October Palace: A Fictional Account of Stalinist Russia

I hear the music. It echoes through empty halls crowded with people, down from the hall of dignitaries in their seats, proper, smiling. The music is lovely, strains of cheerful violin measuring out the patter of dancers’ feet. I picture their faces in my head as they listen, as they watch. A coy smile flits across the face of the lady in the third row. She is sitting on the edge, I imagine, her hand resting lightly on that of the man beside her. She pretends to smile at the music, her eyes belying her love. He smiles back – no pretensions there. She glances away, and back.
He wears a military uniform, this flirtatious man. There is a medal on his chest. He sits taller. After the ballet, these two will go to his apartment. They will make love, ending the process they are even now beginning. Perhaps he will make a mistake.
He will help her into her dress again in the morning. He will still be naked, not needing to report for duty that day. As he slips the garment over her head, he will speak without thinking. “At least I don’t have to sell my life to the army today.” He will laugh nervously, realizing what he said. She will laugh along, kiss him lightly. He will relax.
She is an informant.
That night, as he lies in bed rolling over their time together in his mind, wishing for her back again, the knock will come. He will scramble up and hurry to the door, hoping she has returned to him. He will fling the door open and discover not her, but a small posse of police. He will try to hide behind the door, embarrassed in his pyjamas. They will grab his arms, search his apartment, take him prisoner.
Tomorrow that man will hear the music with me. We will share the ballet from underneath the stage.
The flute above whistles a minuet. I sit up on my hard bunk, legs curled to chin, listening calmly. Only now, only lost in the music, can I relax. The other prisoners, too, pause to hear what happens above us. I do not worry about my cellmates when the music flows overhead.
The door squeaks open, louder than it should. I glance toward it and see a guard’s hard face. I twitch, and retreat further behind my curled legs. He picks me out from the shadows. I know by the look he gives me, the wall behind his eyes, that I am wanted. I do not need words. I stand, straighten, and walk out the door in front of me.
The dancers twirl as I march slowly down the corridor. One picks up another, carries her gracefully across the stage, sets her down again and spins her. My guard opens a door and guides me through it. I step across the threshold and walk to the table in the middle of the room. The door clangs shut behind me. I no longer hear music.
Before I have emerged from this room bruised, once with one eye swollen nearly shut. The music is always done when they let me out of the chamber – or maybe it still plays, but I can no longer hear it. I no longer care. I step into the room, away from the music that was once my salvation.
As a small child I sat for hours in our living room, bending over a violin. At first I played the music of the masters: Dvorak, Tchaikovsky. The music was my refuge from the teasing at school, from the boys who laughed at me because I could not figure my sums. One day I would show them. One day I would redeem myself in their eyes. If only they could hear my violin! How she sang to me, sang of hope and beauty and everything Russian! I began to compose my own music from the tunes that whistled in my head. Haunting melodies they were, soul-searing and glorious. My music inspired me. I became convinced that my music would someday inspire all Russia to lead the way into the grand future.
I lost that hope long ago. Russia promised to inaugurate the grand future. My music inspired no one; the world turned away and refused to follow our dream. Our dream died and so did my beautiful Russia, imprisoned with the poets, starving with the peasants, fleeing with the aristocrats.
The music does not fade behind me: it is cut off with a bang as the door closes. The table before me is covered in blood. Some of it is mine. The guard pushes me against the back wall. Before he ties a cloth around my head, I see two men with rifles. Their faces tell me all I need to know. The guard does not ask if I have any last words. He spins me around. I know that I am facing the rifles. I hear the men raise their weapons.
“Oh my God! Oh my Russia!” I cry. A final dirge sings in my head. “St George save us, oh my God!”
The dirge sings in my ears, cut off with a sudden blast. I almost believe it to be a drumbeat. My legs give out. I fall.
“Oh God have mercy – ”

Flashbacks of a Dream

I have flashbacks of a dream.

I am driving a big white truck, the one I drove for a summer job in Mississippi. I am lost. I drive over a bridge, a wide bridge over a wide river. The bridge is so steep I cannot see what is on the other side. The signs are blurred – I cannot read them.
I crest the top of the bridge and drive down the other side. I take an immediate right down an off-ramp. The ramp curves around, doubles back underneath the bridge, and comes to a T intersection against the river. A bright orange sign announces that the road to the right is closed, and a detour sign points to the left. I look to the left. The road dead-ends. I have nowhere to go.
I see a truck, half-hidden behind a pillar of the bridge. There is someone in the front seat. I cannot tell, but I think he is staring at me. Is he lying in wait beside the river? Suddenly I am on a motorcycle, no longer secure behind locked doors. I hear the truck rev to life.
The dream ends.

