by Graeme Cann
They found Damon’s body the next morning propped against a stately old tree and they carried him back to the village square where they mourned his death.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE MOTHER WHO HEALS
When the days of mourning the death of Damon were over, Mishka met with the Elders of Loloma. These men and women warmly embraced her as their new Mother-Father and having heard the words spoken by the Great One of the Forest, they were anxious to hear her plans for the future.
Today, however, she was keen only to lay before them the same information that she had earlier given Damon. She spoke of the abuse that she had become aware of and of her understanding that much of it was perpetrated by men who themselves were wounded men.
“However,” she said firmly, “being wounded by another person in our past does not excuse violent behaviour. Every man who abuses a woman or a child knows it is immoral, and that ever since we arrived in Loloma such behaviour has been regarded as a crime. There are many, many women and children who need our help. Some of them are too afraid to speak up. Many of them will never leave their homes even if their life is in danger because they have nowhere to go. Together we need wisdom and courage to deal with this dark cloud that hangs over us.”
No one spoke at first, then Marlo, one of the older Elders, addressed the group. “For me as a male and Elder of this community, I need to say that I have always believed that the physical discipline of a wife or a child should not be regarded as a crime, and I will oppose any attempt by you, Mishka, or this Eldership, to mount any sort of attack on the men of Loloma. How a man treats his own wife and children is his own private business. He is not, and should not be, answerable to us. Women and children in Loloma are well provided for. Many of them are in the workforce, five members of our Elders council are women. Our Mother-Father is a woman. Our girls get the same educational opportunities as the boys. Why, my own wife was a refugee from the mountains and she has never been as well off as she is now.
“Many of the women in Loloma, including my wife, understand that husbands are the leaders in the family, and as leaders one of our responsibilities is to discipline and sometimes punish our wives and our children for misdemeanours. We have been elected as Elders to attend to many community matters, but not to become involved in the private lives of our citizens.”
Mishka was not taken by surprise by Marlo’s impassioned speech. She had heard his opinions on the matter of violence against women the day after his wife had visited her to complain of the way he treated her. He had stormed into her house and accused her of encouraging his wife to be lazy and disobedient. “It is attitudes like yours,” he had shouted, “that encourage this silly talk of equality among men and women. Such talk will cause trouble in Loloma, just you wait and see. And another thing: what happens in my house is none of your business.” With that he was gone as quickly as he had come. Now that she was the Mother-Father of Loloma, she knew that she had at least one hostile Elder on the Council to deal with.
The remaining male Elders on the other hand responded with shock and outrage. Taupa, one of the younger Elders, leapt to his feet and stood toe to toe with Marlo. Dots of perspiration stood out on his ebony-coloured brow, his voice moderate but his tone firm and uncompromising. “Marlo, you and I have disagreed on matters before simply because we have had different opinions about some things. But there is no room in a loving and peaceful society for two opinions on whether violence against women is right or wrong. It is clearly wrong. It can never be justified or rationalised. It is a violation of the truth that men and women have been created equal. If the situation in Loloma is as Mishka has explained to us, then it is to our everlasting shame. Violence against women and children must be stamped out and we as the Council must give the lead and set the example. There is no room for dissension on this matter. Either you stand with Mishka and the Council on whatever we decide to do, or you leave.”
It was clear that the other Elders supported Taupa and for a tense moment Marlo regaled them with an angry glare. “That’s it, then. If I cannot oppose you within the Council, I will do it independent of the council.” With that he collected his papers and without making eye contact with anyone else in the room he left, slamming the door loudly as he went out. Taupa returned to his seat and for a very long time the Elders sat in troubled silence.
It was Savannah, a woman in her forties, who broke the silence. “More than one hundred and fifty years ago when Rubin ruled Sampa, our female ancestors had the courage to take a stand against male violence. For some of them it meant being banished forever from the valley and never seeing their children again. They did it, though, not just for themselves but also for us. They wanted us to know that for women to live safely in their own homes is not a privilege but a right, and when that right is compromised we must fight to get it back.”
Savannah took a deep breath and continued. “Until my husband died four years ago, I lived every day of my married life in fear. He believed that he had the right to control every aspect of my life, and that included criticising everything I ever did. The food I cooked was never good enough. The house was never clean enough. My clothes were never right. I was always too fat or too thin. I was a prisoner in my home. He did not allow me to go to the store or to the school or to the village square. I had no friends. When once in our ten years of marriage I secretly left the house, he found out and accused me of having an affair. Time and time again he punished me for my ‘failures’ by beating me. Once he broke my arm and several other times he broke some of my ribs. Nobody knew of my situation and from my point of view I believed that nobody cared.”
Savannah was weeping now, and she paused to compose herself. Mishka moved her chair closer and put her arm around Savannah’s shoulders. The men in the group stared at the floor and the other women wiped tears from their faces.
