I Can't Begin to Imagine

A boy stands in a street after a roadside bomb went off in central Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Feb. 26, 2007. The bomb targeted a U.S. army convoy, police said. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
I can't begin to imagine what it's like to live like this, in constant fear of explosions, with thoughts of the future seeming a luxury:

Iraq's Shiite vice president escaped an apparent assassination attempt Monday after a bomb exploded in municipal offices where he was making a speech, knocking him down with the force of the blast that left at least 10 people dead.

Adel Abdul-Mahdi was bruised and hospitalized for medical exams, an aide said. Police initially blamed the attack on a bomb-rigged car, but later said the explosives were apparently planted inside the building.

The attack sent another message that suspected Sunni militants could strike anywhere despite a major security crackdown across the capital.

… At least 10 people were killed and 18 injured in the blast, police said. An earlier explosion elsewhere in Baghdad killed at least three policemen.

And on Sunday, a suicide bombing at a predominantly Shiite business college killed at least 42 people.

I try to comprehend the destruction, the loss of life, what it's like to live in a country where dozens of people die at a time and the stark, grim reality of that circumstance seems to stretch endlessly into the future, no end in sight—and I just can't do it. I can't understand. I've never felt so hopeless as I imagine an average Iraqi to be right now; I've never lived in such turmoil. There are Americans who can better relate to living in a state of constant fear—amidst violent eruptions between warring factions, to whom crossfire has a literal and immediate meaning and isn't just the name of some silly show where a silly bow-tied manboy says silly things—but my suburban-raised self isn't one of them. And it doesn't really matter whether I can wrap my head around what life is like in Iraq, or even whether I bother to try. Nothing's going to change based on my willingness or ability to empathize. But still I do—I stare at pictures like the one above, and pictures of shattered buildings, and pictures of broken or tired or legless or faceless American troops, and pictures of broken or tired or legless or faceless Iraqis, and I try to make sense of it, try to understand what it must be like.

I recall a comment left here long ago on a post I wrote about the nightmare in Iraq, a comment from a conservative war supporter accusing me of "liberal guilt," the implication being that any sense of regret I feel about my privilege shielding me from dreadful realities is puerile and pathetic—which I suppose it may be, depending on one's perspective. But the guilt I feel is not just about being undeservedly protected from much of the ugliness the world has to offer; it's the guilt of a patriot whose country has done something for which she feels deep and abiding remorse. And because I am neither a cheerleader of the war, nor am I the rightwing's celebratory strawman, giddy with the horror of things going so terribly wrong, and because I am not a person of great influence, I have but two options: I can sink into apathy, or I can be arsed to bloody care. Because I choose the latter, I wonder what it's like to live like this, in constant fear of explosions, with thoughts of the future seeming a luxury… And I weep for the tragedy we've wrought.