News That Stays News

“Where now are all those masters and teachers?” March 18, 2013

I arrived late at the Taj Mahal.  Soldiers with machine guns conferred on what to do in a language I could not understand.  They pointed me to a small bus.  I got on the bus, two officers in the far front, one soldier before me, one sitting across the aisle, both with worn, dirty wooden rifles.  The bus took off.

I did not feel my own fear, then, but I felt the fear of others.  By the thousands, my people stepped into cars with men with guns.  Young men, their weapons used and their consciences still fresh.  My godmother’s sister walked out of that stadium, recrossed the threshold of the disappeared.  From the tourist-friendly, modern heart of a democratic country to whom I was enemy by neither action, ideology, nor descent, I still felt the echo.

We pulled into some sort of processing station.  I left everything.  My bag.  My cell phone.  My pen.  I got back into another van with two more young men, two more rifles.  We drove away.