“Finally I could not bear it any longer. I loved my children but I had begun to think that if I was such a worthless and useless wife and mother, they would be better off without me. I planned to take my life, and the very day that I was going to do it I received the news that my husband had been killed in an accident at work. I have cried buckets of tears since that moment but not one of them were for him. I have wept bitter tears for the painful and wasted years of my life and regretful, guilty tears that my children had been forced to watch what their father did to me.
“I am sure that you are wondering why I stayed in that marriage. Well, there are a myriad reasons. But there were three main ones. First, there were the threats of what he would do to me and my children and my mother if I ever attempted to leave. Then there was guilt. My mother and my grandmother had not left their violent husbands, nor had they even complained. And then there was the fear. Where would I go? How would I survive? To most people this valley is an idyllic place to live but for me then, it was a horrific pain-filled prison.”
Mishka was holding Savannah in her arms now as the younger woman wept uncontrollably. The memories of Misha came back to her. She knew that she had taken up this battle because of the impression that her mentor’s story of her abuse made on her so long ago, and now she was more determined than ever to win the war against domestic violence in Loloma.
When Savannah was comforted, each of the Elders thanked her for her courage and honoured her for her willingness to share her story so openly with them, and then one by one they went to their homes. As they went Mishka silently prayed that each of them would be going to a loving and peaceful home, but she was troubled by the expressions of shame she had seen on the faces of some of the men as they had listened to Savannah’s story.
Over the following month Mishka and the elders worked on a strategy that would address all “behind the door crime” in the households of Loloma, particularly violence against women and children. Savannah was asked to find ways of encouraging women to corporately take a stand against violence even though it was recognised that for some individual women that might increase the danger they were in. Taupa and his wife Mi
nta were responsible for training and developing pastoral teams who would systematically visit all the homes in Loloma. Mishka herself and the chief of Elders, Marcus, gave themselves unstintingly to the task of conducting information and awareness nights in the three hamlets of Loloma.
Following each weekly gathering, people would be given the opportunity to ask for a pastoral worker to visit their home. Within the first six weeks of the strategy more than two hundred women had come forward to declare that they were the victims of some kind of abuse. More than one hundred men had sought the help of the pastoral team because they acknowledged that they had been perpetrators. As a result of the training, the pastoral care team had increased to thirty couples, and twenty men had been trained to lead men’s behaviour courses.
There was already a law in place in Loloma that was meant to protect women and children. This law stated clearly that anyone found guilty of perpetuating physical or verbal violence against women or children would be remanded in the Restoration Centre until they had completed a rehabilitation program, and during that time they would continue to financially support their family. Any return to the home would only occur under the supervision of an elder. The primary purpose of the law was to provide appropriate protection to women and children. For the past few decades, however, until recently under Damon’s Restorative Justice Scheme, this law had almost never been applied. From the commencement of Mishka’s campaign the court functioned five days a week, and the Restorative Centre was extended to accommodate an alarming increase in inmates.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ANGRY RESISTANCE
“As my sufferings mounted, I soon realised that there were two ways I could respond to my situation—either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.”
Martin Luther King Jnr.
“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background or his religion. People learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Nelson Mandela
There was, however, some strong resistance and opposition to what was happening. Some of the resistance came from those who believed that it was the responsibility of the community to keep marriages together no matter what the circumstances were. During the campaign, more than one hundred men had either voluntarily left their homes or had been forced to leave because the lives of their wives and children were in danger. This was totally unacceptable to this group of resisters, and they continually attempted to thwart the campaign. The most violent opposition, however, came from a group of people led by Marlo, the former Elder who had declared that he would fight the campaign from the very first day of Mishka’s term as Mother-Father.
Marlo and his group of protestors claimed that any law that removed a man from his home for doing what was essentially his right to do as leader of his own household was draconian and therefore a violation of his individual rights. Marlo’s anger was made more intense by his wife’s decision to become a pastoral carer, and during many of his public speeches opposing the campaign, he would openly criticise her for her lack of submission to him. Marlo succeeded in inflaming a small group of people who demonstrated their antisocial behaviour by engaging in aggressive protests, which often resulted in the wilful damage of public property.
One evening while Mishka was attending a meeting of the Elders, one of Marlo’s group—who was incensed by being charged with domestic violence and consequently removed from his home—decided to set fire to Mishka’s house. What he did not know as he ignited the fire against the back wall of the building was that Marlo’s wife, who had left Marlo because of his violence toward her, was at that moment asleep inside. By the time Mishka’s neighbours had become aware of the fire, the house was fully ablaze and their attempts to put it out were in vain. No one knew that a woman had perished in that fire that night until Mishka returned to find her house burnt to the ground. A searcher discovered the charred remains of Marlo’s wife and later that night Marlo was told of her death.
The next morning when the police went to the home of the man they believed was responsible for the fire, they found his body behind the hut where he had lived. He had been brutally beaten to death and an attempt had been made to burn his body. Now all interest turned to Marlo. A search was organised and later that afternoon his body was found at the edge of the forest. There was no indication of how he had died.
