John Donne, Meditation #XVII, 1623
(No man is an island, complete by its own; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the mainland. If a rock was covered by the sea, Europe would be lessened, as well as if a hill was covered, as well as if your friend’s or your own house were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am part of mankind. So, never ask for who the bell tolls; it tolls for you.)
No matter what words I use, no matter in what language I write or scream them, or how many of them I use, there is no way they can portray the intense sadness I feel inside. It has been more than a week since the Wenchuan earthquake, and, apart from miracles, there is little else that can be done to save those still among the ruins. The score, as of May 21st, 9:12 PM, China Standard Time, is 41354 dead, 32666 missing, and 274683 injured, for a grand total of 348703 people physically affected by the earthquake according to news.sina.com.cn. All things considered, due to the time already passed, that total is going to stay kind of stable, with the number of missing people is starting to go down, some of them adding to the number of injured, most of them adding to the number of dead. No, actually, I hope that that total remains stable, because if something adds to it it’s going to be the number of dead and missing.
Now, sit down and think a little bit about that number. 41354. That’s a 4 with four 0s behind. Statistically speaking, it is not that much, it is about the capacity of the San Francisco AT&T Park. Statistically speaking, looking at it in terms of volume, it is not such a big deal, all the dead could fit into the seats of that baseball stadium.
We use statistics to be able to talk about these things without breaking down and crying, you know?
Imagine the best four friends you’ve ever had. Remember all the good times you had together, all the dreams and aspirations they had for their lives, the little messages you sent each other, the times they stood up for you and cheered you up when you were down, the times they felt so proud of you and glad of being your friends when you did something awesome, or just the beautiful smile they had, beautiful enough to cheer your day.
Now, imagine that they die.
Imagine that like your group of four so damn good friends, there are 10000 (just to simplify calculations) of those groups, all of them such good friends to someone, and they die.
More than 40000 human beings, mothers and fathers of somebody, daughters and sons of somebody, sisters and brothers of somebody, friends of somebody, all of them with dreams and aspirations, caring for the people they cared about, not different at all from you or me or our best friends are suddenly... gone. I didn’t know them, not one of them - but all the same they were my friends and peers and hopes, simply because they were humans, and all of them had the chance to do something amazing with their lives. Even if some of them were crooks that had never done something good, I can imagine and hope that in those last instants they did something incredible, fighting to their last breath to save a life, even if it was only their own.
That’s my sadness, the things that statistics don’t say but can’t hide.
Never ask for whom the bell tolls.
And that’s only the dead. The living, they are the ones going through the biggest hardships. Not only the injured. Every single person on this planet who feels has lost someone or something he cared about, a friend, a home, is going to have to live with it, rebuild upon what has been lost. Carry on. It is on the hands of the living to repair and heal, put a hand themselves, even if they are hurt, to make things right again.
Thankfully, people are capable of kindness beyond angels. And it is in these kind of moments when they truly shine. Taxi drivers, out of their own initiative, forfeiting their worktools and personal gains, driving injured and ill people from one city to another when they found out that there weren’t enough ambulances for everybody. Volunteers and doctors and soldiers, getting inside falling buildings, risking death and injury themselves, knowing that if another aftershock hit, the whole damn thing could fall upon them, but still giving their best to save another life. Even if it is just one more. People who have lost everything, giving pieces of bread to hungry children when they don’t have enough food for themselves. Fathers and mothers and husbands and wives and siblings who lost their families and friends, the loves of their lives, jumping bravely back into the fallen buildings where their loved ones died and lay to lend a helping hand in whatever they can. People who don’t even have a piece of bread to give or a cloth to cover themselves with, standing in line to donate blood.
Even the Premier Wen Jibao, getting his hands dirty right in the middle of the mayhem mere hours after it began, stripping himself of his position and becoming just another man, moving dirt and debris with his own hands to help. As they say, a server of the people.
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
Abraham Lincoln
When it comes down to it, we are all the same. We all share the same blood. The same suffering. No one is stranger to pain, and that’s why everybody who can help will help, no questions asked.
That brings me to the last group of people affected. Those who weren’t there. Those who are an ocean away, half of the world away. The worst pain of all, the frustration of being unable to do anything, because you’re just not there. They probably have the worst burden to carry, having to sit and wait. Until someone calls and says that everything is fine. That’s a relief, but a small, temporary one. Because later you start seeing the pictures in the internet, the videos on TV. You hear your friends who did lose people there. You see, with all the comfort and commodities of being somewhere else, as your land bleeds. And you want to go, be there, fucking do something.
But you can’t. Because you are not there.
That is a pain I know intimately. Almost a year ago, two weeks after I moved to the states, my own country suffered its worst earthquake in six years, a 8.0. Unlike the one in 2001, this one did some real damage, destroying the city of Pisco and the province of Ica. We got fucking lucky - for all the devastation, and although ten thousand people lost everything, only a little more than 500 died. And I say fucking lucky because only 150 kilometres away from the epicentre laid Lima, the capital, with 10 million people. Had the earthquake been just a couple of kilometres to the north, the shockwaves would have hit Lima instead of Pisco, and, thanks to the low quality urban and housing conditions most of the people live in there, we wouldn’t have counted our bodies by the hundreds. We would have counted our dead by the millions.
We didn’t know that here. Since the reports talked nothing more than a huge long earthquake in Lima, we thought it had hit it full force. I thought it had hit it full force. And pretty much all the people I care about in Peru live in that city. People I love.
Until I contacted every single last one of them, those were the worst 12 hours of my life. Standing here, just waiting, knowing that people I love could be dying out there and there was nothing I could do about it but hope that they were alright, when, if only I had been there, I would have gone and dug and pulled and done my part. But I couldn’t.
And that is why I just can’t understand the little bastards that, sitting here, so comfortably away from all the mess, take their time off to badmouth the people who are actually helping back there in Sichuan. How, in the name of everything that’s sacred, can anyone do that? No matter the political position of the government in China, no matter the inadequacy of those soldiers who are doing the best they can under the circumstances, no matter anything, they are there and they are doing it. They are going through hardships and suffering themselves, knowing that their best effort might not be enough but still giving it all, crying for every single person that they couldn’t save, ignoring their own pain - because it is certain that some of them have lost people in the earthquake - and personal safety - because it is also certain that some of them will die during the rescue operations - for the sake of others. The strongest and wealthiest army in the world is useless if it doesn’t answer when its people need it, like the US Armed Forces didn't during Hurricane Katrina (and, of this I’m sure, every single men and women of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, would have gladly given their lives in New Orleans instead of Irak, but they were tied down by the big heads in the Pentagon). A hero is not the strongest nor the bravest. A hero is someone who does what has to be done when it has to be done, the best he can. That’s what makes every single person doing whatever they can out there in Sichuan, in Gansu and Shaanxi, Chongqing and Henan, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan and Yunnan, a hero, regardless of what they are or what organization they belong to.
They are doing what I would be doing if I could be there. What I would have done had I been in Peru last year. Since I can’t, I’ll do the next best thing. Arthur, you’re gonna have to forgive me for this, but we’re gonna have to postpone our trip to New York to August at least. Our brothers, for we are all human, and thank you both, Arthur and City, for reminding me of that, need the money more than I do. No gesture, action, because the bell tolls for us all.
