#97 Pandora’s box
On the same morning, three signs arrive from
different continents: an e-mail from journalist Lauro Jardim asking for
confirmation of some data on a note about me and mentioning the situation in
the Rocinha slum neighborhood in
Rio
de Janeiro
. A phone call from my wife who has just
landed in
France
:
she has been traveling with a couple of French friends to show them our country
and they ended their trip frightened and disappointed. And lastly, the
journalist who is coming to interview me for a Russian television channel: “Is
it true that in your country half a million people were murdered between 1980
and 2000?”
“Of course it isn’t true, “ I answer.
But it is. He shows me data from “a Brazilian
institute” (actually the Brazilian
Institute
of
Geography
and
Statistics, one of the most prestigious in the country).
I keep silent. The violence in my country crosses
oceans and mountains and comes all the way to this place in Central Asia
Central. What to say?
Saying is not enough; words that are not turned
into action “bring the pest”, as William Blake said. I have tried to do my
part: I opened my institute, and together with two heroic persons, Isabella and
Yolanda Maltarolli, we try to give education, affection, and love to 360
children from the Pavão-Pavãozinho slum in
Rio de Janeiro
. I know that at this moment
there are thousands of Brazilians doing much more, working away in silence,
without any official help, without any private support, just not to let
themselves be overwhelmed by the worst enemy of all: despair.
At some moment I thought that if everyone did
their part things would change. But tonight, as I contemplate the frozen
mountains at the border with
China
,
I have some doubts. Perhaps, even with each one of us doing our part, the
saying I learned as a youngster still holds true: “there is no argument against
force.”
I look at the mountains again, lit up by the
moon. I wonder if there is no argument against force. Like all Brazilians, I
have tried, fought, and forced myself to believe that the situation in my
country will one day get better, but each year that passes things seem to grow
more complicated, regardless of who is in the government, the party, the
economic plans, or the absence of any plans.
I have seen violence in the four corners of the
world. I remember once in the
Lebanon
,
right after the war of devastation, I was walking through the ruins of
Beirut
with a friend
called Söula Saad. She remarked to me that her city had been destroyed seven
times. I asked her half in jest why they did not give up re-building and just
move elsewhere. “Because this is our city,” she answered. “Because those who do
not honor the earth where their ancestors are buried will be damned for ever.”
The human being who does not honor his land does
not honor himself. In one of the Greek myths of creation, one of the gods,
furious at the fact that Prometheus has robbed the fire and is going to make
men independent, sends Pandora to marry his brother, Epimetheus. Pandora brings
a box with her, which she is forbidden to open. However, just like Eve in the
Christian myth, her curiosity gets the better of her: she lifts the lid to see
what is inside and at that moment all the evil in the world is released and
spreads over the Earth.
Only one thing remained inside: Hope.
So, despite everything pointing to the opposite,
despite all my sadness, this feeling of impotence, despite being this very
moment almost convinced that nothing is going to get better, I cannot lose the
only thing that keeps me alive: hope – that word always used with such irony by
pseudo-intellectuals who consider it a synonym for “fooling someone.” That word
so manipulated by governments who make promises fully aware that they are not
going to keep them and tear the hearts of the people even more. That word is
with us so often in the morning, is wounded in the course of the day and dies
at nightfall, yet always rises with the dawn.
Yes, there is a saying that goes: “there is no
argument against force.” But there is another saying that goes: “where there is
life there is hope.” And that is the one I shall remember, while I gaze at the
snow-covered mountains on the Chinese border.
Copyright @ 2005 by Paulo Coelho
Warrior Of The Light
