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| The Reading Room |
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Peace
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by Ann Pai
I thought it would be easy to say something about peace. But the concept has reduced me. I don't
know the meaning of peace. I've lived saturated in it all my life, marooned, in an air pocket of peace on
a planet that has been at war.
I have to imagine living in war to try to imagine what peace must be like after it. And I know that my
imagination of war is a doll's house version of war. What do infected bandages smell like? What do the
screams of the man wrapped in them sound like? What does constant fear of blind violence feel like,
how hard does it hammer at the lungs, how would it wane with sleep or peel harder at the rind of daily
focus you've accreted? How do your ears hurt, how does your head hurt when you hear gunfire far
away? How far is far away? One mile? Two? Or one inch, just far enough to miss you? How does a
woman nurse her baby, how does a man take his child into the street?
How do I write about the moment when the guns do not fire, that morning like every other when it's not
safe to be alive and then suddenly it is, more so... when troops pull back from the villages into their
troop-green world and out of your unfamiliar debris... when you think, is there food? And realize you will
not die for the audacity of the next thought, I can go find food for us... how does a person whose bones
were shaped on peace talk about the sudden void of war, how it must gape with new dangers and
privations, violences and angers, the resentment of memory and the surging wave of suddenly being
allowed—required, even—to long for simple normality in a world where no one, not even the powerful
man or the tribunal, knows what should be normal in the bombed and frightened streets.
What is it like to slowly grasp your new powerlessness as foreign money and second-string players from
previously minor parties fill the vacuum? What is it like to slowly regrasp your power, to ask for what
you need, to bring your money out of hiding, to smile at your children, to spend an evening repairing,
mending, cooking, reading, visiting your friends?
When do the schools re-open? The stores? When do the diabetics find insulin in the pharmacies again?
About that peace, picking barefoot through its first, jagged moments, I know nothing.
I think about the commonplaces of peace. That we as countries and as citizens should work toward it.
That peace is more desirable than war. That peace is achievable through negotiation, compromise, or
force. That peace is bought at a price. That peace is a better guarantor of happiness and prosperity
than war. And for every commonplace, strident, hoarse whispers smoke-ring up in my brain, the ghosts
of years-stacked op-eds... for everything you might say about peace someone can argue its impossible
idealism or its naivete or its incomplete reality or its illogic as it limps on either a crutch of war or
essential human goodness.
Peace seems more like a Zen state, like electromagnetism, or like the awareness of nakedness under
your clothes. The combatants and civilians caught in war have to think about their actions in the war.
Non-combatants and citizens wading, however goofily or purposefully, through the peace don't even
think about the peace. We don't even think of ourselves as non-combatants or civilians. We think about
ourselves in family titles or workplace titles or church titles or gang titles or those of whatever
community is most compelling to us. We think, I am going to make some money off this deal. Or, I
wonder if we could drive out to the lake this weekend. Or, it's too hot in here, stupid window unit. Or,
the baby's shoes getting too small, wonder if one new pair's enough for now. We understand our life as
work or religion or family or art—but not as peace.
Peace is just there.
Not many people spend peacetime lives in actions for peace between nations. Most of those who do are
politicians. So, a digression on politics. Don't sneer when you talk about it unless you'd rather have
bullets. Don't say you're against both war and politics; it just makes you sound foolish. On the other
hand, I can't say I'm against wars and not yell out of the audience at some politician whose greed is
walking her sweat-blind right past the goals of peace. I can't say I want peace and not call down some
elected blowhole who hindenburgs an empty raft of inflammatory rhetoric off the House floor primarily
because the American media is cheaper than campaign mailings to keep his name in front of voters. I
can't say I want peace and then abandon all oversight of the people I pay to keep it. You might be
foolish for sneering at politics—but I'd be worse, a hypocrite, for ignoring them.
Peace isn't just there.
Peace isn't a given, and just because I'm comfortable doesn't mean I live in a world at peace. Just
because soldiers aren't quartered on my street or bombs falling on my workplace doesn't mean my
world is at peace, nor my nation. All my life, there has been a war in the newspapers in which the
United States had a military presence, a direct interest, or at the very least, the economic benefit of
usurping its fascination to maintain box office or retain viewership between commercials.
And yet I'm insulated from the constant war rippling across the world's lines and veins. This sets up a
tension in me, like continental plates grinding and buckling—my comfort in peace against the evidence
that this peace is illusory. I'm scared that I'll confuse my comfort—my job, my pets, safe roads, a
perversely wide selection of breakfast cereals—with peace. It scares me when others seem to confuse
the two. Peace doesn't mean the absence of pain. It doesn't mean the absence of conflict.
