The Luxury of Safety
Hot water isn’t difficult to come by here. It springs from our pipes without the slightest provocation and scalds in seconds. But it is there and handy and clean. I could drink it, if I needed to. I bathe in it daily and let it scrape the sweat and the salt and the grime of my work from my body. My body, with the rounded curves of my luxury.
I pour a powdered soap into my washing machine, turning on this scalding water to froth up cleansing bubbles as I shove sheets into the mouth. One set after another as I do, 5 days every week. Wash and dry, fold and pack, unpack and use, repack and wash. It is a pain in the ass and cycles me into a never ending flow of soap and softener and the heat of the dryer in the heat of this summer.
Then, I see her:
Witnessing a revolution in a country I will never see. Making her wishes known, in a voice of which she would shortly be robbed. Sniped by a militia, tasked with silencing an unarmed student. A student making the sham of the Ayatollah run elections known. Unarmed. Shot dead in the street.
I complain about how much laundry I have to do. Her face has stayed with me for three days as I fold these mundane fibers in my air conditioned home. To transfer to my air conditioned car, to my air conditioned office. I need not worry about being shot for my opinion. I need not worry about my voice not being heard. I will not die in the street, like Neda did. I can no longer think the same of my life. I am in no dire need.
I eat, I sleep, I work, I love. I do all of this in the luxury of safety. Never has the point been so heartbreakingly made.
Strength to you, people of Iran.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
I can’t watch the video anymore, she is haunting me. my life seems so petty with my worries about cancer, SC, men and simple bullshit things I take for granted.
I see death everyday in my work. I see the faces of my patients. they haunt me long after the night has fallen and SC is asleep. They are so sweet, fighting a war in themselves, where their own bodies are the military fighting back against their protests. This is not the same.
She haunts me as well.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Ali, your worries are quite real. Thank you for the work you do.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
She is a heroine.Thanks for this post.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I hope she hasn’t died in vain. I wish there was more we could do, on this side for them.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
i cannot watch the video, because I know I won’t be able to sleep
but your words speak strongly enough
June 24th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
I am not brave enough to watch this. A woman killed for stepping out of her car at the wrong time. We are lucky here.
Bastards.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
heartbreaking and deafening, the attrocities man inflicts upon man . . upon woman.
not only luxury, but the way this word feels in a different country: right.
right choices. right practices. right the wrongs. right now. righteous anger and righteous strength.
thanks for helping neda live on with the weight of her purpose, if even in the thoughts of those of us who are horrified and heartbroken.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
i could not watch that video knowing what was being documented. violence is appalling. i would not like to be unexpectedly swindled by the news media into seeing violence even though i know it may serve as a reminder. but it also functions to haunt and terrorize. watching that would be like asking myself to carry the burden of monsters from that moment forward forever…in deference to the tres mal load and of my strength to carry it, i might break my back when i could be using that strength for something else. but what you are doing here is using your strength for the benefit of everyone, thank you.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:34 am
After seeing this, I had to search for some context, so I hit Google. I’ve been living under my rock as-of-late, buried in finishing up some writing projects for school, so I hadn’t heard about this.
I’m amazed at the reactions of so many people.
I think you hit upon the reaction I’m feeling; safe and secure and living the life when compared to so many others . . .
June 25th, 2009 at 4:43 am
I’ve walked around for days with a similar feeling of unreality and blessing… trying to remind myself that I have everything and more. I read Andrew Sullivan’s blog to keep up with what’s happening in Iran and my heart races and my stomach does loop-di-loops.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:27 am
Well said. I can’t forget the images either. What must it be to live in state of constant fear yet summon the courage to get out there to say what needs to be said and take the ultimate risk? Well said, indeed.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:21 am
Oh my god.
Words escape me now…
She will haunt me, too.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Amen
June 25th, 2009 at 8:43 am
That’s exactly how I feel. But you say it well and I don’t.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:28 am
I just heard of this on the news this morning…I am saddened by her death, and look around my safe world and feel very grateful.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:05 am
I think that image has been haunting a lot of us lately.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Wow. A new awareness. It gives me shivers.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:18 am
It’s true. I catch myself bitching about a new zit or that I don’t have air conditioning, and then I think of things such as this, and I am embarrassed.
