Am I a hostage? I think that sometimes, when I am alone with Anna. When I am alone with a thought that wants to be outside, making connections, leading to actions, but I am here inside, unable to move or make a connection.
I think about Brian Keenan and the other hostages in Lebanon twenty years ago. I think of the years out of their lives, when they survived by keeping their imaginations alive in the here and now of getting through the next moment. Keenan wrote:
‘Something in the human spirit seeks to overcome such oppression. There is always something in us that will not submit.’ (An Evil Cradling, p. 180.)
My situation is not at all comparable. Not at all. It’s the sort of thing that your parents say, there’s always someone worse off than yourself. Much worse off. More than you can even imagine. And not one or two, but in their millions, where numbers become statistics only.
But I am thinking then of the tragic damage of our human nature, our energetic mobilisation of hate and capacity for killing, the political cannibalism that feeds on invasion, exploitation and anonymous death.
Whereas here I am working with the inevitable facts of our human morbidity, - simply, in our case, with the tangles in the brain that can drag a person down while she is still alive, and all you can do is sit still and watch.