Peace means the ability to choose your conflict, to pursue its resolution, without the use of deadly
weapons or the fear that your opponent will use them. I live in that condition now. Yet technology has
made the entire world my wallpaper. All around me, all my life, have been the images of war, so it's hard
for me to lift peace in my world off the background of peace in the entire world.
And it's hard to imagine a world at peace without pretzeling back around to the imagination of war. It
scares me not to be able to envision peace. I'll try again. Here goes.
In peace, I never read about adolescent, barely breasted girls strapping explosives to their bodies.
In peace, I don't have to think how far I am from likely military targets so as to be able to drive as near
as possible to the strike point of a nuclear blast rather than die slowly from burns or poison.
In peace, I don't have to feel like vomiting when I see photographs of hospitals in rubble and
unattached arms and legs random in a street, tangential to the center of the photograph, the tank
treads rolling.
In peace, none of these things even occurs to me. I cannot imagine them. Anyone who could imagine
them would be pitied as sick.
In peace, aircraft manufacturers employ far fewer people. Other countries don't permanently house our
soldiers. We bicker over trade, but not under the shadow of armies. Journalists compete for alternative
sources of titillation. Our arms funding... our arms funding... and there, right there, my imagination
implodes in sadness and frustration.
In peace, do we fund war?
In peace, do we conduct training exercises?
In peace, do we maintain the Pentagon at its current level of staffing?
In peace, do we care whether the president has any experience or knowledge of the military?
Which is to ask—do we trust peace? Do we really believe world peace can last, and that we must attain
it and make it last? Or is that a sham belief, a greeting card, a palliative? Does only the power to defend
preserve the peace, does only military force guarantee it? Is there no such thing as peace—only
intermittent peace, or peace for a few?
I am looking for a positive thing to say, to end this passage. But there is no emotive audience applause,
no tinkerbelling of peace into life if it is an illusion of geography and power. I'm close to where I started—
reduced, and frankly, miserable. But I'll answer one of my own questions and it will have to be enough
for now, a cotton shard of hope. If there can be only intermittent peace, perhaps we can work to make
those episodes longer. If there can be peace for only a few, perhaps it can be for more. Perhaps the air
pocket won't hold us all—but I don't think we know yet how many it can. Perhaps we can find some
room in it, some give, some rearranged belief—without tracing our bayonet down its skin, without
bursting through into war.
I thought it would be easy to say something about peace. But the concept has reduced me. I don't
know the meaning of peace. I've lived saturated in it all my life, marooned, in an air pocket of peace on
a planet that has been at war.
I have to imagine living in war to try to imagine what peace must be like after it. And I know that my
imagination of war is a doll's house version of war. What do infected bandages smell like? What do the
screams of the man wrapped in them sound like? What does constant fear of blind violence feel like,
how hard does it hammer at the lungs, how would it wane with sleep or peel harder at the rind of daily
focus you've accreted? How do your ears hurt, how does your head hurt when you hear gunfire far
away? How far is far away? One mile? Two? Or one inch, just far enough to miss you? How does a
woman nurse her baby, how does a man take his child into the street?
How do I write about the moment when the guns do not fire, that morning like every other when it's not
safe to be alive and then suddenly it is, more so... when troops pull back from the villages into their
troop-green world and out of your unfamiliar debris... when you think, is there food? And realize you will
not die for the audacity of the next thought, I can go find food for us... how does a person whose bones
were shaped on peace talk about the sudden void of war, how it must gape with new dangers and
privations, violences and angers, the resentment of memory and the surging wave of suddenly being
allowed—required, even—to long for simple normality in a world where no one, not even the powerful
man or the tribunal, knows what should be normal in the bombed and frightened streets.
What is it like to slowly grasp your new powerlessness as foreign money and second-string players from
previously minor parties fill the vacuum? What is it like to slowly regrasp your power, to ask for what
you need, to bring your money out of hiding, to smile at your children, to spend an evening repairing,
mending, cooking, reading, visiting your friends?
When do the schools re-open? The stores? When do the diabetics find insulin in the pharmacies again?
About that peace, picking barefoot through its first, jagged moments, I know nothing.
I think about the commonplaces of peace. That we as countries and as citizens should work toward it.
That peace is more desirable than war. That peace is achievable through negotiation, compromise, or
force. That peace is bought at a price. That peace is a better guarantor of happiness and prosperity
than war. And for every commonplace, strident, hoarse whispers smoke-ring up in my brain, the ghosts
of years-stacked op-eds... for everything you might say about peace someone can argue its impossible
idealism or its naivete or its incomplete reality or its illogic as it limps on either a crutch of war or
essential human goodness.