Before they took his body back to the village, Mishka asked for time alone at the place they had found him. She sat on the grass some metres from Marlo and quietly wept. She wept for Marlo’s wife and her senseless and needless death. She wept for the man that Marlo had murdered and she wept for Marlo. The intensity of the violence that had invaded her life in these three days overwhelmed her, and as she wept she struggled with her own part in what had occurred. She had begun this war against domestic violence and she had known that by doing so she had made many enemies. Their enmity against her had led to the death of an innocent woman whose children now mourned the loss of both a mother and a father. Other children grieved for the murdered man, and people in the valley felt violated and afraid.
“Do not be dismayed, Mishka; it is all about fear.” The voice she heard in her mind was the familiar and comforting voice of the white tigress. She lifted her head and through her tears she saw her standing only a few metres away.
“Thank you for coming,” Mishka whispered.
“I haven’t come,” continued the voice. “I have been here all the time. I was here when Marlo was about to enter the forest. I saw him turn for a last look at the valley. I heard him screaming at the Great Creator who, according to him, was responsible for the way he was, and responsible for his inability to control his anger, and to blame for his wife leaving him, and for you becoming his tormentor. The burning of the house was your fault, and the murder of the arsonist was the man’s own fault.
“Marlo, driven by his fear, accepted no responsibility for whoever he had become and how he had behaved, until he stopped screaming at the sky and turned to enter the forest. It was then that he saw me. He instantly fell to his knees and began to plead for his life. He was completely terrified. I told him that I was not going to kill him but that he was about to die. The same fear that had dominated his life would now lead to his death. As his heart began to fail because of his fear, he saw for the first time that he was who he was as a result of what he chose to believe or not to believe. He wondered if his wife and children would ever forgive him. He even wondered whether you would forgive him for opposing you so venomously. Then he died as he had lived, overcome by fear.”
For a long time Mishka did not respond as she pondered the last moments of Marlo’s life. There was a time when he had been her friend and had been delighted when she had become the Mother-Father. Now he was dead; his wife was dead; one of his followers was dead, and her house and all she had owned had been destroyed. “I understand,” she finally ventured, “that to grow up and live in a community where there is no fear and no danger completely changes the way we see our world and live our lives. But my question is, how does a community go back to living without fear when what we trusted for safety is believed by the few and no longer believed by the many? How do we love and respect each other when the significant people in our past did not love and respect us? How do we reject abuse and violence as an acceptable behaviour when we ourselves have been abused and violated? Is living in a community not driven by fear no longer a possibility? Is it just an impossible dream?”
CHAPTER NINE
MISHKA’S REVELATION
“Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another sentiment.”
Leo Tolstoy, Sebastopol in the Winter
“There is no fear in love; perfect love drives out all fear. So then, love has not been made perfect in anyone who is afraid, because fe
ar has to do with punishment.”
John the Apostle
The men of the village were returning to collect Marlo’s body and the tigress moved into the safety of the forest and seemed to invite Mishka to rise and follow her. She did and the tigress led her along a narrow path for about two hundred metres and stopped in the very clearing where Mishka had met her first. It was just as she remembered it. The gurgling sound of the little stream, the various melodies of the singing birds, and the rustling of the gentle breeze in the treetops.
‘I will answer your questions,” the tigress said, “not because I have such knowledge myself but because the Great Creator has sent me to speak with you and has given me the words that I am to say. But first I must speak to you as a tiger.”
“You see, as a tiger I survive primarily because of fear. From fear of hunger, I hunt and kill. Because of the dangers that surround my cubs I am constantly vigilant. Because of poachers I cannot take one step forward without being informed by fear that it may well be my last. Fear causes me to protect my territory even from other tigers. Six months ago a tiger that I did not know entered my territory. He was a danger to my cubs. I opposed him and a terrible fight ensued. He was larger and stronger than I but it seemed that I was electrified by fear and I fought like a demon. The result was that he was mortally injured and dragged himself away to die. I did not have feelings of guilt or relief, joy or sadness: just a sense of safety. “
“Safety, survival, and reproduction are my primary instincts. I do not have what you call beliefs and values. I am not capable of love or hate. None of my relationships come out of a need for what you call intimacy. I live alone for my own safety. I guard my territory for my survival and the survival of my cubs. I mate not because of a need for relationship, but only because of the need to reproduce.
“I speak to you of these things because I want you to know that as a tiger I do not understand people like you but I understand people like Marlo. When a man or woman chooses not to believe in anything greater than him or herself, when beliefs and values are replaced by instincts, and what really matters is safety, survival, and reproduction, they become less human and more like us. Please do not misunderstand me. They will continue to be different from us in that they are intelligent, problem-solving, creative creatures with capacities not possessed by us animals. But when they cease to believe in an origin and an originator, and when instinct and desire become more powerful than beliefs and values, then the capacity for moral choices and relationships gives way to the need for power and control.