, had let loose a pack of the dogs. They tore that boy apart, and by the time he was discovered, he was half eaten. No one had heard his cries, the wind had been howling so loud, we were in the midst of a storm.

After that, the children were quiet, confused, shaken. They woke at night often, screaming. But memories fade as children grow older. They had refused to speak about it, would not release any information if they had it, about how that pack had got loose. Children are resilient. Far less so their elders.

I don't know what I am going to do. Inugssuak gets worse all the time. I don't know why he has become so fierce. He tells me nothing.

The children, none of them, understand fully what happens the first of every month. It's always been like that, so why would they wonder about it? When the liquor quotas are released, people claim their share, and they don't stop until it's all gone. My friend Marie, the white woman staying here for a while, tells me it's called bingeing. That it is not healthy to drink so much alcohol all at once. I can see that, I can understand what she means. It changes people so badly. Nice people get mean.

The children are careful, then. But once everyone is full of the drink and they sleep, the children get up to mischief. They enter houses where the elders live, to gape at the old men and women sleeping, snoring, in disarray, their clothing half gone, their wrinkled faces with their droopy, toothless mouths hanging open. The kids find it funny, they laugh, they poke at the drunken people, they pull their hair, pinch their noses, and laugh.

Sometimes they run, when one of the drunks wakes up. And roars with anger at the children and chases them out of their house, down the street, where the children scatter and race for the protection of their homes. I try to teach my kids it's wrong to do these things. But they say to me all the other kids do it, why shouldn't they too have fun?

The Thule tradition (which lasted from about A.D. 1 to A.D. 1600) includes the Old Bering Sea, Okvik, Punuk, Birnirk, and Thule cultures. It represented a new kind of adaptation to the Arctic environment, based on the hunting of large sea mammals in open water through the use of drag floats attached to the harpoon line. Large skin boats and the use of dogs to pull large sleds were other Thule innovations. Winters were spent in sometimes large communities of semi-subterranean houses, subsisting on a stored surplus obtained most typically by hunting Bowhead whales.

Last night, when he beat me so badly I couldn't even think straight. The kids were asleep. They were in their beds, maybe not asleep, maybe listening. I tried not to cry out, but maybe I did, I might have meant not to, but maybe I did scream. After, he passed out, his head on the table, and I left the house. I went away, I told myself I would run away, I would never come back. He would never, ever beat me again.

I hurt all over. He kicked my stomach, my chest is sore, and there is blood all over my clothing. I know I have some bad cuts around my face, my neck. It was hard to walk, but I did, I went away from the village. It was cold and it was foggy, and I wasn't wearing my parka, but I didn't feel cold, only hurt. I went to the meltstream, up in the hills. Then I made my way down to the marsh, near the shore.

I was hungry, and I felt faint, and I didn't know what to do. Where could I go? Where could I run to? I had no warm clothing, no food, no shelter. I stayed there, at the marsh, for a little while. I was crying, felt sorry for myself. But then I felt worse, thinking about the children. Who would look after them? I went back to the house. He was still sleeping there, sprawled on his big chair, head on the table.

When I awoke it was day, and the children were outside, I could hear their subdued voices. I could hear them speaking to someone; it was my friend Marie. I hoped they would tell her I was sleeping, that she should not waken me. Instead I heard them ask her to go into the house and to see me, because I was 'bad'. I wanted nothing other than to burrow myself out of sight. I hoped she would ignore what they said.

She did not. She came into the house. She pushed open the door of the bedroom. She spoke my name. She sat beside me. She stroked my forehead. She left a little package beside me. And then she left. I feel so shamed. 

 

Lovingly Shared

  

As inner-city children of a certain ethnic demographic - it was not all that surprising, given what she often mused was a kind of precocious inquisitiveness not quite of the same enterprising quality she saw around her now - they were thrown together through mutual exposure within a larger circle of acquaintances. Friends they might be in the most casual sense, but she never felt she belonged. Anywhere. She felt herself to be an impostor, an outsider, felt nothing comfortably in common with all those others.

