PEACOCK

I try to concentrate on the serene backdrops behind white spokespeople. I love the New York skyline they always show as the backdrop amidst such news. There is nothing like it where I am. It is flat land, and the sky is usually grey. In news, like reliant mountains, with lights but more erect, we are told stories of one side being good and one side being bad, but it is always told so factually with such a calm sight of tall buildings and light emanating from them like fairies standing still, as if waiting for some good news to come our way.

I never hear the good news though; or maybe I can’t dissect the good from the bad when I wear a black shalwar, and a red qameez with a green shawl draped over my shoulders, saying I stand for peace, but not at the cost of human lives. That defeats the purpose. What would a world be with less countries? More peaceful, more inclusive, less demanding? I think not. Even if we merge everyone and everything, and try to create skyscrapers everywhere, they will fall and crash on human experiences, and the mountains will not move but they will shrink with shame as to what we continue to do.

I don’t really pay attention to the news, and no, it is not because it is dull or boring, but rather I cannot watch people throw ideals around with such a fake face of authority and condemnation for everyone who is not them, and then I do not want to look away either, because what is the use of this or that. The façade falls each time I see an anchor or a guest wince, look down, trying not to smile, trying not to cry, trying to be brave, trying to be sure that everything they are is just and an whatever they do is an act of love, and not hate; peace, and not war. The fake face with those perfectly outlined lips or those grey spectacles plastered on a face can only do so much for people like me who are not represented.

I wish I could hear anchor persons introduce themselves in a more humane manner. What are names and faces if not stories. I will give you an example; Hi, my name is Jeremy, and I am on the brink of divorce because my wife does not love me anymore, and I have no idea what I did wrong, but I wish I did so I could make my pain and her pain gone away, but I also understand that I need to be strong for my children. Hi, my name is Halima, and I lost my grandmother two days ago back home, but here I stand in this rubble in Syria still documenting the news as if nothing has happened, and no I am not thinking of her because I have to tell you guys about something more important than the life of an eighty-year-old woman who had some of the best recipes in the world tucked under her pillow to be passed down to me, except that I do not really like to cook.

I would probably remember them all more; like we remember celebrities because of their quirks during interviews, or when one of them has a statement move in all their movies, or a similar theme in all their songs; and if you piece it all together you get an elaborate story woven together like a myth or a legend unlike any other about them. We are all epics in our own rights, but only one side gets to be told again and again, while the rest of us watch.

I check papers, and quizzes, the news stays on in the background, and tall skyscrapers appear and disappear. Somehow the weather updates are my favorite. The whole world comes together on the screen, every region gets a turn, and there are no distinctions on names, color, and what one might have been if they had been born somewhere else – rather it all amalgamates with overarching clouds, and arrows for winds, and the oceans… the oceans appear great and blue, and like the sky as our canopy, they show some mercy to us. Only sometimes do they do a disservice like a tsunami or a flood – but most times, most times the weather updates drown out the sounds of bombs, and for a few moments no one hears about hidden weapons of mass destruction, and for a few moments the world seems to show, not in rubble, but in hues of yellows, greens and blues – and for a moment it all seems magical.

The weather person gets no skyscrapers, no twinkling lights, no studio with elaborate backgrounds. What they get is sweeter – an atlas undivided – the whole world staring blankly in all its billions of years of weather changes, and like zephyrs, it says, “This too shall pass”, “This too shall pass”, and I watch intently, knowing, yes it will.

I can see the outline of my country, and I know where the next country starts, but there are no lines, dotted or other anywhere on this map. There are colors shown through geothermal lens at most, and things come together. It will rain in parts of Russia, and it will snow in parts of the United Kingdom, and Greenland is not green, and Iceland is not ice, but it all makes sense. There will be a purple sky in Mongolia, and an orange layer of sand in the Sahara, and we all make plans to travel here or there, or go to an island without the news, but what good will that too.

You can smell the weather in various parts of the world as they tell it, and you can think about what those people will be wondering… do we have shelter tonight? What do we do in this heat wave? Will my children get skin cancer? But it all stops there – and we know that maybe things will be all right once the weather settles. It is only ephemeral, but not ephemeral like men, who wage war, tear down another human being – sometimes with a gun, sometimes with a slur, and sometimes with a vacant look as if no one matters.

How I long to live in a world without grief? But what is life if not grief. What is love if not pain? Why would I wear red and green and black if these words or language did not exist? How would I make sense of the world if not through the news, the dotted lines, the winds as they blow from East to the West? If the sun did not shine the way it did, would we all be as certain about ourselves as we are. I know I will be late to work the next day, and I know I won’t sleep till 1 am, and I am sure of these things, as sure as the fact that the news never brings anything good no matter how much you think it would otherwise. I think of Australia, I think of all the people I once knew, and I think how nice a hot chocolate sounds right now but without the news.