happy endings

The other night I couldn’t sleep. I called a friend and she told me a bedtime story. The story turned me into a princess and was created around some of my life events. However, she gave them a little different spin than I normally think of when I look back on the past. It was nice. :-) And it got me to thinking about people’s stories. How much of our translation of these stories changes the events or how we respond to them; how the stories are written and the words we use to describe; the picture it paints in our memories.

I record people’s stories every day. Then my supervisors read what I wrote. Some comments come back and often I am either too descriptive or not descriptive enough (I think it depends on their mood that day!) Either way, it is a balance and a judgment call of how much and what I write down on paper. The stories I communicate play a large part in whether these refugees are approved for resettlement or not. Any little discrepancies can disqualify them.

I was thinking today as I wrote a case that this would make a good movie! And then I thought of the cases I had yesterday that were even more dramatic – they would have a deeper plot and create a much more colorful film. I then thought of the film I watched last night on Kurdish refugees in Iraq at the beginning of the war. The film was done beautifully and was very interesting…but as the story unfolded, the truth of it was very difficult to watch.

I’m not able to visualize a lot of the events that make up many of these refugees stories. I can’t wrap my mind around what it would feel like or look like to be tortured and beaten or raped and pregnant, carrying that man’s child as a reminder of that awful night. I struggle with the words to relate or bring a bit of comfort to these people as they sit in front of me and share these very uncomfortable events. I normally share and empathize with people who I’ve had similar experiences with – or try to find a similar experience to relate with. I can’t do that with many of these people. And I wish I could. I don’t wish for the experiences, but I wish I could understand where they came from and what causes the looks on their faces when they share with me their stories. I wish I could understand. I want to communicate their stories in a way that would not provoke sympathy, but share their life and who they are. They are beautiful people.

I like to watch the documentaries or the international films that are out there to communicate reality and share truth of what is really happening. And I used to think that the more exposure I have, the more I can see and read and hear of what’s really happening, the more empathetic I could be with people and more effective in working towards a positive change in this world. But I don’t know that seeing such horrific things will do that. I don’t know that experiencing those things would do that. Those experiences leave scars and I don’t know that they are always able to heal.

I wish I could turn each refugee story into a bedtime story that would be enchanting and make you feel good at the end; I fear though that many of them are still in that documentary stage that is interesting and intriguing, but leaves you a bit haunted with the images the next day. I hope that for many of these refugees, their stories will continue. And that they all will have happy endings.