a history of war

30 years ago they decided to go to war.

I can’t say we didn’t have it coming. There is only so far you can push someone before they strike back. We stole their land, we shot their children, and little by little they learned to hate us. But they didn’t strike back. Perhaps they were too afraid. Perhaps they didn’t think they stood a chance. Our weapons were better, we could kill them from afar, or at least that was true in theory. Sometimes they survived. Sometimes they fled to lick their wounds. It must have stung to back down. What instincts compel someone to live out their life in fear and slavery rather than strike back?

I can’t say I know. I never had to make that choice.

I guess it is the same reason we all suffer the indignities of life. Why we look the other way when someone is bullied. Why we accept the fact that our boss is paid ten times what we are, and yet doesn’t do that much more work. We all accept the injustices of the world, one barb at a time. Most of the time we don’t even realize it. Most of the time we don’t even think to question how things are.

Maybe that is true for them as well. Maybe they never questioned the status quo. Maybe they thought that the never ending cycle of violence and abuse was as much a part of nature as wildfires and droughts. Something you could avoid, but never fight. Anybody might rail against the universe, but in the end few of us have the option of doing more than accepting the way things are. Grieving for what was lost. Mourning the dead. How did it feel to stand there and look at the bones of someone that was your mother? Your grandmother? Your cousin? How did it feel to reach out and actually touch death? To have a physical reminder that they were gone forever, taken by malicious fates?

There were so many bones.

Too many bones.

And then, thirty years ago, we tried to put an end to it. We tried to make peace. We forbade the trading. We didn’t exactly forbid slavery, but we figured that if we banned what made it lucrative, things might work out in the end. Humanity’s better nature might have time to assert itself. A lot of people weren’t convinced that what was happening was wrong. They agreed to stop the killings, but what about the ones on our side? The ones that worked for us? Surely it was not all chains and shows of force that kept them in servitude? There was love. A partnership of sorts, one-sided as it might be. Even if they had to give up their old lives, even if they had lost the freedom to walk away, they still loved their owners.

Their masters.

Their handlers.

The acts of sudden revenge and violence against the system were flukes. Accidents. Instincts gone wrong. Maladjusted individuals. Some countries thought different and tried to ban the practice altogether, but most did not. It was not slavery. It had always been this way. For thousands of thousands of years. How could it be wrong then?

With time, everything becomes justified.

Our parents might be wrong, but our grandparents are right, and in the end tradition puts its heavy hand on all our shoulders. The hand of duty. The hand that tells you this is how it has always been. This is how it always will be. An individual might flinch from that burden, but a society perseveres.

So we banned the worst and allowed the rest.

Maybe that’s when we went wrong. When we tried to make things right. Because eventually, the fear of the guns faded. They came to realize that meeting one of us didn’t have to result in death. They could strike back. Finally. And they remembered. They live as long as we do, and they have the scars to prove it. Scars from dead mothers and matriarchs. Cousins. Uncles. Infested wounds. That fear in your stomach when you hear sounds that should not be there. When you feel eyes upon you. When you smell the enemy. When you meet them face to face.

The enemy.

Us.

Over the years they learned. Over the years they grew smart. It was no longer just angry loners with nothing to loose that struck back. It was not just hormones. They began to get organized. Whole clans would work together to raid villages and fields. They knew there would be no guns, and eventually the fear of fireworks faded too. And with the raids came a sense of power. That this was something that they could do. They could take back their land. They could steal what had been stolen from them. The attacks grew bolder, communicated over vast distances in a language we could neither hear nor understand. Decoy raids were mounted to draw off defenders, while the rest of the clan snuck past and ate their fill.

They learned to plan.

And then they learned to kill.

Perhaps the step was not a huge one.

They would come in small groups. Always the young males, the ones with the most anger. The ones with nothing to loose and everything to prove. It is almost impossible to imagine that they can move that quietly. That disciplined. They would travel in the dead of night. When clouds covered the moon. They would find the houses and reach in there. Yank people out. They could hear them. See them. Smell them. They would tear down the fragile walls and crush what they could find. And then, as the alarm was roused, as the screams came, then they would retreat.

Into the darkness.

Into the night.

More blood added to scales that will never be balanced.

And an elephant never forgets.