I
read with astonishment a few days ago one of Stephanie Sinclair’s excellent
graphic reports about the self-immolation of women in Afghanistan, a horrifying
practice that is becoming more and more common, in which the heartrending pain
which these women are living every day leads them to seek the sacrificial fire
to burn their skin in search of death. As this method is too slow, in the
majority of the cases these women are found before dying and then they face,
not only the pain that devastates their soul, but also the pain of a body
without skin, the pain of social rejection, the infinite pain of someone who
must continue with a life they do not want.
My first reaction was close to horror, but as I read about the lives of these women I began to feel compassion and to understand how the reality of the Taliban regime, which affects every aspect of their lives, drives them to a determination which goes beyond any reasoning about the pain. Today in my heresy I can feel how in some moments the pain touches every fiber of our being in such a way that we wrench away the skin in order to be left in raw flesh and only in that way can we sacrifice in some way our heart, destroyed by the thorns of life. My heresy is that, as painful as it may be, there are moments in which this self-immolation is necessary.
In
raw flesh we experience the bitterness of each one of our wounds, we feel the
sharpness of the pain in the midst of the curative process and when some day we
have skin again, the scars will remain there to remind us of this pain that
marked our soul and our very life.
Comments