Part 3

Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security-Obsessed World
by Eve Ensler

(Page 3 of 3)

I changed continents. I changed clothes. I went from a tiny village on the Adriatic where I visited Croatian refugees to the hot dusty Asian landscape of Pakistan, where I was covered in purple Indian cotton, the traditional salwar kameez. I was there to visit a group of Bosnian refugees who were living in dreadful circumstances. This particular group of Muslim men and women had previously lived in a hostel in Croatia. There they had been offered the choice of being moved either to a dangerous and overcrowded Muslim refugee camp close to the Serbian border or to Pakistan, where, they were promised, they could begin a new life of "bungalows, swimming pools, and jobs."

So about five hundred of them had come to Rawal- pindi, Pakistan. The reality they found could hardly have been further from what had been promised. The temperature was 120 degrees Fahrenheit and higher during monsoon rainstorms. Initially they had to live thirteen people to a room. Malaria was rampant, as were diseases from the water and food.

The culture was radically different from their own. The majority of these Bosnians were Muslim, but they were more modern and Westernized than they were religious. Suddenly they were in a fundamentalist Islamic country.

Because their Pakistani hosts were offering them even more than they offered most of their own citizens, more than most countries had offered them anywhere in the world, the Bosnians felt guilty not feeling more grateful. They spent their days waiting - waiting for the weather to cool off, waiting to get out of Pakistan (those that were waiting for entry into America had been waiting the longest), waiting for news of their hometown, waiting for the nightmares to pass, waiting.

Each day I would sit with these refugees for many hours in a saunalike room; we would form a huge circle and the people would tell their stories. Everyone was sick in some way, everyone deeply traumatized from the horrific events they had suffered in the war. And yet, there was great humor, generosity, and community.

During my last days there, I became very ill with some kind of flu. The Bosnians overwhelmed me with kindness, offering me homemade remedies and soups. There was this particular little bottle of nose drops that had clearly passed through the entire community. When they offered it to me, I felt I was undergoing a rite of passage. Now I was infected with refugee illness, with a tiny bit of their suffering.

I had a fever and my nose was running. I felt all my defenses and protection had been washed away, and that didn't seem to matter anymore. I sat on a mattress in a 120-degree room while an older woman with shaking hands was telling her story.

"They came, a group of them, into our neighborhood. They took my first neighbor, my best friend, into the street. There were fifteen soldiers. There in front of her husband and children and neighbors they raped her one after the other until all fifteen had raped her. They did this in front of all of us. They did it to teach us a lesson.

"Please, tell people in America what happened here. We want them to know what happened here. We do not understand how they have abandoned us."

I asked her then, "Tell me, were they successful? Did the Serbs make the Muslims feel bad about being Muslim? Did they take their dignity and self-esteem?"

"No," she said. "No. Not. They raped many women. Twenty-two thousand women. They did not take our dignity though. They did not touch it. The women who were raped did not lose their dignity. What they lost was their minds."

I looked around and I realized a lot of us were crying, sweating, melting. In that moment I loved these Bosnians completely. I loved their stove-made bread and their meat-filled peppers that they cooked for us each day in the heat. I loved that they had survived and their hearts were intact and their kindness was so deeply present even now after everything. We got lost in each other's arms, we grieved their losses. We raged at the cruelty they had suffered. And in the center of this weeping, in the center of this sweating and running nose, I found an odd, perfect strength. It is the strength that comes from surrender, from dissolving.

I returned to the States on a plane that nearly crashed over the Atlantic. In midflight it simply dropped thousands of feet out of the sky. Passengers went flying, luggage was released from the overhead compartments, and objects were hurling through space. Parents were rocking their children. Many were praying and chanting, some were crying, others were perfectly still. The woman next to me took my hand and said she needed to tell someone goodbye. We were walking through our final moment. Then somehow the falling stopped, the plane got caught on some ledge of air.

Flight attendants had brain concussions. Passengers had spiritual experiences they felt compelled to share with strangers.

Eventually I came back to earth - well, the plane landed. In fact, something crucial inside me had changed. Sure footing was gone. I had seen how easily neighbors and supposed friends could turn against their friends and neighbors. I had seen how in a split second a comfortable life could become a nightmare. I had seen how quickly fascist thugs could rise to power by manipulating the people with tactics of racism and terror.

Suddenly nothing was secure. Nothing was dependable. Nothing was what it appeared to be. My life in the U.S. seemed bizarre and irrelevant for months afterward. Most of me remained in Croatia and Pakistan with those women. The memory of their stories and faces and beings made my falsely constructed and misdirected life impossible. I was completely disoriented, unwilling and unable to participate in business as usual. The deconstruction of the notion of security threw me into the center of sadness, rage, and a torrent of other emotions. Oddly though, I was not depressed. Lost, searching, emotional, but not depressed. It had been my denial itself, not the painful things I had been denying, that had been depressing and isolating me. It had been my clinging to what I instinctively knew were lies and illusions that had reduced and imprisoned me.

Copyright © 2006 by Eve Ensler.

About the Author

Eve Ensler is an internationally acclaimed playwright whose many works for the stage include Floating Rhonda and the Glue Man, Lemonade, Necessary Targets, and The Vagina Monologues, for which she received an Obie Award. Performances of The Vagina Monologues have raised $25 million to stop violence against abused women and girls around the world. She lives in New York City.