Catching a glimpse of America: A visitors journal
My introduction with America occurred much earlier, during the early boyhood days, when my father had bought me the un-putdownable translated literary works of Mark Twain, Hemmingway, Herman Melville, and several others
Asadullah Minhaz
For the period between June-2017 and June-2018, I lived as a student of the National Defense University in Washington DC. It was indeed a wonderful learning journey for me. But I learned more in informal ways, making the most of every opportunity available to explore how USA became what it is today. Alongside the mandatory courses for the Masters of National Security Strategy, three electives on Basic and Advanced American Studies helped me to acquire an exhaustive insight of Americas socio-political-cultural-economic fabric. I wrote a few essays during the course; together with those, this opening part is the preface of an aspired anthology on My Impressions of America.]
For our generation, America was revealed a little through Walt Whitman; our HSC curriculum included his famous elegy after Abraham Lincolns fateful death. The heart-touching melancholy of the sailors cry for his captain is unforgettable:
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up - for you the flag is flung - for you the bugle trills
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
But my introduction with America occurred much earlier, during the early boyhood days, when my father had bought me the spellbinding un-putdownable translated literary works of Mark Twain, Hemmingway, Herman Melville, and several others. And thus, before knowing Americas geography, I had known Mississippi river well and travelled along with Huckleberry Finn. The characters of Captain Ahab, Old Santiago and Uncle Tom seemed very familiar, for as they all were talking about quenching innate human thirst for freedom. Whitmans Leaves of Grass led into focused introduction of Abraham Lincoln. And we learnt about his most quoted saying, a profound prophetic declaration: government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Lincoln ultimately gave own life for the cause of setting America free from the shame of slavery, but proved his point by re-writing history pages. Whitmans elegy was a heart-touching melancholy; but I was immensely moved by the character of Abraham Lincoln. His unwavering captaincy saved the American ship in a storm-hit turbulent sea of the American Civil War. If he had failed, perhaps there would be no USA today.
So when on 17 June 2017, we were taken for an official tour of the historic attractions, the focuses of my attention and attraction combined around Lincoln Memorial. This famous monument stands on the western part of the National Mall; inside it houses a 30 feet high huge statue of Abraham Lincoln. Sitting on a chair, the sculptured statesman overlooks towards the Washington monument, and farther down east towards the Capitol Hill. Lincolns statue sits as a metaphorical sentinel that oversees the city. On the south chamber, I read the short but immensely famous Gettysburg speech; part of the last line is ever-intriguing:
.this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedomand that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth..
Thereby, from the rugged battlefield of Gettysburg, America embraced new birth of freedom as its signature tune, for the new road march ahead, for the emancipation of humans from slavery, and for the liberty of humanity from bondage. But then, there was another miserable account; the American Natives were yet to be unshackled from their trademark identification as merciless Indian savages. And they were branded as such in none other than Americas most sacred document-- the Declaration of Independence. To realize this better, we need to uncover the fable of the American West.
Through our adolescence days, America kept appearing with the accounts of Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller, Muhammad Ali, Neil Armstrong, Walt Disney, Martin Luther King, Jr., Michael Jackson, VOA, Statue of Liberty and many others. As soon as we had a TV at home, there was the hypnotic spell of Hollywood movies and American TV serials. That was about the time we had watched Alex Haleys Roots, a saga of slavery in America and the search for ancestry by an African-American. That was also about the time when I had read about the cruel displacement of Native Americans from their own soil, the wounded knee massacre, and many similar brutal episodes. These indigenous inhabitants of America were largely tagged as savages by the white settlers, the civilized migrants from Europe. The natives had to start with a misnomer identity perpetuated from Christopher Columbuss flawed belief of reaching India. The American natives became to be known as Indians.
Like many, my learning about American Indians came through western movies. For the most, these movies portrayed a stereotyped image of Native Americans as uncivilized violent criminals, in opposition to the virtuous Anglo Saxon hero. That model could still be ruling my mind, had I not read the masterpiece of Dee Brown, Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. I sought the book for my research works; and I was also nominated to deliver a thank you address to Blackfoot Indian tribe at the Montana Field Practicum. We were to be hosted by them during a trip to their settlement, and to the yearly Indian festival (Pow wow). The book was available at amazingly useful Amazon, and after reading it I experienced a somewhat paradigm shift in my insofar understandings and thoughts. The usual picture of American West with bravery, gunfight, gold rush and cowboys got flipped, and a darker side appeared with shameful instances of disgracing the humanity, persecution, brutality and ethnic cleansing.
