Don't you know that loneliness
is a waste of time
and I know you won't ever have to walk alone
you can call on me, baby
take my hand and walk with me
–Cry to Me, Margaret Singana
When you die who will weep for you?When you dead who will bury yuh clothes? Who will put your name in a song and sing it until their eyes fill with tears and they get that constricting pain of grief in their chest?What a funny way we choose who to mourn.What a funny way we choose whose lives are of value to us.Even grief depends on your address. And even in death, who we mourn depends on who is privileged enough to deserve our tears.
But in the land of drones, no presidents come calling when little boys die.And in the land of mines, genocide mysteriously only happens where a multi-national corporation wants to dig for minerals to make you the latest mobile phone. The lives of children in other parts of the world are collateral damage.Disasters like that are everyday occurrences and in the land of the free where peace reigns every death is a national tragedy.
And so it should be. But do the people of America weep for the children who die from bombs dropped by their sons and fathers and husbands?How is the murderer in the uniform different from the murderer with the backpack?The hunt is on for a swarthy suspect and CNN journalists, so excited to have a tragedy on their doorsteps, make it into a movie scene where they are the stars and the victims are the backdrop to their fantastic imaginings about the colour and ethnicity of murderers.
Defend America from the infidels–it's so Hollywood I reach for a bag of popcorn.I have no tears for Boston. Like I have no tears for Syria. And no tears for Burma.I know Boston as well as I know Aleppo. My tears can do nothing for the child who still tries to suckle on the breast of his dead mother. My tears have no power to make bombs stop dropping.
Far away people who have never emerged blissfully battered from Maracas, who are unfamiliar with the way a mountain lights up with the flame of yellow poui.I thank a multitude of gods and goddesses that I do not know war. But there are communities in Trinidad that do battle everyday with a multitude of demons that I am too terrified to face.
I have no tears for those who do not speak my language. Tears suggest pity. People under siege do not need pity. People who are grieving do not need the weeping of random strangers.And even for those who do speak my language, I am not sure if my grief is sincere.We are so disaffected by the constant drone of information that nothing moves us really. Our reactions are knee-jerk and predictable. But we know only so much about their lives.
Solidarity is not a random thing that involves a liked and shared image on Facebook. If we remain uninterested in questioning the systems that keep wars running, whether they are turf wars in Laventille or gun battles in Kashmir or "tribal wars" in the Congo, then we will never find the peace we claim to desire.And writers like me can rhapsodise all we want about home but until we are willing to fight for what we speak of then our words do not ring true.
The truth of all of these disputes is that somebody rich is benefiting.Don't cry. Ask yourself if you really need a new mobile phone.Don't cry. Start to ask yourself how your lifestyle or the one that you are aspiring to is affecting someone else in some other part of the world.Don't cry. Ask yourself what you can do to make a positive intervention in the lives of the people around you.That is solidarity. Charity begins at home. Why are you not weeping for the little black boys dying everyday in your own backyard?
If we start to convince ourselves that there is such a thing as ethical consumerism we have no right to call the names of people who have died.We have no right to feign concern for bombing victims when we are silent on imperialism and globalisation.But if we are not also willing to globalise our resistance against the things that destroy communities, then our tears are a waste of water.Who will fill their newspaper columns with your story? Who will call your name and remember you to their children?
And when you log off and nobody is looking, who or what are you really weeping for?
