Why are we the prophets?
Why are we the ones?
Who see the sad solution
Know what must be done?
I have no thought at all
Of my own reward
I really didn't come here
Of my own accord
Just don't say I'm
Damned for all time
-Damned for All Time/Blood Money, Andrew Lloyd Webber
He beat the man like a Good Friday bobolee, he did. I sat in the front seat of the maxi-taxi suspended in another world with an afrobeat soundtrack in my ears and watched the fight like a bizarre tableau. A man, taller than six feet and the width of two men, beating up another man, a short stocky man who put up his fists and did a boxer's carray but didn't stand a chance really. I don't know why, but I've always liked the word bobolee, even though I can't imagine myself ever beating anybody.It is so perfect for conjugation in a society of beating up and beating out. Even though I tend to weep the most for Judas. The lasting tragedy of the story of Jesus and Judas is that Judas and his betrayal is as central to the story as Jesus.
I don't know if it's that I feel bad for Judas that he got picked to do the terrible job that he had to do. But without Judas getting his silver and selling out his bredrin, would we be enjoying a nice long weekend 2000 years later? What a time to contemplate the role of the betrayer and the betrayed. What a time for us to switch from being the bobolised to the bobolisers. Even as state forces trample farmlands, even as solid tongues turn to forked ones. And soon it will be one year since change was granted like boons from gods who reward us for years of suffering and sacrifice during which we did not rise up and fight against state-sanctioned oppression.
There was a time when Judas was one of us. There was a time when people who are now ministers were part of the professional protesters. When the UNC was a jokier Opposition than the PNM now is. And the COP was a haven of middle class misfits who were too red to consider themselves PNM till they dead and too town Indian to believe that they were UNC till they dead. They came and sought out the protest camps. We never imagined then that they would be on the other side. We never imagined that they would forget these struggles in the bureaucracy of ministries, in the politics of survival. I watch the man eat licks. I mean with slight pepper this man eat his licks.
He tried to fight the burn while he got his face remodelled. I am in a state of calm paralysis, sitting in the maxi-taxi watching the carnage. I do not even contemplate stepping out and trying to get between them. People on the roadside go about their business. A man only gets upset about the fight when a fine jet of blood escapes from short man's nose and lands on his pristine white Aeropostale T-shirt sleeve. Oh the horror of the big man beating down the small man. All day everyday. All how like a bobolee. Whether or not there is betrayal. Whether or not the bobolee deserves the licks. But who deserves licks? What does the boboliser get from the experience? What healing is possible in that moment of barbarism and inhumanity?
Beyond Good Friday there is no other time when the bobolised have an opportunity to become the boboliser. The big man walks away with a look on his face that I can't read as anger or regret or satisfaction. The beaters vs the beaten. The victims vs the criminals. The politicians vs the people. We move from tableau to tableau and take our places and play our roles. We may or may not be friends. We might even love each other sometimes. There is no way to know who is real and who is just playing a part. Who is destined to be a Judas and who just plays the role because they like it. But the calm paralysis is like a sickness that nobody wants to find a cure for.
I want to believe that not all politicians kiss your children's cheeks and then watch on as you answer to the crime of wanting more and better for your country. I want to believe that it might be possible to have true love and true interest and true commitment and be in public office. Meanwhile we beat bobolees but are afraid to really challenge our leaders to do the right thing. We beat things only when we are sure that we can win. No one wants to take the chance that they will lose. That they might die. That they can really change things for the better. In this country of bobolisers and bobolised, we are damned for all time to betray ourselves.