Peace seems more like a Zen state, like electromagnetism, or like the awareness of nakedness under
your clothes. The combatants and civilians caught in war have to think about their actions in the war.
Non-combatants and citizens wading, however goofily or purposefully, through the peace don't even
think about the peace. We don't even think of ourselves as non-combatants or civilians. We think about
ourselves in family titles or workplace titles or church titles or gang titles or those of whatever
community is most compelling to us. We think, I am going to make some money off this deal. Or, I
wonder if we could drive out to the lake this weekend. Or, it's too hot in here, stupid window unit. Or,
the baby's shoes getting too small, wonder if one new pair's enough for now. We understand our life as
work or religion or family or art—but not as peace.
Peace is just there.
Not many people spend peacetime lives in actions for peace between nations. Most of those who do are
politicians. So, a digression on politics. Don't sneer when you talk about it unless you'd rather have
bullets. Don't say you're against both war and politics; it just makes you sound foolish. On the other
hand, I can't say I'm against wars and not yell out of the audience at some politician whose greed is
walking her sweat-blind right past the goals of peace. I can't say I want peace and not call down some
elected blowhole who hindenburgs an empty raft of inflammatory rhetoric off the House floor primarily
because the American media is cheaper than campaign mailings to keep his name in front of voters. I
can't say I want peace and then abandon all oversight of the people I pay to keep it. You might be
foolish for sneering at politics—but I'd be worse, a hypocrite, for ignoring them.
Peace isn't just there.
Peace isn't a given, and just because I'm comfortable doesn't mean I live in a world at peace. Just
because soldiers aren't quartered on my street or bombs falling on my workplace doesn't mean my
world is at peace, nor my nation. All my life, there has been a war in the newspapers in which the
United States had a military presence, a direct interest, or at the very least, the economic benefit of
usurping its fascination to maintain box office or retain viewership between commercials.
And yet I'm insulated from the constant war rippling across the world's lines and veins. This sets up a
tension in me, like continental plates grinding and buckling—my comfort in peace against the evidence
that this peace is illusory. I'm scared that I'll confuse my comfort—my job, my pets, safe roads, a
perversely wide selection of breakfast cereals—with peace. It scares me when others seem to confuse
the two. Peace doesn't mean the absence of pain. It doesn't mean the absence of conflict.
Peace means the ability to choose your conflict, to pursue its resolution, without the use of deadly
weapons or the fear that your opponent will use them. I live in that condition now. Yet technology has
made the entire world my wallpaper. All around me, all my life, have been the images of war, so it's hard
for me to lift peace in my world off the background of peace in the entire world.
And it's hard to imagine a world at peace without pretzeling back around to the imagination of war. It
scares me not to be able to envision peace. I'll try again. Here goes.
In peace, I never read about adolescent, barely breasted girls strapping explosives to their bodies.
In peace, I don't have to think how far I am from likely military targets so as to be able to drive as near
as possible to the strike point of a nuclear blast rather than die slowly from burns or poison.
In peace, I don't have to feel like vomiting when I see photographs of hospitals in rubble and
unattached arms and legs random in a street, tangential to the center of the photograph, the tank
treads rolling.
In peace, none of these things even occurs to me. I cannot imagine them. Anyone who could imagine
them would be pitied as sick.
In peace, aircraft manufacturers employ far fewer people. Other countries don't permanently house our
soldiers. We bicker over trade, but not under the shadow of armies. Journalists compete for alternative
sources of titillation. Our arms funding... our arms funding... and there, right there, my imagination
implodes in sadness and frustration.
In peace, do we fund war?
In peace, do we conduct training exercises?
In peace, do we maintain the Pentagon at its current level of staffing?
In peace, do we care whether the president has any experience or knowledge of the military?
Which is to ask—do we trust peace? Do we really believe world peace can last, and that we must attain
it and make it last? Or is that a sham belief, a greeting card, a palliative? Does only the power to defend
preserve the peace, does only military force guarantee it? Is there no such thing as peace—only
intermittent peace, or peace for a few?
I am looking for a positive thing to say, to end this passage. But there is no emotive audience applause,
no tinkerbelling of peace into life if it is an illusion of geography and power. I'm close to where I started—
reduced, and frankly, miserable. But I'll answer one of my own questions and it will have to be enough
for now, a cotton shard of hope. If there can be only intermittent peace, perhaps we can work to make
those episodes longer. If there can be peace for only a few, perhaps it can be for more. Perhaps the air
pocket won't hold us all—but I don't think we know yet how many it can. Perhaps we can find some
room in it, some give, some rearranged belief—without tracing our bayonet down its skin, without
bursting through into war.
This essay originally appeared in the anthology 'Leavened.