“Thank God we don’t live in one of those countries!” How often i’ve heard variations on that theme. And, i know enough of our history, and live with the impacts to this very day, to cause an eye to roll every time (even when i’m the one saying Thanks). Those Countries – you know, where human rights are cheap. Where there is no freedom. Where people live in fear of the system. Well come on.
We are one of Those Countries.
You know, of course, where i might easily go, as an indigenous person, with this blog.
But today i am thinking of it another way.
Because of a pair of boots. Here’s the story:
It was hot, just after 1 pm. I drove with my kid to the bank. As we parked, i noticed the manager and one other staffer, plus the friendly security guy, standing on the sidewalk, beside a man curled up beneath the night deposit box.
So, i paid him no mind.
Went in, did my banking, was out in about 15 minutes. He was still there. I spared him a glance, meaning to go on with my errands, tending my kid, no time for drunks or drama.
Something stopped me. His boots. He was sprawled helpless, face down now; nondescript midsized brownish man with dark hair, jeans, jacket. And good heavy leather work boots. Well-kept boots.
‘Come on,’ i said to my kid, and we changed course for the Safeway. I bought a cold bottle of water. I explained my plan, put the kid in the car, turned on the portable DVD player for her, asked her to wait, and made for the man.
As i approached him, the guard emerged from the bank. Seeing me reach for the water, he said, “I’m sorry, but i’m going to have to ask you not to do that.”
A ridiculous conversation ensued. He was unable or unwilling to explain himself to me, and i was both unwilling and fundamentally unable to walk away accepting that i could not give a man a bottle of water.
But in fits and starts – he kept resorting to going inside, as if i’d leave once he made one more categorical iteration of “thank you for your concern, but i’m asking you not to do that”… he gave out that the police had been called, he knew the man, and the man had been there an hour and a half, in midday heat. And yet, he deemed it better that i not give the man water, because that might revive him such that he’d drive away, than to simply take the keys out of the man’s nearby vehicle. Especially when the police felt no urgency about responding.
I also questioned how he could be sure this man had no medical conditions such that an ambulance oughtn’t be called. Was the bank prepared for this man to die on their property? It was the worst sort of farcical exchange.
I’d have handled it differently, probably more aggressively, had i not had a small kid waiting in my car. Finally, i decided i’d take kid, go over to the police detachment that was also just across the parking lot, and try my hand at getting direct action.
I explained to the man that there was cold water beside him, wished him luck, and turned to go. He sat up. Indeed, he might have been conscious for any amount of the exchange.
“Wait,” he called. “Who are you? Where am i? “ And he got up and walked to his vehicle, which by chance was beside mine. I stopped him as he opened the passenger door, and explained he’d better not get in, he was already in trouble, and rightly so, for it was evident on talking to him, he was indeed stinking drunk.
I have as little respect for impaired driving as anyone. The funeral i attended when i was a kid myself, for the sons of dear family friends who’d been killed by a driver stoned on medication, that is something i will never forget.
But i guess it was the indignity of the way the bank had treated him, and the sheer ridiculousness of someone telling me not to offer a human water; i couldn’t be rough with him. Come back and sit down in this shade, i said, and led him back to the water, opened it, watched him drink.
He began to cry.
I glanced over at my kid, who was happily watching her movie. I sat down. He told me he wished to die. I can see that, i answered, but i can also see you don’t. Or you’d be dead. And drunk driving is more likely to kill others. So stop kidding me and yourself. You are alive. Somehow, you want to be alive more than dead.
So what is your trouble?
When he told me he was a concentration camp survivor, i understood. El Salvador? I asked.
No, Chile. He’d been here over thirty years, had a good job, no criminal record, but he just wanted to die. He didn’t deserve to live.
As we talked, the guard and a staffer came out from the bank and finally took action to simply remove the keys from his vehicle.
And i imagine they called the police again. Because within minutes, a couple of officers arrived with a van.
But meanwhile, i’d found out something astonishing. “You look like somebody i know,” i said.” Do you know J___? “ And he began to cry again. “That’s me.” It wasn’t the name the guard had told me. Who knows why they thought he had another name.
