Freedom...invisible or indivisible?

Today, I want to write about freedom. There's been so much talk of it lately, this being the final day that Nelson Mandela's body rests "in state" before being taken to his childhood village of Qunu. Listening to an NPR report this morning, the local Mayor, a woman, talks about how place shapes a person. The humble beginnings of this gentle giant of a global leader can be found here, but also in all the humble lives he touched, including mine. I opened his auto-biography, "The Long Walk to Freedom" a few days ago and fell on the chapter, The Black Pimpernel, where he recalls living as an invisible man in Johannesburg to escape the police state: 

... Living underground requires a seismic psychological shift. One has to plan every action, however small and seemingly insignificant. Nothing is innocent. Everything is questioned. You cannot be yourself; you must fully inhabit whatever role you have assumed. In some ways, this is not much of an adaptation for a black man in South Africa. Under apartheid, a black man lived a shadowy life between legality and illegality, between openness and concealment. To be a black man in South Africa meant not to trust anything, which was not unlike living underground for one's entire life....  The key to being underground is to be invisible. Just as there is a way to walk in a room in order to make yourself stand out, there is a way of walking and behaving that makes you inconspicuous. As a leader, one often seeks prominence; as an outlaw, the opposite is true. When underground I did not walk as tall or stand as straight. I spoke more softly, with less clarity and distinction. I was more passive, more unobtrusive; I did not ask for things, but instead let people tell me what to do. I did not shave or cut my hair. My most frequent disguise was as a chauffeur, a chef, or a "garden boy." I would wear the blue overalls of the fieldworker and often wore round, rimless glasses known as Mazzawati teaglasses. I had a car and I wore a chauffeur's cap with my overalls. The pose of chauffeur was convenient because I could travel under the pretext of driving my master's car.

To walk "not as tall," or "stand not as straight," to not seek the limelight as a leader, to "speak softly,"  this I think is the Mandela example of freedom, a kind of invisible freedom. His 27 years in prison, his emergence into a world in tumult and transition, his absolute committment to reconciliation, these were beautiful lessons for me and my work as a young filmmaker and activist. 

Like many of my colleagues and friends, I can remember the exact place I was when he made that long walk to freedom, stepping out of a cell and onto the world stage. I was on a very tall ladder, painting the walls of a studio in the Brewery in downtown Los Angeles as partial, bartered payment for some work the owner of this studio had done on my film, UNCOMMON GROUND. I climbed down off the ladder, and sat alone in the vast emptiness of the studio, listening to Mandela's words and the chanting of the crowd. Tears flowed through this ridiculous smile I had, staring at my paint-stained hands, as I felt something enter that room...Hope? Reassurance? And I remembered all the beautiful moments we had, filming Uncommon Ground in Grahamstown, South Africa, where young people everywhere were flush with the fever of change. It was 1990, and black South Africans would still not have the right to vote for five more years, but the kids in Grahamstown, many of whom had fought in the underground Youth ANC league, well, they just knew it was coming. They had what Mandela had all those years in incarceration...a notion of freedom that is indivisible. They had faith.

Now, 24 years later, my mind is on Syria. Unlike South Africa's liberation struggle, when the world turned its attention towards the dismantling of apartheid with university campus sit-ins and corporate divestment campaigns, cultural boycotts, prayer vigils and diplomatic pressures, the world seems to be turning away from Syria. The mounting humanitarian crisis, with a documented 120,000 killed, 160,00 detained and over 2 million refugees outside the country and 6.5 million displaced within, it is arguably at neo-genocidal proportions, and still there is no sign of a solution...nor any sign of international outrage. Where are the mass protests and campus sit-ins for Syria? 

While Assad and his Iranian/Hezbollah/Russian supporters square off with the Jihadist hijackers of the Syrian uprising, the voice of the secularist Syrian people has been silenced. It seems U.S. foreign policy is more preoccupied with nuclear detente in Iran than massive human torture and death in Syria, what the brilliant Asli U Bali, an international human rights lawyer, refers to as "loss of a moral calculus." When it comes to Syria, it seems our world leaders have turned away from the legacy of Mandela and the lessons of South Africa. The quiescence of the international community on Syria is held at a terrible price: both sides are free to carry out more atrocities, the latest just three days ago in a Damascus suburb of Nabk, (reports of which I could only find in Arab news) when pro-government forces heavily shelled the area killing 40 civilians, mostly women and children. Further fragmentation of rebel factions and the increasing influence of outsider radical Islamists also targetting the Free Syrian Army only serve to strengthen Assad's position.

Qunu. Nabk. One village prepares to bury a beloved icon of peace while the world looks on, and another buries countless victims of an unending war, as the world looks away.

So while I am no longer painting studios to subsidize my life as a filmmaker, I need to go back to that empty space. I need to sit quietly and come to terms with this world out of balance, where the values of dignity, democracy, social justice and yes, freedom still matter. And as much as they may be invisible now, they are still indivisible. Like the eponymous Mandela, his absurdly tall bronze statue towering over Johannesburg's posh Standton shopping center, I have to remember where he came from. 

His humble beginnings in Qunu, coupled with so many tragedies like Nabk, really teach me the true meaning of Freedom. A long walk, a kind word, a quiet patience and steadfast belief. Yes, it's hard to find faith.

Until you read the story of Soundos, the 10-year old Syrian girl who was shot in the head by Assad's government snipers, and miraculously still lives, two years later, with the bullet still lodged in her brain. And guess what? Her father's name is Fatih... go ahead. Switch the letters around and what does it spell?