i didn't think it would be too much to listen to. i don't know why. i didn't think it would have such an effect on me. i'm not heartless, i don't think, but for some reason i thought there would be a certain kind of shield. and even as i typed that, now, i thought.. shield? why would that even be necessary.. you know that this is war. or you say you do. you know that you don't trust people and your fear of them is justified and people are capable of that. or i say i know it.
but when it came down to it i wasn't prepared for it.
what i'm talking about is that i was driving home in traffic and was annoyed with music so i turned to one of the various talk stations i have preset on the am band. i tuned to roger hedgecock's show on something like am 600 kogo (here, in san diego). now let me just say that i am pretty much like the average (or sometimes below average) american/californian who walks around in ignorant bliss. i don't affiliate with any particular religion nor do i have a firm hold on any political stance. i vote, certainly.. but on the whole i'm just terribly uninformed, frustrated, and a pretty miserable excuse for an american. i don't particularly like hedgecock.. but then again i don't particularly know too much about the controversy and/or stringent stance he takes on the more pressing issues. i know that intelligent liberals and activists don't necessarily like him all too well.. i think.. but i'm niether terribly liberal nor an activist. this is the kind of thing that makes me ashamed. but that's not what i want to highlight in this entry. not at all. that's not what i want to vent about. not at all. here's what happened:
driving home i decided on talk radio. the decision was made on a whim.. next hedgecock brings up something i'd heard on the news peripherally while i was on the way to class this morning. what i heard was that there was another tape.. i wasn't really paying attention and i thought there was just another thing for the ongoing war to use as a pinpoint. afterall, this war is also very heavily played up in the media and therefore whether they be audio or video tapes.. there are going to be as many records volleying back and forth. that's just a fact, i thought. ok.. so moving on, i changed the station. i went on with my day and didn't think any more about it. that is to say, i didn't think anymore about what i didn't know happened.
so, when i do tune in to the station as i'm headed home i hear a little more about what is going on. what i was beginning to understand was that in retaliation for the humiliations and mistreatment of prisoners incurred by american soldiers in Bhagdad (sp?) a group of masked men who claimed Al Qaeda ties beheaded an american civillian.
hedgecock proceeded with the show by playing the audio of the macabre event. he warned that it might be too much for listeners. i didn't take heed, i chose now to tune in.
the audio was somewhat muffled and hard to hear when the man, Nicholas Berg, tells his name and the name of his family members. followed by that brief identification a man speaks something in arabic. then, whilst the masked men chant the phrase "allaho akbar" (sp?) one man takes a knife and proceeds to decapitate the man-- Nick, by sawing it off. the victim had his arms tied behind his back, his feet were bound. this man Nick screams blood curdling screams. all i can hear is the screaming. and in his screaming i realize that they lied to him. they didn't tell him he was going to die. they told him he would be punished maybe. they told him they would ask his family for a ransom. they must have. they must have told him something because there was this sound of disbelief.. surprise.. something seemed unreal about it. as if he maybe thought it wasn't going to happen or it wasn't going to keep happening once he felt the warmth of his own blood leaving him. i couldn't discern whether he screamed words. i don't think he did. if he did what would they have been? the screams i heard began to merge with the chanting of the men. the chanting of the men sounded like hungry people sound when desperation puts a quaver in the muscles of the voice.
i couldn't hear anything after the screaming. i didn't think it would be too much.. why did i think that? it was too difficult, i felt, to listen to anything else. so i turned off the radio when they broke to commercial. i sat with that scream.. indulging maybe a little too much. immediately, your mind, for comfort, wants to go to comparisons.. to other gruesome deeds and to other stories of war.. to the other things that happened to children or women or young men or old people. and the thing is that i didn't want to be comforted with comparisons. i didn't want to talk. i didn't want to hear talk. all i heard were the screams.. and out of deference all i could do was isolate that instant in my mind and force myself to not let go. to not sit back and let go.
19:58 - Tuesday, May. 11, 2004
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