War and Peace

I've been scared to 'sleep' for quite some time now. By scared to sleep, I mean precisely what the words imply. At first, I thought it was a random case of insomnia of some sort; something that gets triggered by too much caffeine and nicotine in the system! Or it could be the result of my hyperactive brain malfunctioning at every chance it gets. Or it could instead be my insatiable need to attain sympathies to make myself feel important! So I started digging, as per usual, to see if somebody around the world might have gone through something similar too! And I found it!

They call it "Somniphobia". A psychotic phenomenon that gets triggered by exposure to extreme trauma or severe PTSD, such events to which I don't recall getting exposed! Still, I have it, and I'm living with it. Not so long ago, I used to think Psychiatrists and Victimology experts tend to add phobia after just about any word to make it sound over the top superficial. The same thing with Earworms, which apparently is also a real condition, and I have that too! Pretty harmless usually, but people tend to act violently if it gets a little severe. It proves how almost every one of us has shorted brain circuits more or less. In my case, I'm like a magnet of weird-ass brain malfunctions.

As a criminology major, I had to study a portion of Victimology, solely focused on researching and studying the Bangladeshi liberation war of 1971. Around the midterms, we were asked to do a research of sorts regarding the war. Now, our subject teacher decided to hand us the assignment topics in a manner comparable only to Russian roulette. We have 53 students in our class. So, she wrote down 53 very distinct issues on post-it notes and then put those on a bag for everyone. Mine was about Victimization by rape in wars and how rape is used as a weapon of genocide. And I think it was the most challenging research project to date that I have been a part of.

Usually, such victims of war do not tend to speak to people they do not trust. Like who would share their wicked pasts on-demand to strangers? I mean I wouldn't! To make it easier, she gave me this list of six names of people interviewed previously by our seniors. As they already knew who we were and what we do with their inhumane tales of tragedy and sorrow, it helped me build rapport in my initial approach. So, I took the names along with a letter of recommendation and embarked on this journey of revelation that nowadays, most of us Millennials try to suppress deep down and forget.

Five of the victims were females, which made it even harder for them to open up in front of me. Still, I tried to keep it polite and professional and learned what I needed. None of them said a single word more than they needed to answer what I sought from them. And that was enough to scar someone for life only from listening to them. Some of them were kept prisoners for over a month; one had an amputated right hand. And then there was this guy who shall remain nameless told me a story I can never forget. It was easier this time because of him being a male, almost twice my age, and the victim was his late mother, who died a few years back. May God rest her soul!

The following is entirely a true story among thousands of others equally if not more violent. The actual interview draft containing all of their statements was hundred pages long. But this will be about only one of them.

49 years ago, from today, when the war had started, his mother, who was only 14, then used to live in this giant extended family of more than fifty members. Their home was even more preposterous in size, more than the size of a football field he said. A happy Hindu family, comparable to that we see on drama shows, happy vibes all around, enough to put a smile on anyone's face. The war took a little time to reach them as their then rural and small fishing town was devoid of any hassle before the war. Didn't hold any strategical value of warfare whatsoever. As the situation worsened, sectarian violence became so prevalent that it had paved the way for one of the ugliest genocide ever to occur in the world's history. More than 3 million dead in nine months! That's eleven thousand dead per day, BTW! An incredible number for a country so small! And her family too was in those numbers.

This was almost around the end of the war when the ruling military forces invaded their town. They came at night and massacred most of the town people, only because they were Hindus. Only because they had different beliefs. Many of her cousins and she and more than 50 other teen girls were picked up and taken to a camp near the river flowing right beside the town. They were raped for weeks! The prettier ones didn't survive the night because of group sessions. Then they slowly moved towards the not so fair ones. As if they were a random herd of cattle's!

I don't know how to put this any other way, that is, as the soldiers were having difficulties as she was only a kid, they used sharp blades and cut her genitalia to make it bigger! While saying all this, what his mother had to endure, even after such a long time had elapsed, he cried like a baby! And I was just sitting there like a moron thinking, "what do I do"! What do I say that could match up in sympathy even for a fraction of the actual pain!

You do understand that this is not how he described what happened to her mum and her grandparents! It was much more vicious, naked, and ugly beyond imagination. A 14-year-old girl, who was supposed to play with dollhouses was getting DIY surgery from a gang of beasts hungry for blood and flesh. At the same time, her dead family float in the river only meters away.

She was among the last few who survived until the liberation forces ravaged the camps and freed them! She had hundreds of cigarette burns all over her body, even in her cornea. It was a miracle she survived. And he, her son, the man, telling all this was born nine months later. Children of war we the civilized people like to call them, only to mask the ugliness behind cute wordplay. To hide away the illegitimates who are more human than some of us will ever be.

So yeah, I have Somniphobia. Psychotic phenomenon triggered by PTSD and such. In the future, I'll indeed have some more 20th-century millennial bull crap diseases and seek attention by stating how miserable I am. After all, I only like to watch movies about 'manly' Wars. Because behind all those gimmicky random depressions about not having Yeezys, I still seek solace in the grandeur that was never mine.