I woke up to the sound of screaming this morning. My first thought was of all the situations I've heard about in psychology class about people not doing anything when others are being harmed in plain eyeshot or earshot. I walked out onto my balcony to see where it was coming from, and a jar suddenly crashed through the window in the suite below mine and flew across the alley, shattering on the opposite house and raining shards onto the street. Then another item came flying out, and another. I ran to Jordan's (right across he alley) and knocked, hoping he could accompany me to the door to try to do something (a one-person confrontation is more easily seen as provocation), but he wasn't home. Neighbours were standing in the alley gawking, and one had called the police already. As I ran to the staircase to the suite, a neighbour stopped me, saying we needed to wait for the police. I didn't know what to do, and in those few moments when I was deciding whether to ignore the neighbour's advice, a young girl came running out of the apartment pleading for help. Then everybody went to help. Things calmed down a bit, and the police came and dragged a completely out-of-control husband away. He looked like he'd lost his mind... that rage alone controlled his every movement and glance... I'm retrospectively a bit glad I didn't bang on that door earlier, for the man was willing even to lash out at a group of four police officers. The wife was carried off in a stretcher a few minutes later, her daughter accompanying her in tears.
This is not at all the first time I've seen intense domestic violence in the alley, but it's a sobering, saddening thing to see. It is also a very difficult form of violence to prevent in any society, because it occurs within well-established family situations, with houses and children and shared finances and various other conditions that require people to rely upon each other.
And this is a serious criticism of conservative cultures that pursuade women to marry their first lovers, and shame women if they are divorced. I can't imagine how it must feel to be pushed by the threat of shame into living with violence, and in turn being pushed back by violence into a potential life of shame. The people I've seen in the alley, on both ends of the violence, look like they are claustrophobic and short of air every time tensions erupt.
This is not at all the first time I've seen intense domestic violence in the alley, but it's a sobering, saddening thing to see. It is also a very difficult form of violence to prevent in any society, because it occurs within well-established family situations, with houses and children and shared finances and various other conditions that require people to rely upon each other.
And this is a serious criticism of conservative cultures that pursuade women to marry their first lovers, and shame women if they are divorced. I can't imagine how it must feel to be pushed by the threat of shame into living with violence, and in turn being pushed back by violence into a potential life of shame. The people I've seen in the alley, on both ends of the violence, look like they are claustrophobic and short of air every time tensions erupt.
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And on the topic of being forced by one's society into living a life of violence or shame (or both), I just finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. It details the events in the lives of two Afghan women who end up married to the same unforgiving man, beginning as enemies, but becoming fast friends. It was a desperately sad story, yet full of hope, rapturous detail and genuine emotion, not to mention a whole education about the last few decades of Afghanistan's tumultuous history and its stark cultural influences. I can't recommend it strongly enough to just about anyone who might be reading this blog.