The world is surrounded by a sea of ghastly flames. Yowls of cruelty are met with defiant shrieks. The sky darkens to crimson mottled hues. The acrid tang of charred flesh hangs in the air, sticky and putrid. In the midst of the ash and gore, I stand in awestruck horror alongside my friend Sanketh, witnessing the city collapse under the great weight of rebellion, pandemonium urging the calloused clutches of anarchy to swoop in and join the feast. Between the sounds of shattering glass and bullets, he finally speaks:
—He shouldn't have died— His eyes glance over, but I remain transfixed.
The mural, tacitly watching society crumble, a totem of injustice that spurned a revolutionary movement. Cold, unfeeling eyes once tinted with vibrant life watch the devastation mirthlessly.
"I know. But don't you think this is too much?" I whisper back, quivering as terror-laced shock arcs through me.
The flames flicker, shrouding everything in a cathartic glow. Buildings collapse into plumes of ash, spuming obsidian coughs into the darkened sky. Children and police sirens fight, competing to carry their wails into the dead of night.
—We have tried peaceful protest. Where did that get us?— he implores powerfully, eyebrows drawn to a tense knit.
Smiling faces surround: fathers, children, sisters. Their memories scatter along with the dust, leaving families behind to mourn and grieve. Begging, pleading, crying. But there is no mercy.
"Violence shouldn't be the answer. How can anyone say this is just?"
Men scramble one over another like piling ants, creeping into stores and emerging with the thick burden of larceny. The stars are blackened with the death of the city. Blue and red lights flash. Fire everywhere.
—You cannot be just to those who oppress. Haven't you seen those animals suffocate him? This...this is the heat of our anger. The peace that follows will justify— His face is flushed, imbued with the holy fire of sacrosanct ideals.
The dying breaths of the fallen fuel the passions of the living; revolutionaries around the world rise to his call, resounding in a defiant shout: No justice, No peace.
"My heart reaches for you."
The pictures follow me wherever I go: mothers cradling their fallen sons, hopeful children crushed by oppressive institutions, men strangled in the thick hands of security officers.
"But my mind cannot."
I stand in front of my favorite restaurant as it smothers to cinders, the owners sobbing in the periphery. I see innocent bystanders thrown into the chaos, threatened for actions they did not commit. I see my classmates hurling Molotov cocktails that burst into ribbons of heat. I see fearful shop owners pasting 'Black-Owned' posters on their windows before kneeling to pray. I see kind police officers mislabeled, threatened, their children beaten with clubs.
—There's no right answer. If there was, we wouldn't be here. Violence is wrong, but allowing for injustice is too. It's impossible to sit idly by, but it's harder to ruin an innocent person's life. Why is it that people only care for violence, for carnage?—
Ribs jutting out bone like trapped cages bursting upon release, shrieks as the National Guard shoots upon the crowd, tears of resentment against an immovable opposition.
"I wish I had an answer."
That night, as we turned back to leave, everything I thought I knew was swept into anarchy. Throughout my conversation with Sanketh, a BLM rally organizer, I was powerless to choose either side. Standing in front of Floyd's memorial, threatened by the ensuing licks of flame, I was torn. Was the revolt overbearing, or was it necessary to rectify the souls of the fallen?
That day, I learned that not all questions have right or wrong answers. My inquiries into philosophy had made me optimistic; however, there is an insurmountable difference between knowledge (theory) and real life (praxis). When human lives are at stake and the line of morality blurs, there is no objective course of action to follow. The prideful conviction that ethical theories had bestowed upon me had vanished in the drenching weight of reality, where suddenly normative thought experiments turned wary and inconclusive. I had grown accustomed to hearing numbers on the news, to scanning past faces on social media. But every one of those faces, every number, was a human being. When I stood before the might, the fiery passion of the cultural movement, hearing the primitive chants of justice, I found out just how insufficient my mere understanding of numbers was.
This memory will forever be etched, no charred, into my memory as I was jolted into the limelight of our world, a ruthless mess of entangled human nature, where pain is not an emotion but rather a state of being, where lives can be diminished into flickering faces that scroll by our screens, where corrective actions may not be just and just actions may not be correct, where fists must speak in order for voices to be heard. And when strength succumbs to brutality and compromises bleed into greed, are there ever any victors? Can any ends really justify the means of forlorn souls? But can injustices be left alone to prosper?
Behind every movement, every action, one can only ever see the tip of an iceberg, submerged under suppressed and pent-up resentment. I've learned to find the underlying reasons for actions and deepen my understanding prior to making choices. Our world is blessed with wisdom, cursed with knowledge. Knowing how to act is not blindly following an ethical theory, but requires moral knowledge from every facet, a blend of history, culture, and intuition. As I look towards the future, I seek understanding with the full recognition that sometimes, there are no right answers. In life, there are no clear-cut lines. Whenever I use music as a bridge to connect to people, rally in support of environmentally sustainable policies, or cook for hospital patients, I seek a deeper understanding before making definitive decisions. In an interconnected world as personal as ours, numbers do not suffice. Humanity, then, lies within connections.
That day, without the breadth of knowledge necessary, I chose to leave, revisiting the scene once I had more clarity, walking away from a strange city I no longer recognized.
As we turned our backs, I tried to brush away the visions I had seen. But I already knew:
I would never look at anything in the same way again.
Looters scourging in maniacal glee, thieving under the cover of social justice. The hiss of tear gas scattering the howling crowds. The constant roar of gunshots, coming to and from, intermingling into the percussive tune of chaos, bleeding into darkness. And the hellish fire, charring for days on end, enveloping all in its welcoming embrace.
The fire of the oppressed, the fire of the fallen, the fire of the innocent.
Author's Note:
Thank you for reading this far! This piece was very personal to me. I'm accustomed to writing fiction, so the idea that inspiration for a realistic horror was drawn from memory is something I'm still adjusting to. I hope you enjoyed the interplay between dialogue and scenery; it was a heavy but inspiring work to get through! To keep confidentiality, I replaced my friend's name with 'Sanketh' as he requested.
Let me know your thoughts on the events that happened! Whether you agree strongly with either side or are indecisive like me, I'd leave to hear your comments. Living through history sure is a pain, but we never got a choice, now did we?
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I Walk Away
No FicciónThe peace that follows will justify our actions now. That is what they told me. I wish I could believe them. Standing in front of the billowing pyres and watching my city burn into a hellish nightmare, I became transfixed in shock. What is right? Wh...
