The Stories of Rocks

Today, SJ accompanied me on my walk into the sunset- only it was too early and too cloudy to catch any brilliantly-colored rays. I am really glad she came with me because together, we discovered some cool- well new things along the way. My companion grew up on a farm in Redding, CA, so she knew a good deal more than most about animals. Running into dogs triggers the same reaction in her as my reaction with babies, and so at the entrance of the workers' compound, we paused for a minute to scratch the tummies of the puppies that help the workers guard the back entrance. Jonga and Johnny are a mix of Saint Bernard and something else, and so they have really adorable pointed rabbit ears and a boxy shape that is softly rounded by their white fur. Johnny has a black mask over his face like a raccoon, while Jonga has a white one. We cooed and scratched their tummies and then moved on through the compound and onto the open road. 

Before we reached the fork in the road, we took a detour into the hills on the left, following a pack of five wild dogs that ran away from SJ's coaxing kissing and clicking sounds. “Yeah, they're definitely wild,” she decided, as they trotted away from us. While we picked our way through the rocks, I spotted a snail shell in the dirt, and picked it up, utterly surprised. What was a snail shell doing on this desert land? Shells belonged on beaches, not waterless Kurdistan mountains! Or so I thought. Apparently there are beach snail shells, and there are ordinary snail shells that just inhabit your average garden and other dry land. I guess that makes sense, but I had never seen these conch-shaped shells anywhere else but on the beach. Clearly, I have not spent enough time outdoors as a kid. I told her this as she looked at me with uncomprehending eyes. Hey, not everyone has the luxury of growing up on a farm! 

Further up the hill, we ran into even rockier terrain, and had to watch the ground closely as we worked our way up to the top. Suddenly, SJ paused and bent down, studying a particular rock in the grass. I bent down next to her and saw that it had several beautiful spiral shapes impressed into it. “Are those fossils?” I asked. Yes, indeed, they were fossils of shells- evidence that this rock had been underwater thousands of years ago. “We used to have a bunch of these around this lake near our house,” said my companion. I clearly have not spent enough time outdoors as a kid. How did I manage to go almost 25 years without seeing a shell fossil-embedded rock that told the history of the land thousands of years back? Hm, actually, aren't sand dollars basically the same thing? I've definitely collected a few of those in my childhood. I guess I just never fully appreciated the sheer oldness of rocks and the stories evidenced, or embedded, into their very skin. 

Boy if rocks could talk, if mountains had eyes and ears, the ones in Kurdistan would have the most sorrowful tales to tell. Tales of genocide, of mass extermination of hundreds of thousands of an innocent people who had unwittingly earned the hatred of Saddam Hussein and the Baathists. Of a people who suffered through all manner of torture from slowly baking alive in metal-topped pits underground to getting their heads razed off by tractors while the rest of their body lay squirming helplessly beneath the ground, and through chemical attacks that wiped out entire villages of Kurds and sent the injured survivors with burning, blinded eyes and boils popping up all over their contaminated skin- not just Peshmerga freedom fighters, but civilian families, including women and children- fleeing for their lives into the treacherous Kandil Mountains that border Iran. Iran is not seen as a friendly face to the rest of the world, but during Saddam's raging campaign against the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Kurds, Iran was really the only one who lent an ear and a helping hand to the refugees, despite their own suspicions against Kurds. Does that sound like an act carried out by an axis of evil?

In truth, there is no good or bad government. All governments, it seems, work for the sole benefit of their own nation. If it helps their own cause, they will help others- not in the spirit of true altruism, but because their own nation, and their own personal reputation will benefit from it. This goes for the Iranian, as well as for the US government. Why did we create a no fly-over zone in Kurdistan? Certainly not because we cared for the welfare of the Kurds. See how we back Turkey in their own campaign against their own population of Kurds? Well, I exaggerate: some governments are better than others. The current Talabani/Barzani administration is thousands of times better than Saddam's insanely murderous regime, or Kim Jong-Il's totalitarian one. But all governments have skeletons in their closet, and therefore have no right to point fingers at another and call it an “axis of evil” when, in truth, their own acts of evil are just more neatly swept under the rug. Saddam deserved his death sentence, but I question the right of the executioner who mandated that the deed be carried out. How much more innocent is the executioner than the executed? Really it is a case of the guilty executing the guiltier. Who really had the right to carry out the execution? I don't know, perhaps the Kurds themselves. 

I was thinking about the death penalty later this evening, while eating (home-made!) fried rice and watching an episode of The Wire and getting pissed off at a foul-mouthed prisoner. Horrible statements were issuing from his mouth and I was yelling “pound him, die, die you idiot!” at the tv because he was making me so angry. I used to think I was totally against the death penalty. But in truth, if I were the one who was wronged, I would wish death on the wrongdoer with all my heart, with every fiber of my being. But then again, if I were asked to do it myself, I don't think I would be able to carry it out. To think it, to wish it is one thing; to actually physically do it is a whole 'nother ballpark. I read in a book once that the only just death sentence is the one in which the victim himself carries out the execution. I kind of understand that now.