Safe, but not yet over

Photo credit: Randolph Pfaff

Let me begin by saying I’m relieved.

Let me continue by saying I told Randolph earlier, “I don’t want to watch the news all day.”

But then we did.

We live near Boston Harbor, so we weren’t part of the lockdown. But we stayed in anyway and watched as Boston held its breath. We trusted our officials–our brave, impressive police officers; our capable politicians–and they served us well today. They took care of the citizens of Boston, of Cambridge, of Watertown. With every officer they could spare, they cared for and looked after us all.

They took into custody a man suspected in hurting complete strangers, in attempting to destroy tangible things like buildings and people, as well as intangible things, like morale and spirit. They took him into custody alive. They were careful to do so, thankfully. But please consider the meaning of what we’re saying here: he is in custody.

Custody has two definitions: 1/imprisonment and 2/the protective care or guardianship of someone or something, especially regarding legal parental responsibility.

Emphasis mine.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is 19. He has lived in the US for at least ten years–the majority of his life. He and his family sought asylum in the US and built a life in Cambridge, where he attended grade school and high school. He enrolled in college locally as well–at UMass Dartmouth–and, as of last September, he is a naturalized US citizen. Dzhokhar is, unarguably, American. As an American, the US provides him, as the US provides all its citizens, protective care and guardianship.

But Dzhokhar is also an immigrant, so he will be marginalized as an immigrant. This marginalization will be tied to his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev–the other suspect–who is, according to many sources, a Muslim. To some people, that will translate additional layers of otherness. There is already talk of Muslim extremism. Whether extremism is even a possibility, to some people, it will become fact. It will be another way in which these suspects differ from “real” Americans. There are a hundred ways in which they’ll be analyzed, but this will linger and, for some, will stick. It will be the answer to two important questions: How can we figure out the rationale behind their actions? and How to make sense of the senseless?

Some reports have already taken up that helm, stating that Tamerlan may have corrupted his brother, that in 2010, Tamerlan said he didn’t have any American friends and didn’t understand Americans. But, , Tamerlan “like[d] the USA.” He felt you could succeed “if you are willing to work.”

So, how would one get from liking the US to claiming a lack of understanding? Well, let’s say that Tamerlan experienced what so many “real” Americans do once they reach adulthood–disillusionment. Perhaps he didn’t succeed, despite hard work. Perhaps he encountered alienation due to religious difference or cultural difference. Perhaps there were day-to-day things that, rather plainly, wore the shine off the US. We can only surmise the details. However it arrived, let’s say disillusionment came. For those of us who have been disillusioned, the reaction normally includes a combination of disappointment and anger.

And even for those who might claim to have never been disillusioned, every one of us knows anger. It’s easy to feed and easy to cling to.

Now let’s consider what it might mean to be the younger brother of an angry, disillusioned young man. From all the interviews done to establish character, all Dzhokhar’s friends/neighbors/teachers uniformly described him as nice, quiet, and polite. And, now, imagine there’s an opinionated force holding sway over a quiet, polite one. Imagine that the person closest to you, the person most like you racially, religiously, and in personal experience–imagine that person was angry and reacting based on that anger. Then think about how you might feel if that person were your brother, a person who steered your life and your choices. Imagine that you thought you could change things for him. Imagine being hopeful in a way that allowed you to think you could reverse someone’s disillusionment.

I am not saying this is the way things are. I am merely guessing, surmising, actually, for two reasons. 1/I spent my own young adulthood wanting so badly to be bright or happy enough to reverse someone’s dark days and outlook, and 2/There is a gray area surrounding what so many of us want desperately to be starkly black or white.

So, with that in mind, I am urging everyone in Boston–in fact, everyone in general–to remember that this will be messy. We have a lot of claims. We have a lot of contradicting accounts. We will learn in the coming weeks and months what is true.

But here is what I can guarantee to you tonight: Regardless of what happens, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a person. A damaged person (though not necessarily mentally ill) and a person who will most likely be difficult for most Americans to understand. But we need to try not to black-and-white this. We need to try not to marginalize him and, conversely, we need to not dismiss him as some anomaly. Otherwise, Dzhokhar is going to cease being a person and instead be a sound byte. He’s going to be a poster child for every 19-year-old, for every Russian, for every immigrant, for every angry young man. And those who would also be cast into those same groups will have to answer for Dzhokhar’s actions.

Similarly, those who helped him and those arrested who may have helped him–even if they didn’t–will be written into a mounting narrative, will be part of an investigation separate from the criminal one. It will be part of the thread of American life that occurs in the wake of terror, in the ongoing war against it, which is both a structure that the government created and a creature that society sustains. And, despite our best efforts, that narrative will make Americans turn away from each other. It will make it difficult to get close to people. It will be easier to doubt the existence of goodness in “others” and it will be even easier than it is right now to believe that there’s something inherently wrong with us due to age or race or anything other than creed (and, by creed, I don’t mean the Christian sort; I mean the belief systems we all respectively employ to guide our choices). Creed is the only thing that we should each cite to explain our actions and it is what we should ask others for when expecting them to explain theirs. But instead of asking for or even waiting for an explanation, we are generally quick to doubt and quick to judge because no one wants to invest in another person’s issues when our own are already so difficult to endure.

Let me close by saying that this will not be easy. This will be difficult and it will be sad. It already is. We are celebrating in Boston tonight. We are joyous for the lack of a foreseeable threat and relieved that the existing threat has been identified and extinguished. Yet our anger remains, rightfully so, and unfortunately, shallowly so as well. Few will think about what that anger stems from, beyond retribution. Most won’t consider how our anger might be like Tamerlan’s or Dzhokhar’s, which is, of course, what led to this in the first place. They won’t consider how a person cast as an “other” can also be strikingly familiar.