I first had this dream while working in Mississippi, shortly after getting very lost in New Orleans while picking up a friend. Her convoluted directions and a series of less-than-helpful road signs sent me over one bridge, and back, several times. I drove alone through some of the less savory New Orleans neighborhoods at night, searching for my friend’s house and glad of the locks on my solid truck doors. I did find her eventually, though I was rather a nervous wreck and nearly in tears.
I do not flash back to that night. I flash back to the dream.

The Band's Visit

I remember, as a kid, trekking barefoot through muddy trails. Sometimes it was hard work, and my feet got a bit stuck every now and again. But when I got to the other side, my toes felt cleaner and my spirit was happier. The movie The Band’s Visit reminded me of this slow progress with a reward at the end.
The Band’s Visit is an Israeli film about an Egyptian orchestra that gets lost in the middle of nowhere, Israel. I absolutely loved it – it’s now one of my favourite movies. The characters speak, by turns, Arabic, Hebrew, and English (though the whole film is subtitled). I found it to be a fascinating look at cultural undertones, chance encounters, and the nature of love.
The movie follows several main characters through their several stories: one orchestra member spends the night with an Israeli man whose marriage is going downhill, one goes on a date with an Israeli restaurant owner, one spends the evening at a roller rink. None of the stories are developed beyond the events of that night – but none need to be. The orchestra meet the Israelis for less than twenty-four hours, touch each other’s lives, and leave.
The movie is filled with fleeting moments of depth, when one character speaks unmistakable truth into another’s life. While these moments may be few and far between, as they are in life, they are well worth catching hold of. I plan on buying the movie when it comes out, not for its plot, not for its action, not even for its beautifully melancholy and lonely characters, but for the instants of insight that I want to watch again and again, and that I want to share with my friends.

Remembrance

Today is Holy Wednesday. Tomorrow is Maundy Thursday. Tomorrow, Christians remember Christ’s sacrifice with the Last Supper. Pastors, priests, bishops everywhere will recite the Words of Institution over Communion. “Christ took the bread and, having given thanks for it, he blessed it, saying, ‘this is my body, broken for you. Whenever you eat of it, remember me.’”
Today is also the 5th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I don’t think many of us expected to still be in Iraq now. We have created a nightmare, and we are not helping it dissolve. We have seen men and women on both sides sacrifice for their God, for their country, for their family.
This week marks the end of Lent. In the Christian calendar, the 40-day season of Lent is a time of reflection and repentence leading up to the joy of Easter. It’s appropriate that the 5-year anniversary falls in Lent. We have much to repent for. We are all implicated in this war. We are all guilty. We all have the power to change it. Let us remember our dying brothers and sisters – Christian, Muslim, Jew, athiest – with mourning. Let us rise from their ashes with a fire for peace. Let us echo their screams of suffering with cries for justice.

Poetry

For my friend's birthday, her roommate gave her a set of teacups from Palestine. She started calling them her "little Palestinians." Several weeks later, one of the cups met its demise at the hands of a misplaced orange. I wrote this poem to commemorate the event. (It's also posted on a blog about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: http://salemshalom.blogspot.com.)

settlement

the little palestinian
cup
settled in
on the kitchen counter.
tiny blue & white tile
reflecting life
in all its glory
of fragmented togetherness.

out of place, an orange
rests
atop the cup,
also settling in.
orange from california
trumping
arab blue.
complementary colours?

suddenly the orange is
plucked up
for breakfast.
still attached.
the cup, too, flies
fighting
union with fruit
and wins at last.

the orange lets go,
drops
the cup
squarely on the harsh ground.
it shatters loudly –
blue &
white scattered
to all corners of the room.

beauty is fragmented &
the orange,
too, falls.
orange blood with blue pieces.
mingled in brokenness.

