With Tears and Blood: Giving Voice to Those Affected by Conflict

With Tears and Blood: Giving Voice to Those Affected by Conflict

The NY Times OP-Ed provides the reader with an often missing portrayal of the refugee as an individual, as deserving of a voice and an interpretation that refutes the misnomer that refugees can be grouped together in an all-inclusive set of circumstances. Gatrell speaks to the deficiency in the discourse and a media that needs to resist “… the temptation to treat refugees ‘as if they were tabula rasa with no history, past experience, culture, anticipation, skills, coping mechanisms to interpret new situations’” (Gatrell, 284). Bombach’s piece challenges the perceptions of refugees as mere statistics or numbers that have been dehumanized by the public’s fatigue associated with the persistence of the problem of displaced persons over time.

The term itself, “displaced persons” denotes a fallacy in the common vernacular. It tends to attempt to describe refugee crises on a personal level where individuals from a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and unique perspectives can contribute to the narrative, effect change, and garner empathetic support. The tendency to group persons, causes, paths of migrations, ethnic considerations into a collective mass could more appropriately be termed “displaced populations;” by doing so the narrative is coopted by xenophobic nationalist aided and abetted by media outlets distilling ratings from popular fears of invading “mobs” or “hordes” of refugees.

The personal stories of the four Afghanis contribute to the discussion with the humanized personal perspectives that can only be shared by the refugees themselves. Arash dispels the misrepresentations of her new host country (the U.S.) as a discriminatory bastion full of “right-wing immigrant-hating extremists.” Rana describes the “stress and pressure” that comes with uncertainty and a quite different reception when arriving in Greece. In stark contrast, we learn from Helena that remaining in Kabul, although war-torn and ravaged provides her with a personal identity and a certain amount of freedom. Omaid has remained in Kabul just as Helena yet feels much more conflicted than she does. We find that each story is unique, stands alone, and intrinsically valuable to understanding the realities of those affected by conflict.

Although their personal stories are brief, they are emotive, timely and in small ways begin to erode the defensive attitudes of potential hosts. Gatrell talks about the majority of media which far too often groups the affected people in Afghanistan and other conflict regions into a homogenized collective that feeds fear rather than empathy. He writes, “To be sure, newspapers and broadcasters periodically carry stories of human suffering from distant sites of crisis, but public opinion expresses an anxiety about being ‘overwhelmed’ by refugees and asylum seekers” (Gatrell, 255). This is what makes Bombach’s treatment unique, refreshing, and effective at communicating the voice of the individual beyond what mere statistical data can.