Fatima’s Weeping for Her Children

I have started watching films based on the war motif. I kicked off the war series with Red Tails, a heroic portrait of the Tuskegee Airmen who flew in combat for the U.S. against the Nazis during WWII. Real characters of men came to life as well as the hurt of segregation and racism and the pain of losing men in war. But war is hell, and my second film showed a much more visual and guttural graphic of that saying.

In the Land of Blood and Honey was Angelina Jolie’s first directed film, but I know that it won’t be her last. As much as Jolie is embraced and embedded into American Hollywood, her underlying skin breathes for international conflicts, hoping to bring peace to them. In another life, I see her being a diplomat, an activist and a reporter. In this life, her efforts to meet with other distressed people in the developing world in international conflicts has made her all three.  

The Bosnian War was noted as “the worst war in European history since WWII.” How can that be? Well, a religious war, a genocide and ethnic car combined into one war left many dead, many to flee and many wounded. Rape was also a major tool of the war, which is not new to international conflicts, but it was used so overtly as a tool of humiliation and ethnic destruction that it could not be ignored. Just think: at least 50,000 women were raped during the conflict. In this conflict, Muslims were the victims. As Rachel cried for her children when the Jews were slaughtered (Jeremiah 31:15 ; Matthew 2:18, so did Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, for her children in Bosnia.

The film ebbed and flowed into scenes of love and war, side-by-side, which painted views that while many Bosnian men were being slaughtered by the Serbs and Croats, there were Serbian and Croatian families not too far geographically who were enjoying another meal, spending time with relatives and family, loving as they always had and living as they always had been living. The juxtaposition of Daniel and Ajla’s lives to the actual war painted a crippling perception of how could people continue to try to live under normalcy when so much wrong was happening to their brothers and sisters in the next district.

In my childhood, my teachers did not really teach much about the Bosnian war, but it was probably hard to teach young American children about white Muslims in a country who were being slaughtered for their religious and ethnic background. 1991 was the year of Desert Storm, where the world witnessed an unruly dictator, Saddam Hussein, who invaded another country, Kuwait, because of greed and historical belief that Kuwait should always be part of Iraq. In the same era, Disney films portrayed the Arab Muslims as backwards and violent people, eliminating any understanding of the vast and complex religious history that Arab Muslims and non-Arab Muslims shared with each other.

The haunting images from that film stuck with me till today. The Bosnian women in the internment camps held their wombs out of physical and mental pain, feeling defiled before God and their separated husbands because of the injustice of rape against them. Watching these women reminded me of the image of Fatmagülün (e.g. Fatmagülünsuçu ne?) lying on the ground the morning after the rape, trying to hold her womb to cradle herself and cope with the imminent shame, dishonor and pain from the traumatic incident.

Still image from In the Land of Blood and Honey

Injustice comes in many shapes and form, and violence against each other and against women is one of them. Bosnian men being lined up to be shot at and then bulldozed into massive graves speaks unspeakable terror and a mockery of the saying “Never again” because it has happened again. Bosnia – Rwanda – Sudan – the Congo – Syria. Which country will be next? Which woman will be another rape victim? How many fatherless children will continue wandering through this world? Are humans prone to fight each other? These are deep questions that do not always warrant a simple answer.

War is hell, but to understand it takes time, and yes, we must never forget and we must not terrorize peoples. “Never again” must be continued to be reiterated throughout the walls of hope, freedom and justice. All religions share the tenet of compassion. We must remember compassion to fight injustice because each person can be a victim of their own demons or others’ demons. We are all children of God or Allah as the Muslim people call him. Some have just turned astray and into a way of darkness. That is why we must shine our light into the darkness.