Not in Kansas Anymore: Some Poems and Politics of Disaster

“Virginia Hammond of Greensburg stood in the street Saturday afternoon. She looked at a gaping hole that once held a large curtained bedroom window. "I just washed those curtains the day before yesterday," she said.”



Springtime is here at last. But springtime is tornado season in Kansas. A home, a family, even a community can suddenly go missing. As the nations of the world, we can blame each other for the horrors of war, but how can we understand a natural disaster that appears in a moment, like a sudden confession of love?



Last week, Adam Nossiter of the New York Times observed, “for perhaps 80 square blocks, old brick buildings and new frame ones were flattened into twisted piles of masonry and timbers. In a muddy field, a mortuary’s open coffins lay tossed about, and large trucks lay upside down like giant beetles,” The Wichita Eagle, two days after the massive tornado, led with this headline: "Greensburg is gone; its future, unknown."



What future? The grade school, a high school, a City Hall, a hospital, a water tower, a fire station, a business district and the main street are gone. Crews have been spray-painting street names on the broken streets so people will know where they are. (see www.kansas.com.)

Fires and floods beset us everywhere, but we forget so soon. Nor do we wish to plan ahead, even for children, old people, or pets; we have no escape plan but our faith in God. But surely we can also reduce some future suffering. Mosques and Muslim community members might promote giving blood, bring free disaster planning training into the schools and youth groups. Every group can rehearse its disaster plan.



And some disasters can lead to positive action. After the 1999 earthquakes in Istanbul region, the Islamic movement parties stepped in with discipline and hard work while the bureaucracies of the secular state, and even the army, failed to act effectively. Moreover, the state’s failure to enforce building codes resulted in greater suffering as building after building collapsed; this became a scandal just as with the failure to build levies to hold back the flood in New Orleans. In Turkey the religious parties came to power in a political earthquake. For the last five years they have been carefully championing human rights reform and engagement with Europe.



Now there seem to be two Turkeys, with the secular elite and the military encouraging growing crowds to oppose the Justice and Development Party of Recep Erdogan, who has already served months in jail for reciting the poem by Ziya Gokulp including, “The minarets are our bayonets; the domes are our helmets. Mosques are our barracks, the believers are soldiers. This holy army guards my religion, Almighty; Our journey is our destiny, the end is martyrdom.”



One might smile at such poetical political rhetoric but also feel it stir one’s pulse. And we do need reminding of our collective destiny as Muslims.



In France last week, Nicolas Sarkozy won a hotly contested and close election, and one might say that at this moment there are two Frances staring across the divide of class and ethnicity. And yet it is good to note that Sarkozy, not previously known as an inclusive force, did offer the gesture of reaching out in his moment of triumph, stating, “for me there is only one France. I want to tell them that I will be president of all the French." We will see in what way he means this. Sarkozy also indicated that he would challenge the US on its lack of action on Global Warming. Even now we see the politics of disaster planning becoming an essential aspect of political discourse.



Has the earthquake in Pakistan led to similar reforms or moments of unity? Currently the suspended chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry is calling for change and for a moment a political earthquake seems finally arrived. At rally after rally the Faiz Ahmed Faiz poem is read: “When the mountains of cruelty and torture will fly like pieces of cotton under the feet of the governed/This earth will quake and over the head of the ruler when lightning will thunder/We shall see.”



In Turkey Erdogan went to jail, but ended up in on top, though fighting for political survival. But what will happen to Chaudhry? He declares, “The concept of an autocratic system of government is over... Those countries and nations who don’t learn from the past vanish.”



Which of today’s empires may be destroyed in coming years? The poet Shelly wrote, “And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay, of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare; the lone and level sands stretch far away.”



Even the lone and level Greensburg Kansas knew its glory days, when steam railroads converged near the town and the nation’s largest hand-dug well was dug, seven stories down, to feed the engines as well as people and finally three million tourists.



This well is the only direct contact a tourist can have with the enormous Ogallala Aquifer flowing underground, watering millions of Mid-western crops. It would cover all 50 states with 1 1/2 feet of water if it were on the surface. Now this mysterious unknown wonder is below broken rocks and splintered wood.



Let us offer our prayers for the suffering people of the world and hear them in their time of emptiness. As Eliot brought this supplication out of the well of emptiness; “Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden, Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood; Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still --Even among these rocks, our peace in His will-- And even among these rocks; Sister, mother And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, Suffer me not to be separated-- And let my cry come unto Thee.”