On Sunday, my heart was shaken to the core.
Upon rising, I checked my usual information sources and found a video posted to my IM from my boyfriend in the States. We are cat lovers and this story has a happy ending, but its beginning is devastatingly tragic.
In Colorado City, AZ, individuals who do not understand the meaning of love, submerged a kitten up to its neck in concrete, inside a pole, and left it to die. Workers that came to the site heard the sound of meowing and found the kitten trapped in both cement and at the bottom of the pole. They carefully cut the pipe down and delicately tapped at the concrete to break it. The kitten was freed.
The video destroyed me at 9am on Sunday morning. I cried and cried and cried and cried...deeply, painfully, longingly, shockingly. I could not understand this act. There is no doubt that this video unleashed a well of unresolved emotion from my experiences the past week. Though decimating on its own, it played a cathartic role in my Cairo journey. I called my boyfriend to weep openly on the phone as we discussed Good and Evil. He explained his experiences with evil as he has seen much, including the very dark side of humanity. Nowhere could I match a story he told me about a drug addict he knew that tied up a man in a barn, fed him drugs and beat him for days over a mere $10 dollars. The man escaped and the addict went to jail only to get out, do it again, and land in jail for 25 years. "Good", I said.
I am exceptionally naive about evil. I have no true experience with it despite the fact that I have a strange fascination for serial killers. In reading about them, I am desperately trying to piece together what makes them tick and why they do what they do. My limited mental capacity, though adept at psychological terminology and concepts, cannot comprehend in full such dark thoughts that breed evil action. This has been a personal question of mine for many years--are individuals such as psychopaths influenced by a chemical imbalance of the brain, or have they chosen to invite in a demon, real or imagined, that leads them down the path? I have resolved often, that it is a perfect storm of chemical imbalance, choice and lurking childhood trauma. Unfortunately, my intent is always to provide the benefit of the doubt to humanity, or I would trust no one, ever. This trusting nature however, renders me naive in more ways than one.
On Sunday night, I visited Kasr El Dobara, the large evangelical church in Cairo. It is a wonderful church and by the end of the service, I felt totally and completely at home (of course, earphones provided to foreigners that translated Arabic to English helped!). A warmth emanated from within and enveloped the congregation while they sang. I felt wholly a part of this love. As the preacher spoke about rebuilding the city, of fighting dark forces and embracing change and light, it was there that my psychic experience of Good and Evil began to truly unfold. I could visually see the city of Cairo in my mind's eye, the reality that its dominating religion had enslaved a people that shuffle about in dark clothing--empty and wanting, poor in mind and spirit. That the dominating religion requires one to pray for acceptance rather than knowing they are accepted simply by God's grace and worldly gift. Again, these are difficult concepts for me to embrace because Good and Evil conjure up visions of witchcraft and voodoo. Is there really a force for light and a force for dark?
Yes...yes, I believe there is.
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