Why am I doing this?

The weapon was poised, held high in the air by the chanting-induced trance of fierce rage… Weju, named after the sun because of the brightness of the day he was born, was ready to plunge it into the Arawak’s heart. Then suddenly the victim’s anguished cry aroused the Carib warrior from the fiery depths of his hypnosis.{{more}} Now somehow, the senses that had been shut down by ancient rituals were reawakened giving instant clarity to the scenes of horror before him: women screaming, as their children were torn from their breasts; young Arawak men thrashing on the ground as poisonous arrow heads inflicted their painful death; fallen Carib warriors dying, as the Arawaks fought to defend themselves; fire-ravished caneye homes crashing onto elders and young children who had not been able to flee.

Everything was happening around him but Weju was frozen… gazing at the terrified man he was about to slaughter. Just days before he had passed the test of manhood, ignoring his own pain, he had felt the agony of the bird that had been beaten to death against his body; without flinching he had endured the searing sting of the agouti teeth and the pepper in his wounds. Now, all he had to do was to kill an Arawak; but this man cowering before him was not just an Arawak… this Arawak had a familiar face.

A face from his childhood, those many moons ago when he had strayed away from his father’s side, when he had slipped and fallen over a bank and landed, unconscious, in a river below. He tried to convince himself that it was a different man. All of the Arawaks had flat heads, broad noses and long, coarse black hair; but somehow… somehow he was sure that this was the man whose face he had seen as he coughed and sputtered back to life… the man who had rescued him and then ran off.

Now, as Weju stood, poised to attack and take the man’s life; he was confronted by the image of the same man standing over him… fighting to revive him. The ancient chants that had prepared him for battle returned, instructing him to attack; but his strong, muscled arms were frozen.

Then… Time … aware of his dilemma, began to spin the wheel of revelation and this frozen Carib boy saw before him mirror… a vision … not of himself…. Instead he saw a European standing over a Carib warrior with a charged musket. The shot exploded in his ear and the scene became warped as it was replaced by a slave master about to strike with a whip and as the slave cried out the image evaporated and a new picture was swiftly constructed; this time a slave about to beat another slave.

Scene after scene, they bombarded him… mercilessly: cutlass wielding husbands destroying the ones they promised to love and cherish; men, hypnotised by some ancient trance of fierce rage discharging bullets that tear through flesh and bones in their relentless pursuit of death. He saw the shocking headlines that would threaten to change the very culture of his island, his blessed Hairoun: missing people that become buried bodies, children, sodomised, murdered… a trail of unspeakable grief. He even witnessed the pain caused by partisan division, when people – friends who do not understand that in order to prosper we need to support a government not a party – become bitter enemies on Election Day.

Then suddenly, he saw himself… a Carib about to murder an Arawak. A Vincentian about to murder a Vincentian and Time asked him one question. Why?

For territory? For land? For wealth? Maybe it was some primitive ambition to conquer; maybe it was just what everyone else was doing; what he saw his father do; what his peers told him was right; maybe because it was the only way he felt he could survive; maybe it was just sheer frustration. Whatever the reason he was a Carib and the man before him was an Arawak and so only one of them could live.

He was aware now that this division would drive both them to the edge of extinction; but he was compelled to sink the weapon, and as his victim cried his final cry, Time’s mirror showed him the graves of all those that had perished at the hands of violent crimes. In this vision, he saw their tombstones and at the end of each epitaph was a single question. WHY?

This is the third in a series on the Vincentian Heritage and Vision by writer Ava Browne. She can be contacted at avabrowne25@hotmail.com