Module 12 Blog (#6)

One common theme between each of the stories from this week is the desire that people have to create a home, or a safe space for themselves. In Goodbye, My Brother, Elliot Ackerman goes back to Fallujah where he fought in the Iraq War in 2004. He notices how it has barely changed, but there are people living there now and “every tenth  hour or so, someone is trying to rebuild, clearing out a courtyard, sweeping up debris, tampering with a generator” (Ackerman 9). Even after all the destruction that occurred, it is human nature to try to rebuild what has been lost and salvage all that we can in order to keep on living. Similar to this situation, Rabih Alameddine notices the way that the Syrian refugees in Jordan try to make their poor accommodations feel more like a home by decorating and personalizing them. He met a family that besequined their entire pantry, all for the sake of having “something beautiful to come home to” (Alameddine 24). Despite the cramped, crowded, impoverished conditions the refugees are forced to live in, they still take the time to decorate their living spaces to the best of their abilities to establish a familiar place that makes them feel like they belong somewhere.

Another theme these passages had in common was witnessing and being a part of history. In Ackerman’s story, he visits Fallujah and sees the place where he lost his friend Dan to the war. When asked why he came back, he saw that he wanted to see what it was like now, and a soldier tells him that “it is just as you left it” (Ackerman 12). He felt drawn back to this place where so much death and destruction occurred, yet in the 12 years that he had been gone it had remained the same and his return did not affect it at all either. Similarly, when Alameddine visits some of the Syrian refugees, one of them asks him why she should speak to him and if it would change anything and he replied, “No. I’m sorry. Nothing will change” (Alameddine 21). He is aware that speaking with them will not bring about change or ease anyone’s suffering, but he still feels the need to be there and speak with him because he feels it is a crime to ignore that it is happening. He recognizes that so much of the population is living under tragic circumstances and cannot sit by and pretend it is not happening, so he forces himself out of his comfort zone to be with his fellow man.