Ironic

A traffic jam when you’re already late
A no smoking sign on your cigarette break
It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?

A traffic jam when you’re already late
A no smoking sign on your cigarette break
It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?

These lines listed above form a portion of rocker Alanis Morisette’s hit song “Ironic”. I don’t know what twist of the world keeps bringing song lyrics into my writings but they seem to define so many different moments, almost as if someone or something was writing the soundtrack for the movie of my life in Guatemala. This particular track on the soundtrack leapt both from the pages of a book and through a tiny glowing TV screen as, last week, I sat aboard the first class bus from Coban to Guatemala city (really the only available way to travel between these two parts of the country). A first class bus in Guatemala means that each person has their own seat as opposed to sharing it with 2-6 other people. For this benefit you pay Q40 or roughly $5 depending on the rate of exchange for the day. It was the third leg of my 18-hour return expedition from a 5-day tour of three communities in the Alta Verapaz department and the Ixcan. The other two legs of my trip that morning had been in tiny microbuses, which are a little cramped for space especially with my long legs. Because of this I felt my body breath a sigh of relief as I sat back in my own cushioned seat and pulled out my book of the moment. This happened to be “Return of Guatemala’s Refugees: Reweaving the Torn” by Clark Taylor, a tail of the return community of Santa Maria Tzeja which is not far from the village of Cimientos in the Ixcan where I had spent the night before. I had just been sifting through the words and images in a part of the book where it talks about the terrors experienced by the families in Guatemala during the “conflicto armado (armed conflict)” of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Where soldiers marched through the villages, helicopters descended from the sky, families were massacred, indescribable atrocities were committed against the people, and hundreds of thousands were given no other choice but to flee with their families and the shirts on their backs to the safer confines of Mexico. The Ixcan, where I had just been, was the staging ground for many of the horrors, which drove that stake of terror into the people’s souls. It was becoming more and more difficult to look past that fact, especially with each journey out onto those lands. The chapter talked about the embedded subconscious fears in many peoples hearts, how to this day the site of soldiers in camouflage gear, the sounds of helicopters, etc. sets off wave after wave of deep seeded panic crashing against their inner sanctum and engulfing them in its debilitating embrace.

As I finished reading that chapter, the bus assistant put on a movie (yes, this first class bus had TV’s). I curiously looked up since, on one hand, it is always a trip down memory lane to watch a movie on a bus and, on the other hand, I had had such appalling luck with movies on buses in Central America that I was curious as to what further torture I would be put to. My own mental torture faded away in the blink of an eye and it turned into a very bad joke as the opening credits started to scroll across the screen. The movie was “Predator” with Arnold Schwartzanegger. A movie all about terror, about violence, about killing, about soldiers in uniform stalking through the jungle, and punctuated with scenes where the only noise to be heard is the blade of a helicopter chopping through the air. The irony dominated the bus. Here I was in the middle of Guatemala where I had just read about the fears harbored by a large amount of the Guatemalan population regarding these very scenes I was watching on TV, sitting on a bus, full of Guatemalans, with one little boy standing in his seat to get a better view of the movie. We were leaving Coban, a town on the edge of the Ixcan jungle, on the edge of land so similar to that on the TV screen, land where the people had to flee and hide amongst the trees, amongst their fields, in caves, hide from the violence that was consuming their homes. The Ixcan was the sight of some of the most horrible massacres and atrocities committed during the armed conflict. And here we were, watching a movie that I can’t help but think touched off with incredible quickness, like a flame to the wick on a stick of dynamite, some of those old fears for at least a few sitting on that bus. Those old fears that lie right beneath the surface of consciousness and can be triggered in a heartbeat. I especially thought of the fears within the heart of my good friend who sat next to me on that bus and whom I had talked to, at length, about his flight to Mexico with the army nipping at the heels of he and his families’ shoes. The fuse was lit and he said nothing during the entire ride…

My new lines to Alanis’ song would go something like:

The sounds of a helicopter that your heart still can hear
A movie about senseless war when you continue to live in fear
It’s like a child playing soldier when a massacre killed his mother
And isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?

Unfortunately, I do and it’s so hard to remove from my thoughts.

Pablo

Paul Pitcher is a missionary with the Christian Action of Guatemala (ACG). He serves as a communication and youth worker with ACG.