When the Tiger Roars

by Graeme Cann

  “I sat alone for a very long time. Over and over in my head I could hear the words, ‘the violence is your responsibility,’ ‘I love you,’ and ‘I forgive you.’ It didn’t make sense. How could you blame someone for their destructive behaviour and still love them? How could you bear so much pain and yet choose to forgive the perpetrator? How does a person become strong enough to say ‘I love you but I will never ever let you treat me like that again?’ To my surprise instead of feeling angry, I felt humbled. I thought of my wife with a sense of awe. I realised with shock that she was so much better and stronger than I had ever been. I was overwhelmed with a suffocating feeling of guilt, and for the first time that I could remember, I began to weep and then to sob loudly. I did not hear the Elder reenter the room, and was unaware of his presence until I felt his fatherly arm around my shoulders.

  “For the next two weeks, when the day’s work was done, I would sit alone in my room writing down my thoughts. I wrote about my childhood and relived those times when, from my bedroom, I would hear my father yelling at my mother, and I would hear her cries as he beat her. I realised as I wrote that I had rationalised it all in my childish mind. My mother must have done something awfully bad to make my father so angry. I remembered seeing her in the morning covered in bruises and swellings and thinking how weak and pathetic she looked.

  “I was full of admiration for a father who worked so hard, and at the end of a hard day’s work had to deal with a wife who did not do what she was told. As I wrote I was devastated. Why had I thought that this was all right? Why had I never come to the defence of my mother even when I was strong enough to do so? Why had I so easily embraced the belief that men had the right to punish women if they were displeased with how they performed or with what they said? Why had I married one of the loveliest girls in the valley and then treated her the same way as my brutal dad had treated my mother? How could I tell her in the morning that I loved her and then in the evening beat her? What kind of man had I become, and was it even remotely possible that I could change?

  “Two weeks after my wife had come to the Restoration Centre the first time, I sent a message to her asking if she would be willing to come again so that I could share with her where my two weeks of heart searching had taken me. She agreed, and a few days later I entered the room where I met the Elder each week and she was waiting for me. She was alone and I was struck again by the peace and calmness that seemed to emanate from her. It occurred to me that when we first met it was this peacefulness and quiet strength that had first attracted me to her, but in our marriage the same characteristics had somehow threatened and angered me, and my response had been to punish her for being what I was not.

  “As I took the chair opposite where she sat she smiled, but she did not speak. My heart was racing and my mind slowed to the extent that I felt like I was dragging each word I spoke down a long tunnel. I felt timid and completely inadequate in the presence of this remarkable woman, who had for so long suffered so much at my hands. ‘Tina,’ I heard myself saying, ‘I have not asked you to come so that I could justify my actions or further blame you for my behaviour. Nor have I come to you to say that I am sorry for all the hurt I have caused. Indeed I am beyond sorry, and simply saying the words at this time would be to trivialise what I have done to you and to simplify the road I must travel, before I could ever expect that you would even begin to entertain the thought of accepting an apology from me.’

  “I continued speaking but I was too ashamed to look her in the eyes as I did so. ‘I have asked you to come so that I could tell you that since your visit I have been discovering what sort of a man I really am. The man I wanted you to see when we first met, and the man I wanted others to see was an emotionally strong, confident, competent and competitive man. But just under the surface I was not that sort of person at all. I was a socially and emotionally incompetent coward, and I lived with the terrible fear that people would discover who I really was. I was and I still am just the teenage boy who stood by and watched my mother being beaten by my father. Did I realise what he was doing to her was wrong? I must have surely, but I did not come to her aid because it was easier to side with a powerful dad than with a “weak” mum. Please, Tina, do not misunderstand me. I am not blaming my behaviour on the fact that I had a brutal father. Rather, I am saying that by my inexcusable and cowardly choice to support him rather than to protect my mother, I was laying the foundation for attitudes that would one day lead to me treating you as he treated her.’

  “Tina did not take her eyes off me. When I occasionally looked at her face, her expression told me that she neither hated nor pitied me. If she had hated me I would have understood. If she had offered me pity I would have rejected it, although in the past I may have welcomed it.

  “During my teenage years and early adult years, in my relationship with other men, I continued to align myself with the perpetrators rather than with victims. I was guilty of violence against others, but never on my own. I was far too cowardly for that. I would always be part of a gang or a group, and our violence was always excused on the basis that the victim’s behaviour was infantile or annoying in some way. Our violence was always perpetrated in private and not in a public place, and the secrecy of that and the ability to deny our involvement when challenged was, in a strange sick sort of way, stimulating.

  “‘When I think about the abuse I inflicted on you, Tina, I know that it was not your weakness I was reacting to, for now I know that you are an extremely strong woman. No, it was my weakness, inflamed by a desire to control every perceived threat that came against my fragile sense of self. Your self-confidence and your ability to act as an independent and decisive person, instead of being the things I admired about you, spoke to me of my own inadequacy. Beating you in secret gave me an irrational sense of taking control of the person who by her own goodness condemned me.’

