“Only shoot the crazy ones. Wave at the others.”

Time is funny stuff. A moment in the present can find an echo in a moment from the past. A little slice of memory filed away and waiting to be pulled from the mindshelf, opened and considered.

When I was 19 years old I found myself in a war zone in Africa, a ‘complicated’ civil war with mercenaries on both sides. I say ‘found myself’ knowing that it is ambiguous, and I intend it to be so. I was naive; and I did not quite know what this place I was in would reveal to me, about it, about me. Until one day.

The day started fairly normally, it changed when I was told to get into an armoured Land Rover to complete the rest of the drive I’d been offered as a sort-of ‘sightseeing’ trip. The armour was crudely home-made, quarter-inch steel plates attached to both sides up to chest level, a large plate bolted on behind to protect our heads, and a massive piece bolted underneath to deflect the worst of a mine detonation.

The driver, whom I’d only just met, was jovial and blunt when I asked if this was all necessary. “Why do you think I’m limping?” he asked as he pulled up his trouser to reveal a prosthetic leg, “This is what mines do…” he added casually “…and anything traveling on the road we’re taking gets attacked more often than not. I lost one leg on this road, I don’t intend to lose the other one as well.”

Then from a locked box in the rear he handed me an Uzi 9mm machine gun and several clips, and almost as an afterthought two grenades, passing a shortened FN 7.62 to my friend who had arranged this ‘outing’, and taking a second Uzi for himself which he clipped into a holder on the side of his door which allowed one-handed use and the ability to spray an arc of bullets on the driver’s side. “If you see ANYONE charging out of the bush around us as we’re driving just fire the Uzi at them…” he added casually.

1976 © John MacPherson

“But be careful” he added in a slightly concerned voice “…your Uzi has had its safety catch removed, so it will always fire, keep it pointing out of the window….please” and off we drove. Slowly. Very very very slowly.

“We’re going very slowly” I said, watching the grenades waltzing gently around my feet.

He laughed “With several tons of steel plate wrapped around us we’re not ever going to be going very fast”.

“Is this necessary?” I asked.

“If we go fast we still get blown up by mines, so we have big steel underneath, that slows us, makes us sitting ducks, so we need steel on the side to stop bullets, but then we need to be able to shoot back, so we have guns. And after that we just pray.”  

The inescapable logic of conflict.

1976 © John MacPherson

We drove. I was terrified. My mind was racing, even if the Land Rover was not. Each bump was…well either a bump or perhaps something more destructive. It was a nerve-straining experience.

Suddenly from the bush on my side a black figure burst out of the undergrowth “Oh jeez, oh jeez…!” I exclaimed, swinging the Uzi around, but not yet firing. My companions both laughed, as the figure waved and smiled at us, and they returned the salutation.

As the adrenaline surge relented and my hands stopped shaking, I wiped the sweat from them. The Uzi had become more than a little slippery.

“Jeez…..how do we know who the hell is on our side…and which ones are the enemy?” I exclaimed as another two locals walked out of the bush across the track in front of us, both barefoot, he carrying water, she carrying firewood on her head, sending my pulse racing again.

Driver laughed “Complicated this eh man! But its not really. Its really simple. It’s got bugger all to do with the colour of people’s skin, it’s not their ethnicity that matters. The ones you need to worry about are the ones running at you, clutching weapons and looking crazy. You see any of those, you fire. Anyone else? Just wave and smile and be civil. That’s how a civil war is.” and he laughed again; the deep long laugh of one who knew.

I was reminded of his prescient comment this week in the aftermath of Boston, as the media sought to explain what might have been the ’cause’ of what happened, an imprecise process articulated eloquently in an opinion piece on Al Jazeera by Sarah Kendzior – ‘The Wrong Kind of Caucasian’:

It is easy to criticise the media, and after this disastrous week , there is much to criticise. But the consequences of the casual racism launched at Chechens – and by association, all other Muslims from the former Soviet Union, who are rarely distinguished from one another by the public – are serious. By emphasising the Tsarnaevs’ ethnicity over their individual choices, and portraying that ethnicity as barbaric and violent , the media creates a false image of a people destined by their names and their ” culture of terror ” to kill. There are no people in Chechnya, only symbols. There are no Chechen-Americans, only threats……….

…..Chechens and other Muslim immigrants from the former Soviet Union are human beings. They are not walking symbols of violent conflict. Do not look to a foreign country to explain a domestic crime. Look to the two men who did it – and judge them by what they have done, not from where their ancestors came.