Mood Swings
Escaping fireworks
By
Amr Shalakany
"Whatever we do today, I don't wanna hear the fireworks." I repeated the same line, over and again, to anyone asking what we should do on the Fourth of July. If you live in Boston, the typical thing to do is have an early evening picnic on the banks of the Charles River, and wait there till it gets dark enough for the fireworks show to start. It makes for a lovely evening out with friends -- unless, like me, you can't bear to hear the sound of fireworks. Colourful and charming as they may look in the sky, fireworks to the ear are the incarnation of the explosive sounds of war. And on the Fourth of July, the biggest fireworks show in the world unfolds in many cities and towns across America.
You see, fireworks don't just come in different colours and shapes, they also come in different sounds. First, there are the flamboyant variety of fireworks, ones that open up into big, round, multicoloured circles. This variety tends to produce sonorous thuds that resemble nothing as much as major bombshells detonating in the distance. Then there is the smaller range of fireworks, those cute ones that sparkle in the air like a million stars. Those sound like exchanges of gunfire, perhaps M16s or the like. The trickiest of all are the seemingly subtle variety of fireworks. You know, the ones that trail fluorescent lines across the air, gently tumbling down towards the ground? To the eye, they are captivating, delicate, dreamy. To the ear, they are Apache helicopter gunships shooting guided missiles at unidentified targets.
I know all these sounds. I know them from the two years I spent in the occupied Palestinian territories. But I am privileged: today, they are only a memory triggered by fireworks.
OK, OK, you get the idea. I hate fireworks because they look beautiful but they sound like war. Where can I escape the sounds? In the days leading up to the Fourth of July, I debated different escape strategies with several friends who sympathised with my predicament. Stay at home that night? No. You can still hear the fireworks loud and clear from my apartment. Leave Boston for New York? That would be suicide: New Yorkers happen to have even louder fireworks than those Bostonians could dream of. Perhaps go out to the countryside, stay at a small quaint hotel for the weekend? Naah, too expensive. Besides, doing that would make me feel like a raving neurotic, and I insist the problem is not with me, it's with the damn thudding, exploding, militaristic sound of the Fourth of July fireworks.
The cinema! That's where we should go for the Fourth of July. It has all the necessary requirements for those of us escaping the sounds of war. Effectiveness: cinemas are big enclosed buildings that keep the sounds of the outside world at bay. Convenience: cinemas dot Boston, one of them is just a five minutes walk from my place. Inexpensive: for just $9 I can delude myself into safety. Diverting: in the cinema you become engrossed in someone else's story of someone else -- a sure prescription for forgetting about the fireworks outside.
Sounds reasonable, the cinema should do it. Right? Wrong!! When the film started, the fireworks hadn't begun. It was a nice movie, I was getting the mood, watching one scene after the next when all of a sudden the entire movie theater seemed to shake and reverberate with the thuds of bombs exploding, M16s firing, and Apache helicopters launching missiles at the screen. No, it wasn't a war movie. It's just that the fireworks outside had started, and the cinema crumbled before the invading sounds of the Fourth of July. I became jumpy in my seat. Damn! Damn! Damn! Friends sitting next to me gave me a resigned smile: "Sweetie," they seemed to say, "you can't escape the sounds of war, especially on the Fourth of July."
You see, those friends who went with me to the cinema were Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel. Only today did I start to comprehend the feelings they must experience each May when Israel celebrates its day of independence. They stand before a flag clad with the Star of David, sing Hatikvah, listen to fireworks and wonder: is this state truly a state of all its citizens? I am an Arab-American. My people are dying at the hands of my country's war machine, and my country is celebrating its day of independence today, celebrating with fireworks that resonate of the battlefields in Iraq.
And yes, there is no escape.
The writer is lecturer of law at Harvard Law School
