ShortStory: News Is Fiction

Pretty much a normal, hectic day. Had my morning coffee with a friend, lunch with another, shopped with a third friend, discussed getting 250 JDs worth of hair extensions, and went to see a movie with my best friend, which made me write this.

After a long busy day of paying social calls, talking about what’s been going on with me and my troubles, gossiping and such, it was nice to retire in front of the big screen and relax. Letting my troubles go away and watch others’ lives roll on the screen.

Disconnected from reality.

A gang kidnaps a rich boy.
They hide him in a hole in the ground. With no water or food for days, the little boy decides that he has died and is in hell. One of the kidnappers had a son, the same age as the kidnapped boy. He stumbles across the hiding place and befriends the boy, brings him food, water and toys.
So matters complicate. To kill the boy was the only solution. The son runs out in the middle of the night to save him. He helps him climb up the hole, but gets stuck in the grave instead. He hears footsteps and voices approaching, and sees his father, his heart leaps with joy and he runs to him…

The bullet kills the son.

My friend, the audience and I were shocked of course. Petrified, angry, sad and in tears.
“Oh how unfair!”
A pressuring emotion distressed our lives.
“Oh thank God it was just a movie?”

But as the herd moved on, I stayed, staring at the screen and wondering. How many children would want to be in my place? To watch others’ distant lives entertain them, detached and unfamiliar with it.
My friend gets impatient and says: It’s only a movie.

But, it’s on the news everyday, never mind mentioning what’s distant and unfamiliar. Children dying in Palestine, in Iraq, every single day, mercilessly deprived from the joys of childhood, family, learning, growing up, falling in love.
I feel sad, I feel sorry and I wish it all to end. But, it takes only a click on the remote control and it all goes away. I am in a better mood.
“What do you want? A comedy? Or some romance? We’ve got it all to wash away your pain. We’ve got it all to wash your brain.”

Do they really brainwash us?

We brainwash ourselves.
This denial suits us perfectly. The real becomes unreal. We don’t want to watch it on news because it’s too real for us. We prefer movies, stories and sad songs. For at least they amuse us.

Just another brick in the wall?

The 1st of September is just as long awaited for as their birthdays. Whole year long, preparing for it, they come, dressed in their best clothes. They come, with flowers and poems for their teachers. Everyone is excited, everyone is happy. Some worrying about the play they’ll be performing. Some worrying about lines of songs’ they might forget. Happily greeting their old classmates, and 6 year olds living the day of their lives. They are growing up; they are big boys and girls now. They are going to the 1st grade.

Do 335 of you want to die?

Beslan 2004

I blame myself.
I blame you too.
And we will blame the day Kain held the grudge.

So everybody keeps telling me to learn from my mistakes. But, we are 40 thousand years old and no one can even estimate that number of mistakes we nurtured, we nurture, and we will keep on nurturing.

Have we learned?

I’m sorry to inform you my friend, that you and I, are as ignorant, oblivious, narcissistic and ferociously uncivil as the first man was.

So I look at my 8 year old brother. He plays, he does his homework, he watches TV, and he even plays Scrabble with me. And I wonder.. What if he starred in a movie, where his life is threatened permanently. Where he is so small, so vulnerable and with no hope of a better day. Where he can no longer be a child. where.. ….
I can’t. I am too horrified of this scenario.
Others tell me to stop my ridiculousness and put these evil thoughts out of my head and “stop worrying about impossibilities.”

Do you have a brother?

Who am I? I talk of those less fortunate, to pretend I understand. I- who never knew hunger, thirst or cold, I- who have a for-granted roof over my head. I who never knew fear. I who hate my life and is unsatisfied with all I have. What do I know about loss?
They tell me: tragedy is romance. Tragedy is Romeo and Juliet.
I am either afraid or uninterested in news. For after all, what will I gain? I don’t want to feel sad. I don’t want to feel bad. So, I will deal with it as a movie. These things happen only in movies.. Fiction. Life is too normal for these things to happen.

So I guess I’m over it. I’m going to the beauty parlor now. I think I will also have my new extensions dyed blond. Or what do you think?
I’m a Hypocrite.
We all can get familiar with the unfamiliar, but it can take us a second to get unfamiliar with the familiar unfamiliar.