on sleeplessness and imperialism

It was a hard night, even all the way down in Argentina, learning once again that countries invade other countries freely. Learning that leaders could justify their actions with ease. Learning that peace justifies war, and freedom provides the basis of any invasion.

I could not sleep last night. My phone glared at me with news apps, index finger refreshing every minute, body moving to one side, to the other; not blinking.

I remember studying about appeasement in WWII as if it were something of the past. And even as I grew older and lived throughout many of the still ongoing wars I could not comprehend them as something of our own time. I am 33 years old, and I’ve been an artist (and academic) life all my life: no point of me joining an army. My body is weak, my mind is too sarcastic, my thoughts are too deep. I have been “against the system”, like, forever, trying to “change it from within”, etc. Moreover, I’ve lived in Argentina most of my life. The closest war to me was in 1982, Malvinas (Falklands), to which most of my father’s generation died; my dad almost went, because his military training ended a few weeks before Argentina went to war.

I was always told: the fresh 18 year-olds who did not know how to carry a gun went straight to war, while my dad returned home from a completed military training. My dad’s awesome, probably better than yours 🤣, but he’s definitely not better than a British Brigadier… 😅. In any case, I’ve always had mixed thoughts on his not going. Had he gone, which he probably should have, those young, under-equipped, undertrained, and frightened soldiers would not have been sent to war. But, I would not be telling this story otherwise. So, there’s that, and I’m glad he saved himself.

I always read about wars, war-zones, as something far away, not here, not now. Nothing to worry about, I kept thinking. It all changed after a cousin of mine went to live to Israel, joined the army, and went to the frontlines. Actually, before he did, I went to Israel to try convince him not to. He had already enlisted. Basically, I was trying to convince him to bail and go to jail. What an idiotic move that was. It was like talking to a wall.

well, not quite a wall… walls do not talk back at you, walls do not bully you. Walls don’t frighten you. Walls are walls, and some can be taken down, no matter how hard you bang yourself against them. What I saw was not a wall, it was my cousin, my own family, a face so close to my own that I saw myself, and my own self was shattering itself into pieces. I saw broken glass, I saw a war zone, the aftermath of an invasion, a young mind filled with prefabricated ideas as ancient as the Bible; I tried to say things I was not allowed to; I panicked, I thought I would never get away from that place, and I fled. Things were never the same after that.

Having lived that horrible experience is not enough for me to understand the catastrophic consequences of war. Trauma is unique. What I can understand, to some extent, is fear and despair, hopelessness and frustration. I can also understand how selfish it can be to survive in this world, but it makes it easier to know that you don’t need to deal with trauma on your own. I hope the Ukrainian people undergoing violence today know they are not alone.

My great grandmother was from Kiev. I never met her. My grandmother told me how she used to have chickens in the backyard, and twisted their necks like breaking a loaf of bread for dinner. The chickens kept running for a while with their severed heads. I’m a vegetarian.