Anyhow, he pulled out a business card. Yes, it was my old accquaintance. I hadn’t seen him for 8 years. And the last time i’d seen him, he’d been clean and sober.
The police arrived. He looked up. “Just kill me,” he asked, eyeing the officer’s hip holster. The officer declined. J___ got up, flattened himself against the wall, in a grotesque caricature of a man facing a firing squad. It seemed clear he was not just drunk, but seeing something else, something from the war, as he asked them to kill him, he didn’t deserve to live.
One officer questioned me, why was i there? Was i his girlfriend. No, i explained, i merely stopped cause he looked like he needed water. To my surprise, found i knew him. And told the officer how i knew him, knew him as an accomplished, good person, and a survivor of war and torture.
The police took him away, explaining they would just get him home to sleep it off.
I took his card. I wrote my name and email on the back of a second card for him. And admonished him to remember to live.
“But where do i know you from?” he asked. “ It doesn’t matter now, “i replied. “I’ll be in touch. You need to remember that you are here for a purpose. You need to go home. And live. And get better. You have a story the world needs to hear. I am depending on you to live, and to get back to work.”
And i walked away.
In a different mood, i’d have made sure to get the officers’ badges and so forth. But i felt a compelling certainty that they heard me, that they understood, this little brown man was not a bum, was a respectable man, who had survived something horrible and needed help to get better.
“He’ll have to go to his doctor, you know,” the officer told me. Yeah, i understood the police couldn’t do more than quietly get him home.
But here’s one of my points. I needed to be sure they knew who he was, and what was the problem, lest they treat him poorly.
Because we are one of Those Countries. Not all officers. Not all the time. But some officers do… beat the brown people; take them on a Starlight Cruise; look the other way when they are murdered… ask any brown person in Canada, you are likely to hear a story, either of our own, or of a relative or friend, and how the Law cannot be implicitly relied upon not to abuse its authority toward us and expect impunity.
And here’s my main point. The wars of this century, the acknowledged wars, may not appear to be happening on this soil. But they are. Because the refugees and survivors of those wars flee here, and try to find a place to live in peace, to make peace with the demons of surviving horrors.
And what do we have in place to help us all deal with these beautiful people, if and when the ghosts of the killing fields, of the concentration camps, of the torture and the massacre, come upon them and bear them down so far they cannot go on?
Can we really put the responsibility of knowing what to do only onto specialists? Do we have specialists in the horrors and healing from them, enough specialists to go around?
Is there a time limit on the help we as a society extend toward refugees? Should we all take it upon ourselves to go further? To learn about the wars, so we can be there, should we be called upon to witness, to assist, to offer water and an ear?
I stopped because his boots looked like the boots of my brother.
And i stayed because he was brown. And because a white person told me not to. And because the people passing by who asked was he okay and did i need their help, were either “ethnic” looking (non-white), or elsewise identifiably marginalised, as the deaf man and his companion, struggling to talk to me in sign language, offering their concern. Offering to stand with me if i needed them.
And because the bank people were clearly doing the best they knew how to do, they just didn’t know what else to do. They are not bad people. They are normal. They are representative.
And because i am Aboriginal in Canada, my dad went to church schools and didn’t live to see this day, but i have seen this day, when our community is rising to help us all rise and heal the wounds of that war.
And because of the courage of many friends who’ve shared with me their horror stories, and shown me what it costs them to keep going, and humble me with their beauty in living fine lives depsite the horrors, not all of them from acknowledged wars, and not something that the white people i know are exempt from either.
Finding out i knew him just confirmed all those reasons for taking the time to be his witness. I’m glad i did.
I don’t know how he’ll do. I put him in connection with a person i know who can help, who is knowledgeable about this particular war, and about how to heal; and who is a great hearted person, who does not at all question that the human thing to do, every time, is to give a man a drink of water.
Me, i might not have had the will that day, but for those boots. Gracias a whatever loving spirit directed my gaze to his boots. Made me see a person who could be worth my attention. Who was somehow like my own.
I needed to see his good work boots to see him.
And that tells me that i do live in one of Those Countries. We all do.
What can we all do to be moved by that truth to be kinder, stronger, clearer, with all our fellow travelers, whatever the state of our boots?
All My Relations
ams