Today's Thursday News of the Absurd Will Someone Please Write This Book Inspirational Moment breaks my heart.
On NPR this morning, I heard a story.* The reporter was discussing the use of "suicide camps" for training young people to become suicide bombers, particularly in Pakistan. The man he was interviewing (again, apologies for the failure to cite any of this), told him of a new phenomenon. It seems that some people are purchasing children and training them to be suicide bombers, not as part of any jihad, but for revenge killings and other dirty work. The story the interviewee told involved a young boy who was bought from his family and told he was going to be trained to become a martyr, but was instead sent to bomb the next door neighbor's after a dispute.
Even the NPR reporter, after a pause, said something to the effect of "That is the most sinister thing I have ever heard."
I want this kid's story. I want to see, from the kid's point of view, how one of these camps can take a child and mold him into someone who is willing to kill himself for a cause. I want to see his opinions changing, his doubts erased, his mind narrowed. I don't want any judgment or religious opinions; this is an emotional journey, not a political piece.
I don't know how I want it to end. Part of me would pray, of course, for intervention, for the kid to be caught before he can go through with it, like that kid that went public on CNN about feeling tricked. Or for him to figure out he was being used in a way he hadn't imagined. But part of me knows the story is better if in the end we see the carnage and the destruction and not an angel in sight.
Who will write me this book?
* which I had on in the car and could subsequently not find or link to here. Sorry.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The path to paradise
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6 comments:
ugh. thanks for shining a light on this. there are too many really tough situations that children are put in every day that are so dark it has to break hearts when the light does shine on it. what can we do, half a world away? what can we do when that evil is right next door? take http://myothercar.blogspot.com/2009/05/bad-scene.html today for example.
i'm not positing that there is nothing we can do. first shining the light on it is an excellent start.
This actually reminds me of one of the main characters from Neal Shustermans book "Unwind" One of the kids was brought up to be slaughtered for a cause when he became of age. It was a very interesting and emotional thread to the story.
Very heartbreaking.
cath c, there's so much like that, sometimes I want to bury my head.
Christy, I haven't read it, but I will. Good?
Made me think of the last verse to Steve Earle's "Rich Man's War" ...
* * * * *
Ali was the second son of a second son/Grew up in Gaza throwing bottles and rocks when the tanks would come/Ain’t nothin’ else to do around here just a game children play/Somethin’ ‘bout livin’ in fear all your life makes you hard that way
He answered when he got the call/Wrapped himself in death and praised Allah/A fat man in a new Mercedes drove him to the door/
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man’s war
* * * * *
It kills me, the ways we abuse each other ...
Too dark for this writer. I'm not seeing any room for farts jokes in this one.
Paul, too dark for me too. Where would I put the dogs and cheese scene?
Thorp, good reference but your own last line is what sticks with me. Too true.
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