My Jesus Wears A Hejab

I am not a Muslim. I am a Christian, though I do sometimes distance myself from mainline and evangelical Christianity. Occasionally, I wear a hejab. This symbol of Muslim femininity sets me apart from the women who run about in immodest clothing, who worry incessantly about what others think about their appearance, who spend twenty minutes in front of the mirror in the mornings. It is a symbol of modesty, in part – but more so, it is a reminder to both myself and others that my appearance is not what defines me.
Hair is crucial to our society. A person’s haircut says much about them. Buzz cuts for the military men, dreadlocks for the anarchist hippie rebels, long flowing hair for the women (unless you’re a butch lesbian, in which case you must cut your hair very short). This is how we are supposed to look. Hairstyles can make or break a “look.” I cover my hair; my hair does not matter to who I am.
When I first wrapped the hejab around my head, I felt an unexpected change. I felt like a real person. Cares, worries, the awkwardness of life slid off my shoulders, ousted by the folds of fabric. I felt peaceful, as I rarely ever do. I saw the beauty of the world when the hejab slipped into my peripheral vision. Somehow, without realizing it, my body acknowledged that covering my hair meant one less un-necessary stressor in my life. It no longer mattered what others thought of me. I could be myself – and when I allowed myself to be myself, I allowed myself to be a person again.

A large painting of Jesus sits in the prayer chapel on my university campus. He is a pale white, his long black hair matted into his face, his beard covering his chin and some of his neck. Red and blue streaks mark his face – Blood? Tears? He is suffering yet noble. His eyes may bleed, but his face holds loving dignity. He looks off to the side, his face in profile to the viewer, as though looking elsewhere. He wants to show off the blood and tears, the scars of the trials on his face, but he does not want to see. He does not want to accept, to acknowledge, to understand.
This is not my Jesus. My Jesus is loving. My Jesus is kind. My Jesus wears a hejab.

What Does It Take?

My roommates are watching the movie Across the Universe. The song “Let It Be” made me stop in my tracks. In the movie, the song underscores a scene with a race riot and two funerals (those of a black boy and a white soldier). I think it’s a combination of visual impact and amazing gospel singing that always gives me the chills during that scene.
The race riot scene makes me wonder what it was about the 1960s and ‘70s. Why did things come to a head then? Was it the war, the senseless killing, the nonsense that we couldn’t “win”? Was it that people finally got tired of being oppressed and ignored? Was it that enough charismatic people came to the fore to lead the way?
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any particularly charismatic leader in the anti-war movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a part of it – but most people criticized him for concentrating on beating both the war and segregation.
You could argue that Vietnam was the first conflict which didn’t involve us directly. The average person in the United States saw no difference in their personal life whether Vietnam was united or not, Communist or not. Citizens felt as though they were being driven to fight, to sacrifice, to die, for something other than home and family.
Yet the current war in Iraq is much the same way. Baghdad is halfway around the world. Most people in the U.S. don’t speak Arabic – we can’t communicate with them. So why are we not speaking out? This Wednesday marks the five-year anniversary of the war. It’s been going on long enough. What is it about our era that makes us so apathetic? Do we need a wake-up call? What would ring the alarm?
“Music’s the only thing that makes any sense anymore. Play it loud enough, it keeps the demons at bay.” – Across the Universe

Suicide Bombers

I don’t think we in the West understand the motivations of a suicide bomber.
There was another explosion in Kabul today, one in the latest string of violence. Afghanistan the centre of attention again, if only for a few moments. We’ve gotten distracted by the conflict in Iraq, the threat of Iran, the attacks in Palestine. Tensions are rising in the East: Afghanistan, Pakistan. We hardly notice it.
But I stray from my point. We as a society do not comprehend the oppression, the hopelessness, that would make someone strap on explosives and blow him- or herself up. We are perfectly willing to go to war. We are perfectly willing to risk our lives for others, or for a cause. But we would not willingly die for the cause, nor for other people.
One of the great moral dilemmas which gets tossed around psychology circles is the lifeboat dilemma. You are on a ship in the middle of the ocean. It sinks in a storm. You end up in a four-person lifeboat with four other people: an elderly man, a young child and his or her mother, Bill Gates, and yourself. It becomes apparent that the lifeboat cannot hold all five of you – one of you must be tossed out of the boat, or you will all die. Sharks swim all around, hungry for their next meal. Who should be thrown overboard?
It’s interesting that people rarely (if ever) nominate themselves. We are generally unwilling to deliberately die, even to preserve another’s life. And so we do not understand why anyone else would.
I’m not condoning suicide bombers. Far from it – whatever good they might try to do with their resistance is negated by the scores of other lives they take down with them. I’m simply saying, we do not understand. We have not tried, and we do not understand. We cannot pass judgement. We cannot scoff at their stupidity. We must first understand.