It was a dark, cold winter night. Seriously, it was dark and cold and all I wanted to do was get home. I had just finished tutoring my class of 8th grade students for that day’s after school program and my mind was programmed to take the next bus and travel on homewards. Unfortunately the bus in question was the B43, which never seems to arrive when desired – it always leaves just before you reach the stop or it takes what feels like an hour just to show up. On that night I felt the latter. Maybe if it had come sooner I wouldn’t have had to deal with what happened next.
There were kids playing around in front of the school. Of course there would be, it was about that time of day when all the various after school programs ended and everyone felt like pushing the limits of how long they could stay out before parents started to give trouble. My own friend was one of them. It was his book-bag and jacket that I watched over as he ran around with the preteens, acting very much their age. It was he whom I called out to when I, standing on the short steps leading to the front doors of our old middle school, saw the bus that would take me home. And it was he to whom some random kid mimicked my call, whether in an attempt to assist me or to mock me. To this day I could never be sure what his intent was. To this day, I could never be sure if I would have reacted any other way.
“Oh, shut up,” I told the unknown kid. In the half a second before and after the sounds came out of my mouth, I knew. Trouble was coming. I had to go. Now!
I wasn’t fast enough. That random kid must have been well connected, because one call from him brought a group of his friends over to block my path. They wasted no time in trying to grab me. One of them bashed me in the head from behind with a solid, hard object. I nearly lost consciousness. Thankfully, one of the deans from the school had been called outside. He came just as I started to fall over, and had driven away most of the attackers. The police was called to try to arrest the kids, but they couldn’t do anything. I guess that being directly across the street from a police precinct doesn’t help increase the chances of someone getting caught.
The fact that the police, despite being directly across the street, couldn’t help me was really disturbing. It was so distressing that I relied on outside intervention and couldn’t get justice. Although I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, now I can look back and say this must have been what the citizens of Iraq must have felt. In this same year, 2009, President Obama announced that he planned to bring a majority of troops home from Iraq. Imagine that Iraqi residents had to rely on intervention from an authority that seems so close, and yet not get any true satisfaction. As the American soldiers leave the country, the mess created becomes larger. Families, homes, livelihoods, relations, all damaged or destroyed as a result of the conflict between the law enforcement and criminals.
The next day, going back to school, I found my life to have suffered a similar blow. I suppose that getting the police involved only made a bad situation worse. Half the school had heard about the fight, and rumors were circulating that this was the only time in which two rival gangs put aside their differences to take down one annoying guy – me. My friends stopped associating with me. No one wanted to talk to me. I lost just about every connection I had with anyone in my school. It was unbearable. As many Iraqis were forced to do at some point in recent years, I had to face my loss and start anew. It was difficult, and I doubt I would ever truly heal from the pain of being alone in the midst of former friends, but it was a consequence that I had to bear. It was the price of violence, the cost of conflict. This cost was paid in loss.