June 25th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Amen, flutter. Such a shame.
June 25th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I eat, I sleep, I work, I love. I do all of this in the luxury of safety. I hear this. I feel this.
My heart goes out to them.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
It’s a rare gift that so many of us have, safety, security, freedom to speak. I think about it every time I look at my daughter, who might have grown up in a very, very different place, or failed make it to adulthood there.
June 26th, 2009 at 3:56 am
This is going to sound perverse but here it goes. Maybe I should temper it first. She was a beautiful innocent girl and now so painfully she is dead. I can’t watch the video. But Flutter, so many have died before her and so many after. That this is shocking us, that is a gift in a perverse way. We are so much more at ease when we hear it, read it. But when we see it it haunts us. We all deserve the haunting as this shit is going on. Now, what for the world to do?
June 26th, 2009 at 10:02 am
We take so much for granted here in the US. And we are so very, very lucky in many ways.
June 26th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I haven’t been able to watch this.
I know I should, but I can’t. I just can’t.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
I can’t watch it either right now. Later, yes. Now? No.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
perspective shifts in these moments. she lives on because of this. because we have felt something immense from her death.
June 27th, 2009 at 4:55 am
that was a very moving tribute.
and my heart aches for all who are fighting the good fight- and sacrificing their lives- all in the name of freedom.
June 27th, 2009 at 5:23 am
Sigh…. Every day. Every day, all over the world, we treat our fellow men and women with no respect. With violence and hatred that boils over so quickly, that the reactions are murderous and atrocious. You can use that knowledge to either become depressed (as I’m struggling to avoid) or to be positive and proactive.
June 27th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
We are really so lucky. And most of the time i just take it for granted.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Perspective can be such a necessary pain.
Oh, the reminder to be thankful, to appreciate, to be activists at any and every level we can.
June 28th, 2009 at 4:29 am
The immediacy of sound combined with images creates an impact that sound or worse still print only can not create. We are inundated with bad news, we become increasingly immune. Injustice at every turn can make us feel all the more inclined to view our feeble attempts at protest as futile. It is only in uniting voices that protest becomes viable. It is not an exercise in futility, it is an exercise in humanity. Neda is one woman. She is being mourned throughout the world and rightly so. Every life is precious.
June 28th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
I am broken in two by this.
June 30th, 2009 at 7:16 am
Yes.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I understand the power of what you are saying. I had a similar reaction to watching Slumdog Millionaire. I went to bed thinking of all the people in the world who live and sleep in squalor. I bitch about my rental house. But we are safe. We are warm. My children are with me, and I do not fear that someone will kill them in the night. I did not sleep well that not. Nor for many nights after. As for the beautiful Neda, I have seen the footage and have to compartmentalize the sadness in order to function. We watch shows like CSI and think of death as entertainment. It isn’t funny at all.
June 30th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I know. I know. It’s all relative though, in a way. Not that those battles being fought for human rights are on the same level or platitude as laundry, no not at all, rather that the sinking feeling, the guilt of having when so many others have not. That, is relative, and universal to us all.
July 1st, 2009 at 1:15 pm
This makes me so angry. Then I get angrier still when I hear them suggest that she was shot by foreign agents. They don’t even have the courage to acknowledge what they have done. If only being angry made justice happen.
July 1st, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Yes, strength. And prayers.
July 1st, 2009 at 11:18 pm
oh flutter. this makes me unbelievably sad. horrified. afraid. angry. thank you for the writing, for observing, for saying how it is. I feel like I’ve been so out of it lately, focused so close on my own little plot of land in this big wide world, and I’ve forgotten about what is happening beyond my comfy little borders. Thank you. I need to remember, and witness, and understand.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
How… horrific. How sad. And like you said, how humbling. While we all have complaints about our country, our government, our lives, our burdens – watching that video truly puts it all into perspective, doesn’t it?
While none of us live in total perfection, right now I am feeling truly blessed – for the piles of laundry, the sink full of dirty dishes, the yard that needs to be mowed, the car that’s on it’s last breath, and the foreclosure on our home. Because compared to Neda? I have so very much.
And like others mentioned above, I’m ashamed to admit that I couldn’t watch the video at first – it took me until today to actually click, watch, and comment.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
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