Memory

We forget quickly, but events in this world have been speeding by at dizzying speed since the new millennium dawned. I remember strange things, horrible things, that are no longer mentioned in the public square. My surety these days is that none of what we’re seeing now is new. The hatred and intolerance, the greed and immorality, the ambition of rogues is as old as recorded history, but now we see it in technicolor and real time. Lucky us.

Over the past few years, I remember Margaret Hassan, a humanitarian worker who was kidnapped and murdered by ISIS militants in Iraq in 2004. Like other victims perpetrated by militants, she was held for a lengthy interval, during which time she appeared in videos made by her captors that showed her begging for her life and explaining she would be killed if money and military concessions were not made. Reports surfaced months after her ordeal began claiming that she had been executed while imprisoned. One such report told of a blindfolded woman in a prison jumpsuit shot in the head in the prison camp. Although her husband, himself an Iraqi, begged for release of her body, his pleas went unanswered.

Margaret Hassan had been working in humanitarian aid in Iraq for years. She wss known and well respected. The ambush kidnapping occurred on her way to work on an ordinary day, at least a day as ordinary as it could be in a war-torn country with religious extremists undertaking a grisly revolution. She chose to be in Iraq, making the intentional choice to live amongst those she wanted to help. Her life came to a brutal and undeserved end at the hands of those same people.

Again, this is really nothing new. Cruelty has been documented since the first appearance of humans on this planet, as has greed and misguided quests for absolute power. Power is a drug, and a currency, and we are addicted to the pursuit of both. It’s hard-wired in our DNA now, and to some extent, it is who we are as humans. We cannot escape it, but fortunately, it is not expressed as strongly in some as in others. We are, after all, merely animals who are instinctively bound to our need for the social hierarchy of dominance. How we are dressed is irrelevant.

I don’t know why Margaret Hassan’s story has stayed with me since she was killed in 2004. Perhaps it is because I cannot forget her tear-streaked face in one of the hostage videos as she begged for her life. She looked haggard and desperate, and she knew this was not going to end well for her. She was an ordinary woman doing work to helpl others in the middle of a revolutionary war in a country that was not even hers. She was just a white, European-born woman, doing exemplary work in the service of other people who found themselves suffering in the middle of a war, and she died for that.

Margaret Hassan has, perhaps, reminded me of my own mortality. Life can change for any of us in the blink of an eye on any given day for reasons we can’t understand. When there is such incredible cruelty involved, I am nearly paralyzed with fear and incomprehension. I wonder when she gave up hope that she might survive the circumstances in which she found herself I wonder if she was beaten and raped every day. I wonder if she prayed to a long-forgotten deity for mercy, or freedom. or both. I wonder if she thought of her husband or her co-workers or her childhood. I wonder if she hated her captors and what they had done. I wonder if she was afraid of death but prayed to die.

I will probably never forget Margaret Hassan, and I have no idea why. She was not the first nor the last of those kidnapped, imprisoned, and executed in the Iraqi war. Some who were taken were publicly beheaded, but when your life is taken from you it may not matter how it happens. When you are in such a position, I can only imagine that you comprehend the full extent of the concept of powerlessness. I can only imagine what you think during every agonizing second that could be your last.

For whatever reason Margaret Hassan has become permanently attached to my memories, I cannot forget her. I will remember always, and will tell her story when I can. It is a painful memory because there was no sense in her death. Murdering her did not change the outcome of the war, did not convince a single person that the Iraqi state was strong or superior to all others. Murdering her did not change the balance of power in the Middle East, and it did not afford the murderer with religiously prophesied reward. He was somehow captured and convicted of the crime, and now serves life in prison. He is no one’s hero.

Rest in peace, Margaret Hassan. You did a fine job until the end, and at least one person who witnessed your ordeal from afar will not forget you.