BRATTLEBORO — May 29, 2012: Here in Brattleboro, the heat hugs the ground as dark clouds hover over the mountain; the air is as silent as a drone and as oppressive.
I cannot look at the video of 49 children posted on YouTube, a video that shows bloody bodies, executed at close range, bodies with small skulls bashed open and bullet holes in their heads.
There are gaping wounds everywhere I look. Whole families were murdered in cold blood in their own homes.
It is still here in Brattleboro except for the sound of a distant fire engine. It is stiller in Houla where dismembered bodies lie in streets.
We cannot deny or rationalize this act. We cannot waste time trying to ascertain who is to blame for the massive brutal killings of innocent citizens in the Houla village of Taldaw.
The local residents blame the killings on pro-regime militias known as shabiha. This makes no difference to the 49 children, to the 34 women, to the 108 citizens now dead.
What is the tipping point that can wake up the world? How many innocent citizens must be murdered before a man like Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, steps down?
Thousands of tanks and machine guns cannot stop al-Assad's image being burned in the streets. His image is seared into the hearts of his people.
A young boy rushes to purchase a loaf of bread against walls drenched in white scars by rocket fire. His eyes, his brown eyes, question what he is seeing and his mouth is tight.
The viewers of YouTube cannot see what the boy sees.
Instead, we see the fragments.
Three young children - a girl in front, and two younger boys, perhaps her brothers - stand to take part in a protest.
The girl's face is covered with writing that says, We want freedom. A boy holds a white placard on which is printed, We aren't terrorists. We only want Freedom.
A girl in a bright red shawl, face uncovered, bravely holds up a flag during a demonstration to protest the regime. A mother holds a young infant in her arms as she sits on the shattered remains of her terrace.
On the left side of her, you see an opening larger than a door where a shell was fired into the apartment complex.
How can I admire the red rhododendron blossoms the size of an infants' hands and not think of these 49 children who were here Friday and are dead today?
This is not the only city that lies in ruins in dirty piles of snow. These are not the only citizens lacking water and electricity. This is not the only city whose white concrete walls are shattered and splayed out like bone fragments of skeletons with sheathes of fire raging in the distance.
A robins whistles in the white birch by my window as the dark clouds roll in over the mountains. The thunder howls as rain rushes in. The sky is crying.
* * *
The killings continue because people in power want to hold power. How can we look in the mirror and tell ourselves it is human nature to be greedy for money or power, or that it is human nature to kill other human beings?
The odds are overwhelming: one dictator against millions of citizens who want food, water, shelter, clothes, safety. Yet the massacres continue.
War never leads to peace, as Einstein said. The United Nations has no Plan B, now that Plan A did not work. What does it take for the world to be shocked out of indifference? How many plans do we need?
“At this point it looks like entire families were shot in their houses,” said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. Observe the language. Look at the words “looks like.”
How brutal does a massacre have to be for it to be noticed and for a dictator to be overthrown?
Is the face of 49 dead children enough, or do we need to see videos of thousands of children murdered in cold blood?
We are all part of the human race, even though we have different customs, ideas, skin colors, or political views.
How can any man sit under his fig tree when in other parts of the world swords are still not beaten into plowshares? If we truly carry the spark of the divine within us, or what some call the Christ Consciousness, we must stop evil.
* * *
I am the grandmother sitting with folded hands on the shattered steel terrace destroyed by the Syrian army. You are the Syrian refugee in the camp walking on crutches in Turkey.
The same cold wind that whistles through the rows of flimsy white tents balancing on narrow strings and poles in Turkey blows right here in Vermont. The acid rain that falls in Spain browns the fir trees at Morningside Commons.
I walk into the Dollar Store next to Price Chopper to buy 10 birthday balloons for my grandson, who is 9. He will have a chance to peer at stones and insects under a microscope. What about those 49 children who lie murdered on a bloody carpet in Syria?
When safety is measured by our geographic distance from what is happening, no one is safe.