for whom my heart weeps

I heard the story of the two women who blew themselves up in pet markets in Iraq as I was getting dressed yesterday. It was before 6 AM and I was preparing to go to work; I had just stepped out of the shower.

I'm a pet owner and have always loved my furry friends, from my first cat (Cougar) as a kid, through college (having cats in my off-campus apartments, sometimes without the knowledge of my landlords) and single life, and even now as my wife and I share our home with Murphy, Buster, and Peekaboo (the spelling of whose name is a controversy in my house, since my wife swears she named her after the skier).

So I'm immediately saddened thinking of the poor dogs, cats, birds, fish, turtles, and who knows what other kinds of animals were in those stalls as some disillusioned, perhaps brainwashed woman walks up and ignites a bomb strapped to her body, killing in the name of scaring the hell out of us.

Then later yesterday I hear that both of those women had Down Syndrome. They most likely never understood that they were going to their death; indeed, the bombs were not set off by their hand, they were activated by remote control, by someone else at a safe distance, someone else who knew they were sending not just the innocent to their deaths but two women who were so much more than innocent... what is the word for that?

My eldest brother, Jim, had Down's. Back in the sixties, they didn't use the term Down Syndrome, they used the term mongoloid, which was a reference to the way the eyes slant in those children. Jim was very severly retarded; he only ever showed that he recognized my mother. Unlike some Down's children, Jim would never be able to care for himself, and, at the recommendation of professionals, he was admitted to a facility that would be able to give him the 24-hour care he needed.

I have very few memories of Jim; I was quite young and not very well myself, and only saw him when we visited the facility where he lived. Jim never knew me or my father, or at least he never responded to us in any way recognizable. Jim died at the end of the sixties.

I wish that I could talk to Jim now. I wish that I could call up his face easily in my mind. I am so desperately sad about those two women who never understood their fate and madder than hell about the evil that exploited them. It's hard to see the screen at this point, and I'm just not sure why I have kept typing... but one thing sticks with me.

Most of the pictures you see of Down Syndrome children show them smiling. Of the Down's kids I've met, they seem to have a genuine aura of love around them, and they have a happiness and a joy that is infectious. They are enjoying what they're doing as they're doing it, something that I have certainly struggled with in my life.

In my mind I can see these two women now, out among people at the market, people who they did not know but who also did not know them. They were probably enjoying the sunshine and the sounds of commerce and birdsong. They were probably smiling that lovely, happy smile, content with the moment, when the bombs that were strapped to their bodies ripped them apart.