When I first heard the news that President Trump ordered the killing of Qassem Soleimani only three days into the new year, I did not feel relief that the architect of Iran’s shadow wars in the Middle East had been killed and could do harm no more. Nor did I feel anger at the United States for making such a reckless and uncalculated decision. I thought of Soleimani, and I felt sadness.
I thought of the Iranian people, and I felt sadness. I thought of President Trump, and I felt sadness. I thought of the ease at which Soleimani designed and carried out plans to take the lives of others, and how with the same ease my country took his life and the lives of those he was with. I felt a sadness so troubling at the thought that we have not only made killing come with ease, but that the killing of someone we are told is an enemy of our country brings relief and is cause for celebration. I began to hope: not in war. Not in sanctions or nuclear deals. Not even in peace but against all I had left: hope itself.
Violence permeates and thrives not only in relationships between governments but also in the relationships we have with each other here in our own country, in our own state, even here at Eastern Mennonite University. Violence is not always a clandestine operation meant to push our own ideology on someone else or a drone strike meant to kill in the name of peace. Violence is a physical touch meant to leave a bruise. It is a word meant to wound the mind. It is intimacy, sexual or emotional, that has been violated or abused. It is trust that has been shattered. It is the passing of judgment in the name of religion. It is hoping against hope, desiring for an end instead of a beginning.
I was not in Iran when Soleimani was killed, and the tension and the fear in the aftermath of the killing was not tangible to me, but I felt the presence of violence. I continue to feel its presence in class or casual conversation when someone is attacked with a punch or a kick or a word sharpened with vengeance and a longing to be safe. I have witnessed violence. We have all witnessed violence.
I cannot ease the tension between the United States and Iran. I cannot bring back to life Soleimani or the lives that he took. I am not calling on us to do this either. I am telling this story to remind us that we all have experienced violence of some form. Whether it is a war of drone strikes and bullets or a war of words and eyes sharp enough to leave a scar, we all know violence, and we carry it with us. I want to remind us that we have the capacity to be violent ourselves.
We do not all have the power to order a drone strike, but we have hands and mouths and eyes and the history of violence we carry with us. I must also remind us that we have power over the violence we carry. I am not going to say that we must simply have hope and be done. No, we must have hope and not be done. We must put away our potential for violence and our desire to give endings. With trembling hands and voices and a fear in the prospect of hope, we must have mercy in our ideas of what is “right” and what is “wrong.” We must remember the relationships we have here at EMU and wherever else we may find home, and we must give ourselves and the people we know and the people we will meet a beginning instead of an ending. Let there be no knives in our handshakes, no bullets in our words, and no damnation in our gaze.
This is not an easy task, and it may not seem relevant to all of us. But we cannot see what people carry in their bodies and on their minds, and others cannot see what we carry on ours. In a world of veiled wounds where violence comes with such ease, what else are we to do?