She had been accustomed to social contact with the children of her parents’ friends, and found social acceptance there. But never completely relaxed comfort; even then non-conformist in a social manner. He had been caught in a larger net of young boys and girls meeting within a more institutionalized framework, where the community established casually-encouraging friendship centres to assist their young to make unconscious future commitments to those within the ethnic group.

They recognized in one another attributes that made each attractive to the other. Bringing them into a tandem that would result in their interior compass setting a direction that would take them through life together. They had much in background commonality, yet even within similar backgrounds there were enough traditional differences of social custom to ensure that they discovered in each other an awkwardly opposite heritage and tradition of customs. There was a certain intrigue in that.

It was not the shared portions of their backgrounds that drew them to one another, but the compulsion of a boy emerging into adulthood meeting a girl practising adulthood, both curious and willing to learn about the greater mysteries of life. And, incidentally and instinctively seeing in one another the potential answers to some of their questions. That, perhaps more than anything drew them together. Was it not ever so? Along with the fact that he, like her, felt socially clumsy, awkward, not nearly as unselfconscious as their peers. In one another’s company they felt the comfort of relaxed security.

He had the rough and awkward edges of a boy and she had already left that stage of a girl’s groping for the future against the inconveniences of the past far behind her. His clumsiness occasionally troubled her, but that was weighed off against the fascination she felt for those experiences he had in his life that had been so different from hers. Together they experimented with life in all its dimensions.

What better time to begin than as young people barely into their teen years? Those were the socially formative years, and they grew together, in spite of their often different perspectives; his already inclined to social conservatism, hers touched with a legacy of social justice. Despite, it might be added, their parents’ aversion to their inconvenient closeness to one another. Too young, they clamoured, as though in unison, never having yet met. Get out, meet others. How can you compare if you’ve nothing to compare with?

Even at that young age she had already invested herself in a kind of intellectual snobbery and his lapses into occasionally sloppy street vernacular offended her. She would tartly correct him, and he would grin sheepishly, accepting the verbal slap-down. Nothing about her bothered him.

They were in many ways like brother and sister. The bond they developed was that close. Sharing confidences, concerns, aspirations. But if their relationship was like that of siblings, then it was that of siblings engaged in covert incest. Chance offered them those opportunities and they grasped them, and with little damage to their conscience. They hungered for one another like fervid, adult lovers at a time when they still played children’s board games in quiet moments together. What they had most obviously in common though was their shared love of literature, and reading.

He played football at his school, she took part in some theatrical productions at hers. They went to school dances and showed up on other social occasions at community centres. They regularly walked together in public parks, and just as often went together to a local library, browsing among the stacks to select what they each preferred in reading material.

His was an omnivorous reading habit, consuming short fiction, history, detective fiction, Arctic exploration and the classics. She was absorbed in reading the classical Greek myths, Egyptian and general Mid-East archaic discoveries, autobiographies. In that sense, for their age, they were in a class of their own, she always felt.

They married while still in their late teens. Among other things that absorbed them was finding a place of their own after completing high school studies and finding jobs commensurate with their education levels. And joining a book club since they moved themselves to the outer stretches of the city where libraries were absent.

Four years later when their first child was born the city began to grow up around where they lived, at first slowly, then with renewed vigour as the general population increased and the search for adequate housing was unabated by a continuing influx of immigrants from abroad.

When their children were young, he discovered in himself a flair for design and a desire to produce objects of artistic expression. Over the years he developed a myriad of interests, all self-taught, all progressing to the stage where his output was both varied and energetically expressive -- from building furniture of classical design, to painting of watercolours, and designing and producing stained glass pieces.

For her part, literature remained her expression and she developed a facility for placing words in conjunction with one another where they agreeably formed poetry, short stories, essays. While his output decorated their home and made them both feel proud and appreciative of the beauty that surrounded them, hers lay secreted away in a bottom drawer. Eventually she made some tentative efforts toward publication, and eventually over the years her poetry, short stories and essays made their way into small, independent-press literary magazines and academic journals.

