The footage of Iraq at the beginning of the US invasion in 2003, and especially the youth that were depicted, reminded me that it has been four years, mostly overlapping my time in college. It made me try to imagine how different four years of education by experiencing war in Iraq, as opposed to classes at Chicago, would have been.
My four years here have felt like a long time, with lots of events and influences on my life. What would I learn if I were in Baghdad for that amount of time? I was getting emotional watching “Little Birds”, and it actually worried me that had I been there–getting bombed, having smug military men occupy the city, seeing children and acquaintances die–I can’t say for sure that I wouldn’t have wanted to fight, or have learned enough rage that I could justify it to myself.
Nori’s story started with Iraq too, although in 2004. And it has been three long years for him as well. I think I sometimes forget how much happens year after year to every person, how much thought goes into every day.
Maybe this is similar to what Jake said in his post about the broad application of the term “hibakusha” weaving geographically dispersed stories together. We might each get different information about what’s going on in the world, and interact with it in our own unique way, but the time somehow runs parallel. And moreover, we are part of those influences on each other. “Little Birds” is one of those influences in the mix of information and communications surrounding the Iraq war, and a very powerful one at that. And I was struck by all the humanity behind it, the making of the film, the people portrayed in the film, everyone involved in disseminating (or failing to–why can’t I see anything like this on TV?) this message. My four years in Chicago is four years of US-occupied and increasingly violent Baghdad for someone else, and each moment I’ve had during that time, and which seem to me so numerous and significant, could have been something out of “Little Birds”.
It made me sad and scared, seeing how much momentum is stacked against peace. At the same time, though, the parallel lives are perpetually bumping into each other, and things don’t stay the same. And more recently I’ve been encouraged by how much of a response a call for peace can get. Mike and I have been circulating a petition about getting our high school to decline a donation from a cluster bombs manufacturer (the effects of cluster bombs were made clear in “Little Birds”), and while there have been very disheartening tendencies (http://uchicago.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2301622317 — “ASIJ in Support of Cluster Bombs”??!?!?), it has clearly pushed the buttons for lots of people (http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?asijasij&1).
Anyway, I think I had a point somewhere in that muddle.
