Remember These Stories
The spirits are speaking to me. Across time. Through history.
Ignore the headlines. Go to the heart.
How many millions of humans have stood where you stand now?
Afraid. Overwhelmed. Despairing. Raging.
The globe spins with their haunting cries from Chile under Pinochet, Liberia under Taylor, Estonia under the Soviets, East Timor under Indonesia, Denmark under the Nazis, India under the British. On and on and on the list goes. Humanity has suffered under many cruel regimes, brutal dictators, violent occupations, war—my heart wrings like a tear-damp washrag, remembering it all.
Remember the end of those stories, the spirits say.
Pinochet ousted.
Taylor gone.
Estonia independent.
East Timor free.
Denmark at peace.
India liberated.
Mohandas K. Gandhi echoes through the whispered recounting of the past.
“When I despair,” Gandhi said, “I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always.”
So, the spirits come to me in a gentle haunting.
Remember me as you are now, they say.
Remember how it was before we won.
Remember how afraid we were.
Remember how bleak it looked.
How invincible our oppressors seemed.
Back then, everyone hissed at us:
it cannot be done
and you’ll only
get yourself
killed
trying.
Remember.
And so I do. I wander off the beaten path of facts and dates, into the corners of the crowds that line the black and white, or grainy-colored photographs. I rewind the clock to before the dictators fled, regimes fell, and the people flooded the streets. Back before success hung from a nail hook in the glowing frame of history.
I think about the people swept up in times of disaster, times of change. The ones whose names we’ll never know, whose stories never make it into the thirty-second commemorative spotlight, whose lives can’t be compressed down to a pithy quote for social media.
They murmur to me across time . . .
When Pinochet came to power, a Chilean mother says, we could not imagine that our grief would bring him down. As our children disappeared, shoved out of planes into the ocean, we tasted hate. Fear singed our tongues silent. We were as broken as Victor Jara’s fingers, music and hope crushed in the stadium they rounded up the leftists in. No one knew how it would end. Not then. That our mothers’ love would overcome our terror. That our grief would break the silence. That the country would rise to follow those whose hearts were breaking.
When the Nazis invaded, a Danish shipyard worker recollects, grim and jaw-clenched, they took control of everything—the government, industry, radio—everything except the people, that is. They wanted the half-built war ships in our shipyards. But we didn’t let them have them. Not a single one. We turned the bolts in slowly, slowly. Then, as soon as the Nazis looked away, we yanked them out, swiftly, swiftly. I winked at my best friend behind their backs. Damned if we’d let the Nazis have what they desired!
When the second civil war broke out, a Liberian woman tells me, we were plunged into a nightmare. Again. The scars of the first civil war still bled, only the newborns had no memory of the horror that repeated itself. We were terrified; hundreds of thousands were dying, soldiers raped us—it didn’t matter which side they were on, the dictator or the rebels—whoever won, we had already lost. Until one woman had a dream. I was in mosque when she and another woman I knew came to ask us to pray with the Christians for peace. It was mad. Hopeless. But faith is like that. Al-Khidr says jump into the river. Perhaps someone will save you. You jump. Perhaps God saves you. I jumped into the river with the other women. We protested. We prayed. We sat down in front of the doors of the peace negotiations and refused to let the men leave until they made peace. Our actions were the answers to our prayers.
If you listen, the spirits of all who rose up against tyrants and dictators come tiptoeing across the centuries. They will sit down at your side, share a cup of unseen tea, and tell you what it was really like in those days that seem, suddenly, so much like ours.
An Estonian will recall the moment the motorcyclist unfurled and lifted the banned national flag—blue, black, white—at a song festival. It was then I knew that freedom from the Soviets would be ours one day. Because, in our hearts, we were already free.
A Pashtun man will remember the shape of the stones in the wall of his village school in the Northwest Province of what was then India. He will feel the shape of Pashtun on his tongue, on the page as he learned to write. When Badshah Khan called for men to join his ‘nonviolent army’, I was there long before the other 80,000 volunteers. He had built the school with his bare hands. I would build our independence with my bare hands.
An East Timorese woman will tell you of the turning point, the moment she realized the genocide had ended, when she looked around at the ghosts of her beloveds and vowed to live. To live! Each breath was a victory in the wreckage. Each day was a triumph over what we had survived. We were still here . . . and we would keep going. Always.
History will speak of the rise of tyrants, their violence, wars, extermination campaigns, round-ups and imprisonments, disappearances, repressive laws. It may mention the people who rose up in their millions to overthrow their dictators. But it will not tell you these stories.
The ones we’re longing to hear.
The mothers who broke through fear.
The workers who refused to work for hate.
The women of faith who prayed out loud.
The singers who gathered for change.
The students who built freedom.
The people who kept going.
These are the stories we need to remember. And live.
So the future will remember us.
Pass them on.
This piece was written in response to a prompt in the Writing Nonviolence Affinity Group. This small circle of writers meets monthly to explore nonviolence themes in op-eds, articles, poetry, and more. If you would like to join us, let us know here.