  “I knew that I had spoken long enough but did not know how to end this session. I sat in silence and then after a few moments, Tina simply said, ‘Thank you, Corma,’ and, rising from her chair, she left the room.

  “My search for insight continued during the weeks following my meeting with Tina, and like most introspection, it became very depressing. Our next meeting was initiated by her with the surprising request that it also be attended by my father. My father, however, was not as surprised, as his reasoning was that if she was intending to leave the marriage permanently, then Loloma tradition demanded that the father be informed at the same time as the husband. This fact added to my depression, for even though I had no right to ask her to trust me ever again, I knew deep within myself that I had fallen in love with her in a totally different way than before.

  “When the day came for our appointment, my father and I arrived at the small meeting room at the same time. It was awkward between us, because he was obviously embarrassed that I should have been an inmate in the Restoration Centre. In fact this was the only contact I had had with him for more than a year. As we waited we had little to say to each other, and my discomfort grew as the realisation dawned that I despised this old man as much as I despised myself. When Tina arrived she was accompanied by the Elder and someone else that I did not immediately recognise. Her companion was an old woman, walking with the aid of a stick. She was so bent over that I could not see her face, but as she sat in the chair opposite me and lifted her head, to my dismay I realised it was my mother. If my father was surprised to see her there he did not show it. Instead he nodded at the two women and greeted the Elder with a handshake. As for me I was completely thrown by these events and a deep sense of dread overwhelmed me.

  “The Elder spoke first, explaining that this meeting had been initiated by Tina, who had requested the right to speak without interruption from either of us. When she had completed what she had come to say, my mother would be given the opportunity to speak if she wished, and then Tina and she would leave. ‘I am thankful,’ Tina began, ‘that you, Corma, spoke to me as you did in our last session. I felt th
at for the first time in our marriage you had given me the freedom to embrace the woman I knew myself to be. The verbal and physical abuse that I have suffered at your hands for many years had almost completely robbed me of my self-belief and imprisoned me in a world of false guilt and misplaced self-condemnation. Your acceptance that the abuse spoke volumes about your character and nothing about mine is the key that unlocked the prison door and has allowed me to once again enjoy being the woman I really am.’

  “She paused and then turned to face my father. ‘I have brought Mother today, because I want you to understand that she is less than twenty years older than I am. She should be in her prime, enjoying good health and normal mobility. But she is an old crippled woman. Is it illness or disease that has made her this way? No, Father, it is decades of physical abuse that has broken her body, and as many decades of verbal abuse that has crushed her spirit. Mother is not an old lady; she is a middle-aged lady who has been reduced to a shadow of what she could be, by you. Furthermore, I was quickly being diminished in the same way, by the same abusive behaviour, by your son. I do not blame you for his behaviour anymore that you can blame your father for your behaviour. You both made choices and your wife and I have both paid the price for those choices. However, Father, I do hold you responsible for what has happened to this beautiful lady. You have punished her for being the person you are not. You have manipulated her, controlled her, devalued and diminished her. You always had the option of providing a safe place in which she could flourish as an individual, but you chose not to do that. Instead, you have callously and maliciously crushed her.’

  “Her eyes were blazing now, not so much with anger but with determination. ‘I have asked you both to come today because I want you to know that I have decided not to walk out of this marriage for now. What you, Corma, said last week has done two miraculous things for me. The first is that I can see a glimmer of hope that you will change, and while that hope is there I have decided to delay any decision in relation to getting a divorce. The second is that you have revived my belief in myself, and I now feel that for the first time I am in control of my life. If I ever again decide to please you, it will not be because I have an obligation to do so, but because I love you and myself.’

  “For a very short moment there was silence but it was suddenly broken by the sound of sobbing. It was not my broken mother who wept but my brutal father. No one moved to comfort him and for a few minutes it seemed that we were all stunned at the sight of this man in tears. The first to recover was my mother and when she spoke I was startled by the strength of her voice.

  “‘Husband, I hope those tears are not for you! I have seen your tears before. I have heard your promises that the beatings will never happen again. But those tears and promises were never for me. They were always about making you feel better. At least Corma is using his time here to learn what manner of man he is. Perhaps I should have reported you to the authorities long ago. Maybe it would have brought you to your senses. I have learned from Tina. I have decided you will never abuse me again. I will never live with you again until you admit what manner of man you are.’ With that she rose and without assistance from Tina she strode purposefully to the door. Tina smiled at me and, with the Elder beside her, followed my mother out of the room.

  “Gradually, Damon, I began to take responsibility for my feelings, attitudes, and behaviours, and through her visits, Tina and I did indeed fall in love again. Now I am home and I no longer feel threatened by my beautiful and talented wife, not because she has changed, but because I have changed.”

