11
Street roots
May 13, 2011
il
À
/ELj
Tales of humanity, sometimes joyous, sometimes harrowing
BY JOE MARTIN
C O N TR IBU TIN G W RITER
n her splendid historical work “A World
Made New,” Mary Ann Glendon
expatiates on the painstaking efforts of
Eleanor Roosevelt and a multinational cadre
of intellectuals, politicians and philosophers
to weave a visionary charter that
comprehensively details human rights v
relevant to all people. An extraordinary
achievement, the Üniversal Declaration of
Human Rights became a reality in the wake
of tiie horror of the World War II.
“Today, the Declaration is the single most
important reference point for cross-national
discussions of how to order our future
together on our increasingly conflict-ridden
and interdependent planet. But time and
forgetfulness are taking their toll. Even
within the international human rights
movement, the Declaration has come to be
treated mòre like a monument to be
venerated from a distance than a living
document to be reappropriated by each
generation. Rarely, in fact, has a text been
praised yet so little read or understood.”
To celebrate the promise embodied in .
the Declaration, the United Kingdom’s
is a boy who hopes to go to school. His
Amnesty International has brought together
father tells him he will be enrolled but first
37 superb short stories by-writers from
he must work in order to raise tuition. In
around the world in a volume entitled
“Freedom: Stories Celebrating the Universal actuality Sando has beep sold into slavery.
He becomes a powerless cipher. “Sando
Declaration of Human Rights.” Joyce Carol
worked all day and every day, and was
Oates and Wèlter Mosley are well-known
unofficially allowed only two free days in a
while others like. Hector Aguilar Camin and
year: the day of the Feast of Ramadan and
Banana Yoshimoto will be new to many.
An air of menace, terror and helpiessness the day of the Feast of Sacrifice, the two
major Muslim holidays. And only on those
permeates à number of these tales.
Individuals are subjected to the brute will of days was he left in relative peace.”
Eventually three local boys subject Sando to
an arrogant political order. Incarceration,
a violent humiliation.
isolation and beatings are applied in often
An offering by M arina Lewycka titled
murky or absurd circumstances. A character
“Business Philosophy” portrays a slimy
'
bears these’riolations and mustdiscover an
peddler in human flesh. “Look at it from my
inner strength in order to endure.
point of view—it’s not easy trying to make
In Helen Dunmore’s “Where I Keep My
an honest living in these parts, but my
Faith,” an imprisoned woman opines: “l am
business philosophy is to give my customers
not the material of which martyrs are made.
what they want. And what they want is girls.
I have always known this. The others say
Nice, willing, pretty girls.” Sometimes a
they are the same. It’s just that we took a
step, and then another step, and these steps young female is not so pliant. A male
employee administers discipline: “Like I
brought us here. But in fact it’s not possible
said, no one sets out to hurt the girlies
to count the steps. And you can’t take them
deliberately,' but Branko’s a big lad and I
back again, because in order to do that you
sometimes think he doesn’t know his own
would have to unmake everything. I would
strength, so she ended up with a couple of
have to become a woman with ten toenails
fractured ribs and a few broken bones in her
and ripe, moist skin and hair the color of
feet, nothing that wouldn’t mend with a bit
earth after heavy räin has fallen on i t ”
of re s t” The pimp expresses fury over one
Article 4 of the Universal Déclaration
young
woman’s escape to the safety of a
states clearly. “Nò one shall be held in .
women’s refuge.
slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave
David Mitchell’s piece “Character
trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”
Development” takes place in Iraq. Some
Yet in our time slavery is thriving. The
British soldiers are conducting a rough
heart-wrenching conte by Mohammed
interrogation of an Iraqi doctor. A pistol that
Naseehu Ali, “The Long Ride Back Home,”
is a profound evocation of this reality. Sando supposedly contains blanks actually has a
I
Freedom
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frights
Âmsestf Internatimi
Freedom: Stories
Celebrating the
Universal
Declaration of
Human Rights By
Amnesty
International USA,
Broadway,
Paperback, 2009,
414 pages, $16
RÉUTERSZMOLLY RILEY
live round. The doctor is shot and killed. A
young British soldier who witnesses the
gory event is instructed to understand that
the doctor “left the base alive and well and
cheerful at 16:00 hours after helping us
establish the facts.” Told implicitly to shut
up about the incident, he is then sent home
immediately on leave. The incident haunts
the soldier. Before his murder the doctor
had invoked and started to recite the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Back home and drinking with his brother,
the soldier reveals something to his sibling:
“Looked up the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. Learned it all by heart, I did.
Want to hear it?”
“The War on Women” by Kate Atkinson
limns the swift imposition of misogynistic
policies designed to transform women into
chattel. The tale oozes an Orwellian
creepiness. Liana Badr’s “March of the'
Dinosaurs” portrays the tension
accompanying the sudden incursion of
Israeli solders into a besieged Palestinian
neighborhood: “Thefr helmets erased any
trace of the humanity a person might hope
to see from their rock-like faces.”
These and other short literary gems in
this fine collection are an opportunity to
become acquainted with an array of writers
whom the reader may be encountering for .
the first time. It is a rewarding and
worthwhile endeavor.
Originally published by Real Changes News,
Seattle, Wash.
A woman chants
during a rally held
by Amnesty
International in
front o f the
Egyptian
Embassy