Their children, unsurprisingly, adopted their parents’ interests, and all of them displayed their own abilities over time, both creative and academic.

Over time, for reasons of her own, she withdrew from the immensely satisfying acknowledgement of her literary talents and wrote no more. She had at first exposed her early work to her husband, feeling he was in as good a position as any critic to evaluate the quality of her work. He read a few of her stories and congratulated her, and that was the extent of his interest. He was pleased she was busy and immersed in doing something that had value to her. It was not his habit to enquire whether she had anything he could read preparatory to sending an item out for possible acceptance for publication.

She eventually wrote a few longer manuscripts, completed them, one as a novel the other as a social commentary, then put those away, too. Out of sight but never out of mind, not completely, although their life together continued to evolve and to cocoon them in a cradle of mutual gratification of all that they experienced together.

The fruit of his exuberant creativity increased over time and they were hemmed in with aesthetic objects that gave them both great pleasure. Eventually, their children began to accept the excess of their father’s artistic output to adorn their own homes.

After they both retired from the workforce, his creative streak began to take on a frenetic tone, and he applied himself more vigorously than ever to his multi-talented pursuits. Every wall of their home was covered with paintings, every window was covered with stained glass, every surface held some quaint object he had designed, every bit of floorspace proudly stationed furniture he had crafted.

She carefully dusted all these treasured and beautiful objects and began to realize that she too had a need to create, not merely to admire and to languish within a odd dissonance of ennui.

She began writing again. For herself. To re-create the inevitable reward of satisfaction that flooded her on the completion of a poem, a story of her imagination. She relished the feeling she felt while conspiring with her muse to expand on a thought, something that stimulated those long-in-abeyance creative impulses.

A sense of accomplishment soothed her and encouraged her to continue. She became besotted with the impulse to write. He knew she was absorbed once again in writing, and he teased her about it, and embraced her at every opportunity for her soft and loving continuity. Their shared complacency in their loving regard for one another was obvious to them, not only a comfort but an inspiration sparking both of their creative compulsions.

With each new piece of creative work he accomplished she praised his effort and enjoyed living with it. With each new piece of creative work she produced, she mentally hugged herself and teased her mind to help her muse form yet another. She became so obsessive a writer that no single day elapsed without its quotidian creative writing piece.

She felt assured; her creative legacy was there, no longer shut away in a dark drawer no one might ever access, but in bright, living language, tenderly posted each day on the Internet, on her very own publishing site. Hers a mute, unanswered cry for recognition of the expressive bounty of her fevered mind - - resounding in that great indifferent space of Time-and-the-Wired-World.

 

The Power Of Her Mind

 

Do not think it, she urgently
cautioned her mind. Do not begin
to think it, her growing awareness
counselled her; schooled, entreated,
cautioned her. The irresistibly
growing realization that her mind
was the fount from which events -
sordid and sorrowful grew, impinged.

Frail and innocent she may appear
in her advanced years, but what
has been revealed to her is the
power dwelling deep within.
Think of some misfortune and someone,
somewhere, will suffer. Imagine a
catastrophe and it occurs. Idly
contemplate a life-shattering
occurrence and there it is, a living
manifestation of her dread power.

She knows now, with a startling
clarity that she is the ineffable
instrument of disaster; from her mind
leaps atrocities, misery, hopeless
surrender to nature's and humankind's
evil design incarnate. She represents
the means by which a malign force
exerts its vicious domination over
all that exists, as a plaything to
relieve the tedium of its existence.

She can no longer live within the
impossible weight of her guilt, and
imparts her dread knowledge to all
who will listen. But they doubt her sanity
and proffer tender concern for her
aged plight of what they term dementia.

And this finally destroys the pain
of her living guilt, leaving her free
to permit her imagination free rein.
After all, she forewarned them all.
She told them so. Was that not so?