Dee Brown took the title of his book (and also for the creation of a 2007 HBO television film) from Pulitzer winner Stephen V. Benets poem American names and its incredible last line, Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. This creation of literary genius is a proof that sometimes a phrase turns out to be better-known than the poem itself; and sometimes sayings like whats in a name... are absorbed in our habitual conversations, (even if we had never read Romeo and Juliet). This early 20th century poem basically says about the poets patriotic sentiment. Surprisingly for me, I was attracted to the line from an analogy drawn in an article where the writer finds an striking similarity with a Bangla version amare kobor dio hatubhangar pare. Both the Bangla and the American lines kept whispering in my mind, at leisure times and in loneliness, leading me to the surprising discovery of Wounded Knee Massacre. I was facing a different picture of the American west.
The natives had been living in the Americas from some 15000 years ago. When the European colonization began in late 15th century, they were about 3 to 18 million. By 1800, they were reduced to mere six hundred thousand, being severely affected by the introduced diseases, warfare, territorial confiscation and slavery. The natives became subject to many discriminatory policies, lived in their own lands as foreigners and could only become US citizen after June 1924, more than 300 years later they received the Mayflower ships passengers. The Wampanoags indians warmly received the first batch of Mayflower passengers at the Plymouth Rock in 1620, and saved these persecuted religious refugees from England from starving to death. Those early days were about compassionate helping and Thanksgiving gestures between the natives and the migrants. However, soon the curse of European plague went off, wiping about 60 to 70 per cent of the local native tribes. Then came the impulsive greed for land and wealth, pushing aside early philanthropic motivations. A deliberate ethnic cleansing occurred, where diseases were spread among the Native Americans. In 1763, Sir Jeffery Amherst, Commander-in-Chief of the Forces of the British Army, wrote a commendation letter praising the use of smallpox-infected blankets to extirpate the Indian race. After the discovery of gold in the west (California) in 1840, the natives were again subject of elimination and removal from their ancestral lands. This time the move was justified by so called manifest destiny; a propagated idea that approved the Europeans to rule the whole of the America as divinely destined. The natives had to endure this godly desire, suffer Indian Removal and confinement inside selected Indian Territory or reservations.
In July 2017, when I had an opportunity to meet and take a photo with the Blackfeet Indian Chief Earl Old Person at the Montana (Browning) festival, I jokingly reminded him the fact that it was me (not him) who really represented the greater Indus Valley Civilization. He nodded in approval, with a mystic smile spread all over his face. His running of a sovereign government of Blackfeet nation inside the Indian reservation at Montana sounded somewhat rhetoric. Later I capitalized a longer chat with another notable Blackfeet figure, Mr. Keith HeavyRunner, at his Tipi (tent) and realized how Americas concept of freedom got clouded at the Indian reservation.
Battling between nobility and reality, the path of reservation-based improvised freedom could neither provide what the natives desired, nor did it help the later generations of American citizenry taking pride in their past. As I passed my subsequent 12 months, I found the dark saga of slavery, handling of the natives, nuclear bomb in Hiroshima, Vietnam atrocities standing in contrast to the American magnanimity imprinted in the Declaration of Independence, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
On 4th July 2017, America was celebrating its 241st Independence Day. On the rooftop of my apartment building in Arlington, I found a mixed bag of American crowd gathered to watch the fireworks exploding over the Potomac River. They came from diverse societal and ethnic backgrounds, to be the part of a big melting pot. But none would miss to detect their ethnic separation and fragmentation, standing in small groups of American Indian, American Chinese, American Italian and so on. And I wondered, if America could really become a melting pot at all. Perhaps it just made a hybrid society of many societies, a body of some people connected for a better living. Quite frequently, I discovered the 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants in America still tracing their roots back to native countries. I also noticed the white Americans finding themselves not being native; the native indigenous people are living in rhetoric complacency of having own nations; and the African-Americans are searching for ancestries. Samuel P. Huntingtons book Who are we seeks to construct an American character. Such could be the case with many Americans, looking for self-identity. The torch of freedom in America was lighted bright indeed, but perhaps the shadows underneath were not all removed. Along my subsequent days, I tried to realize, if the United States could yet make a United Society, whatsoever.
The writer is a serving military officer. He can be reached at [email protected].
