Victims of Dignity

There’s a small park that’s been turned into an improvised cemetery during the war in the 1990s in a street not very far away from my neighborhood. It’s across the local psychiatric hospital from which you can frequently hear patients screaming and shouting on a daily basis. I used to react and feel sorry for them but now I’m no longer sure which one of us got the shorter end of the stick. However there’s something there I usually find very hard to ignore: the cemetery. Originally, it was named after the WW2 guerilla fighters that were captured and hanged by Italian Fascists close by. In an ironic twist of fate, maybe this was a question of time anyway. Places of public executions are difficult to invigorate with new vivacity due to that historical residue of cruelty that proves knowledge is simultaneously a source of power and sorrow. Sometimes little miracles infuse it with a breath of love: my parents supposedly met here. This is why memory matters, knowing history doesn’t start or stop with us. It’s like a train on a long journey without a timetable, and we’re merely passengers. If we’re lucky, we get a window seat.

Sometimes that’s not necessarily an advantage: the windows of the hospital must have had witnessed all those war atrocities and burials before they were replaced recently. The windows may be new but the tombstones are still there, tall and white, each one with the same year of death. A brotherhood of indignity. This is where they came together, bodies in hastily dug out holes in the ground as if they were jewels that needed hiding before they could be retrieved after everything ended in 1995 with the Dayton peace accords, pulling the break on a bloodbath that had already claimed more than 100,000 people all over the country. But no need for grave robbers here: we’re not in Egypt, few of them had much more than skin on their backs. There are wooden Christian crucifixes scattered between the Muslim tombstones. Nameplates have long since disappeared and the wood is peeling off, but there are candles lit, little lights flickering in the dark like fireflies. A shining Diwali of souls that lost even their names. For only what has a name endures, preserved in someone else’s thoughts. And it’s a silent relief to see it. Someone knows. Someone remembers. All is not lost, even if it’s hard to tell derelict graves from the lawn scattered with pungent flowerbeds that come up in springtime, as if they wanted to defeat the fact they’re condemned to flourish in a place that’s meant for death and decay. It shouldn’t be there in the first place: other improvised places of burial have long since been reclaimed and the deceased re-buried in a more appropriate, dignified place. For there’s all sorts of things here. But no dignity. There are dumpsters and parking bordering on it, occasionally even wheel tracks inside. And all of it because it’s supposed to somehow visibly keep bloodstains on the hands of their butchers. However, the blood dried up a long time ago. It’s only the grass in the park that’s drained by invisible blood, fragrant with lack of remorse. You can almost smell it. But we refuse to wipe it, clean the slate. And every time a new car passes by or a piece of trash accidentally spills over from the dumpsters into the grass, they die all over again. It never ends. They can’t rest in peace for there is none to be found here. An inconvenient warning in the face of attempted, unburdened normality that can only be achieved through unhinged ignorance. Abandoned lifeboats floating on the hope that maybe next time we’ll know better. It’s always on All Saints Day that they remind us that candles and flowers aren’t enough. For they deserve the respect they were denied in their last breath.

The war cemetery is an example of how much still needs to be done. We have been living in a place that’s like a giant open wound for so long we no longer need painkillers. For none are more effective than silent complacency without a breaking point. We reconciled with it and hardly even feel sore until something happens that scratches the scathed tissue once again. Maybe we’ve gone numb? Ignorance fosters immunity to pain. It kills the ability of empathy, which is one of the most precious gifts of all. Something that requires time and strength, and a single moment’s weakness to lose it. It’s all there in front of us: the living and the living dead, between the trees, tombstones and trashbags. There must be a way out. Is anyone looking for it? A mind overcluttered with excuses for silence is inadequate to understand its own contribution to the price we’re all paying for inability to deal with our mistakes. Because it’s precisely what this blood-stained patch of greenery stands for: mistakes. They refuse to stay out of sight, yet we refuse to let them into our mind, apart from that one day in November each year, when it once again dawns on us that time doesn’t heal old wounds. That’s our responsibility. Forgive and forget doesn’t work: it’s mutually exclusive and morally inacceptable. But it’s a journey filled with obstacles that take skill to overcome. The memory we owe them isn’t a task for the lazy, faint-hearted or cynics. And it’s not about regret or pity. That’s of no use to those it’s meant for. Pull your sleeves up, open your hearts and stop pretending it’s none of your business. The difference between unmarked and unremarkable is that the latter applies to the living, and the former to those deemed disposable. It’s the audacity of this very idea that’s so appaling. Until it’s condemned and dismissed, the first step on that journey ahead won’t be within our reach. A little candle underneath a rotting, unmarked crucifix might be something in the right direction. Because living memory is the only way to overcome one’s own mortality.