  The men in Corma’s group had sat spellbound as he spoke. Now they warmly commended him, shaking his hand and patting him on the back. Damon stopped them.

  “It is good,” he said “that Corma has come to his senses and saved his marriage, but today the one we should honour is Tina, and all the other courageous women who have refused to be crushed by violent men.”

  The success of the restoration program meant that the valley needed only one policeman and an assistant. The policeman had the responsibility to investigate crime and the authority to make arrests. He always appeared in court to present the charges and the evidence. The person charged with a crime could ask an Elder to represent him or her in court, and together they could call witnesses to support their defence. This would mean, of course, that that particular Elder would be excused from jury duties. All the Elders were trained in matters of Loloma law and justice, and also in the art of advocacy.

  There was of course minor offences for which a custodial sentence was not justified. Other penalties such as fines or community service could be employed at such times. One very important thing to understand about Loloma is that like ancient Sampa, it had few crimes that were punishable by the Council of Elders. Murder, robbery, fraud, violence, rape or sexual assault of women or children were normally punishable by incarceration. Other crimes such as offensive behaviour or drunkenness in a public place and cruelty to animals would attract a fine or community service.

  It is important to appreciate the impact that the restorative justice approach to crime had on the whole Loloma community, and that impact is best understood as a successful attempt to focus on the theme of compassion as the central core of all healing. When a community responds to victims of crime with compassion, it helps to restore their dignity and self-worth. When that response includes a generous compensation, it provides a practical expression of that compassion. When the perpetrator is the source of that compensation, it becomes both an act of social justice toward the victim and an imposition of personal responsibility on the perpetrator. This, in turn, is complemented by the gift of unlimited opportunity for the perpetrator to demonstrate compassion to those he or she has hurt, as well as discovering a new level of self-compassion.

  What Damon had discovered was that when the individuals who make up a community rediscover the capacity for both self-compassion and compassion for others, the ability of that community to address pain and conflict increases significantly.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MISHKA: MOTHER TO THE ABUSED

  “Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires our inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or by finding a quick cure for it.”

  Henri Nouwen

  As a teenager and already a teacher at the high school, Mishka had, as we have already seen, been mentored by Misha. In fact her first of many encounters with the Great One of the Forest had occurred during that very time.

  As she listened to Misha tell her story of abuse at the hands of her father, Mishka was at first outraged and then repulsed by his behaviour toward his daughter. Even at this early stage of her life Mishka was an activist, and one of her reactions to Misha’s story was to begin her own investigation of how many women were still experiencing abuse at the hands of fathers, brothers, husbands, and boyfriends.

  What she discovered was that during both Rubin’s and Kaluba’s rule in Sampa, which had covered a period of almost one hundred years, attitudes and beliefs that had led to the upholding of the values of honour, respect, and equality had been undermined. They had been replaced by a new set of values that centred around the man as the undisputed head of his wife, the rights of the husband to have more than one wife, and the requirement that women live in total subjection to their husbands. During the time of Rubin the women of Sampa, unhappy about the way they were being treated, had gone on strike, refusing to care for the home and cook the meals or to have sex with their husbands. This, however, was short-lived as Rubin, instead of agreeing to the women’s demands, rounded up the leaders of the protest movement and banished them from Sampa, forcing them to leave their children with their husbands. Men who were sympathetic to the cause of the women left Sampa voluntarily, joining their wives and taking their children
with them.

  To compensate for the shortage of women, Rubin had sanctioned raids on mountain villages with the primary purpose of bringing back young girls for the men to marry. Domestic violence became commonplace, women were removed from the workplace and forced to stay at home, others who had served as leaders in the community were replaced by men, and girls were no longer allowed to attend school.

  Mishka found that under Alofa’s leadership in the new settlement of Loloma, many things had changed. Women, including Misha and Kara, had served as Elders, those who wished to work outside the home returned to the workforce, and girls went back to school. Polygamy had been outlawed, as had the marrying of girls under sixteen years of age. Alofa, Misha, and Damon worked hard at helping both the men and women who had come from Sampa to deal with the emotional hurt they had suffered both as children and adults. Mishka, however, also found that rather than ceasing altogether, violence against women and children had gone underground. Women treated cruelly by their husbands refused to report the abuse because they were afraid of retribution from the husband’s family. Women who were bullied in the workplace remained silent for fear that they might lose their jobs. Children who were sexually abused were silenced by their own mothers purely out of fear. Mishka was overwhelmed by what she uncovered and although it was uncharacteristic of her, she plunged into a deep and dark depression.

  She took to her bed for days at a time, often not eating, and when she did sleep she was haunted by nightmares that centred around this mountain of unspoken abuse that was taking place in her valley. One day she determined that she did not want to live in such a dark and violent world any longer, and she left her home and entered the forest where she fully intended to take her own life. Weakened by days without food, she had only just entered the forest when she fainted.