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Mr. Rasheed? |
September 8, 2002: Does God exist? This is an easy question for almost ninety eight percent of the people of the world to answer. There are some people though who would like some time to ponder the question. The arguments are strong on both sides. I was introduced at a very early stage to philosophy and maybe I took too strong a dose of it. I read so much of Jean Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx that they were pouring out of my ears. When you read these guys, it is not a question whether you believe or not, but what emerges is a picture of confusion. You want to believe these guys but when you look at the universe, doubts creep in. You are suspended in between. But as you get older, and you see the world moving with amazing speed further and further away from the playground of harmony into a journey of human cruelty, then philosophy returns and so does the question.
The journey of human savagery stopped at the home of Mr. Haroon Rasheed at Non-Pariel two weeks ago, and I faced the question once more as I did when I first encountered these philosophers as a boy, as a grown up adult, as a university student, and as a mature parent and husband. Does God really exist? If he does then why did the journey of manís inhumanity to man stopped at Mr. Rasheedís house? Why was fate so cruel to him?
Getting on in age, Mr. Rasheed suffered a stroke and parts of his body were permanently immobilized. He was a poor pensioner whose daily needs were provided by is wife as the couple were childless. Emerging from a mini-bus, just outside her home, no doubt returning to her bed-ridden husband, Mrs. Rasheed was blasted by the velocity of a speeding motorbike. She died instantly and no doubt the psychology of Mr. Rasheed died too when he heard of her sudden demise. As Mr. Rasheed lay on his bed with his relatives, wifeís relatives and humane friends, a group of teenagers invaded the wake house with blazing guns. They took a few hundred dollars from him, saturated him with kerosene, and lit him afire. The flames blinded him, and destroyed an already destroyed physical frame. He never got to pay his last rites to his wife. He never got to see the light of day after his brutalisation. He lay paralysed in on a Georgetown Hospital bed, then peacefully died in his sleep on Monday afternoon.
This is a story that equals any other form of human descent into uncivilized animalism in the annals of human history. Such savage devastation of a human body inflicted by other human beings belongs to the types of horror stories we read about in tribal conflict. But this particular sociological event in Non-Pariel may not have a parallel even in those types of conflict. Did the Serb troops ever entered a Bosnian home, saw a paralysed man and killed him? Yes they did. They just shot him. Did the Nazi storm troopers even entered a Jewish home and killed a victim who suffered from a stroke? Yes they did. They just shot him. What a group of young criminals did to Mr. Rasheed was beyond human comprehension. The Haroon Rasheed tragedy needs long political reflection that every single Guyanese, but more importantly the people who lead the PPP and PNC, must engage in with frenetic exigency.
The Haroon Rasheed tragedy has moved Guyana into a new era that has no bearing with the past. In the ethnic conflicts of the sixties, human brutalities were present but not with such intense sadism as what happened at the Rasheed home. A pathological, psychotic mental degeneration is creeping into our ethnic conflict and is taking on unthinkable sadistic dimensions of anti-human hate. The pyromaniacal nuance has now crept in. The potential for drifting deeper into the pit of uncivilized ferocity is increasing with every passing day. This sub-human primitive instinct is staring us in the face. Rasheed is the first victim of it. How can we just sit by and watch it take over a country that has suffered so much and deserve a tiny breathing space? Will God give this? If he exist?
But should political compromise only console this nation after what was done to Haroon Rasheed. The answer is no. The Haroon Rasheed horror should not go unpunished. There cannot be a decent human being in Guyana who has not been moved by the Kaieteur News front page picture of a badly burnt, blind Rasheed lying helpless at the Georgetown Hospital. This picture needs to be reprinted on the pages on every daily newspaper and on the television screens so we experience what the ancient Greeks call catharsis. It used it on the front page of the first issue of the New York edition of this newspaper. The paper was flown to New York on Friday, on Monday afternoon, I got three calls from friend who said they were emotionally troubled by seeing it and wish they hadnít. On Sunday evening, I got two more calls from New York. One of these callers made a curious suggestion.
The caller advised that a group of rich businessmen organize a wealthy fund, wealthy so it can be attractive, and put this money in the hands of an elite security group whether local or foreign based to bring the persons who so brutally destroyed Mr. Rasheed to justice. In this pursuit, I think the people of Buxton should cooperate. I believe the nation will experience a salvation of the collected soul if these inhuman creatures are brought to justice. The capture of the Rasheed killers will go a tremendously long way in attempts at national reconciliation. There cannot be a Guyanese out there who can disagree with that caller from New York suggested. I would like to repeat for you the circumstances under which Mr. Rasheed was burnt then blinded. He lay bed-ridden at his wake for his wife who was smashed up in a road accident. The gunmen came, merciless pulverized him, stamped on him, then burnt him. They did this because all they got from him was $700. But there was a deeper psychological motive for mutilating, lacerating and burning him. And that is what makes the current situation in Guyana so frightening.
I end this article with what I feel at a deep philosophical level; I believe Mr. Rasheed was better off dead. He died and that was the best comfort life could have given to him. Why should life have tortured Mr. Rasheed with Shakespearean cruelty by having him live without sight, without bodily functions, with ninety percent of his body destroyed, and with the psychological pessimism of lifeís uselessness. It would have been a living hell for him to have his thoughts taken over by one question which was all he could mentally think of ñ Why did God do this to me?