We are mutually vulnerable– Week # 7

“Los que no han sufrido no saben nada. No conocen ni el bien ni el mal, no conocen a los hombres ni se conocen a si mismos” –Fenelón

“Those who have yet to suffer know nothing. They know neither good nor evil; they know neither men nor themselves” –Fenelón

" آنان که با درد و رنج بیگانه اند از هیچ چیز آگاهی ندارند، نه نیک را از بد تمیز توانند داد و نه از خود یا دیگری آگاهی توانند داشت" – فِنِلون

Those who have worked with me can attest that I am extremely patient. But there is a student that has been pushing the envelope further and further since the beginning of the semester; my bowl of patience has been brimming with frustration. Finally, I asked her to leave the classroom after she referred to an African-American man in the textbook as a “nigger.” Mindful of language and historical barriers, I genuinely tried to explain to her the racist burden contemporary American history has placed on this term, and offered her appropriate terms to use when referring to an American wo/man of African descent, but she further insisted on using the derogatory term. Perhaps she just wanted to defy the authority for all it’s worth. But there are certain questions that I’d still like to contemplate upon before dismissing the incident as such.

In an age where information incessantly pours into our screens, an age where books have their own magic of finding their way around the globe, no place is remote, no town is inaccessible, and no culture is isolated. “That” student must have read/heard about the history of slavery in the U.S. and the world. But what’s the gravity of her knowledge? Did she grow up with racism and racial sensitivities, dynamics of a post-slavery society?  Did she feel the percussions of slavery to the marrow of her bones by observing the systematic injustices African-Americans endure to this day? Has she read first-hand accounts of slavery? I assume she has seen depictions of slavery in films where the identities of slaves are barely negotiated with subjectivity and nuanced embodiment. She is unfamiliar with their history, with their stories, the reality of owning another human being does not sit heavily on her. “Nigger” is just another word for her, and for me it is the lynchings, it is Ku Klux Klan which used to ravage the South not long ago, it’s the ownership of another human, it’s murder and torture. Between the two of us, the gravity of this truth sits heavily on me.

Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Zamora, Michoacán

During the Cristero War in Mexico, many Catholics were
 executed against this wall by the Mexican Army

But “that” student has truths of her own that have little or no gravity for me: foreign invasion and conquest, centuries of feudalism and monarchy, decades of American imperialism, the persecutions of Catholics by the Secular government of Mexico, indigenous marginalization, atrocities caused by drug mafias, etc. I am unfamiliar with her pain, with the history of Mexican struggle. As I face my own unique struggle of establishing myself in Mexican society, learn their language and familiarize myself with their stories and pain, there are hundreds of red lines that I probably have crossed, of course subconsciously. For her, the term “Narco,” which I use so freely and loosely, means abduction, ransom, public shootings, fear, paranoia, in short, a national catastrophe! And there have been many times when I have jokingly used this term, being unaware of how real its threat is, unaware of how deep its damage has been felt throughout Latin America, how many lives it has consumed.

I knew very little about the United States as a nation. After I immigrated to the U.S, I studied American culture and history, I breathed American culture and history, its pains I assumed as my own, its stories I assumed as my own. And still there were many moments when I felt out of place. In Iran, we lightheartedly made jokes about Nazi Germany, Hitler and his gruesome regime. I remember for my 12^th birthday, I asked for a cake with a Nazi symbol on top. A few zestful speeches, handful of movies, and a couple of photos with his typical serious pose were all I knew of Nazi Germany and the atrocities it had caused. I just wanted to be “different,” but that birthday cake symbol for someone else would have been reminiscent of his/her grandparents’ remains. In the U.S, the ground in which the Nazi Germany is seen and analyzed bears no tolerance towards humor, as lighthearted as the one of an uneducated 12 year-old might be. The massive migration of European Jews to the U.S, the staggering number of first-hand accounts of the Holocaust published by the American media and many other factors contribute to the serious and unforgiving manner in which Nazi Germany is (and should be) perceived by Americans.   

As one who sees everything through the lens of literature, I place my absolute faith in the therapeutic effects of story-telling, and the dialogue it generations. I do not expect my student to obtain absolute sensitivity towards American history and society, but I hope she comes to class with an open heart for I am about to tell some stories. “From the suffering of another, there comes a giving that is no longer drawn from the power of acting and giving, but precisely from weakness itself, and the suffering other gives knowledge of shared vulnerability and the experience of the spontaneous benevolence required to bear that knowledge”—Paul Ricoeur.

Peace and resistance from Los Reyes,

Aria