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Northwest Passages: Naseem Rakha
In 1996, then-journalist Naseem Rahka covered the execution of Douglas Franklin Wright. He was the first person to be put to death in Oregon in 34 years. Soon after, Rakha interviewed Sister Helen Prejean, a leading anti-death penalty activist. Rakha told me that Prejean
was so good at planting these seeds, these questions in my mind. What if. What if the victim didn’t want to see the perpetrator hurt. What happens when a family sits through an execution, and the result is not consequential enough. Then I had my son at age 40, then I got sick with cancer, then my mom died. And I decided I was not going to report any more. I wanted to write fiction. I started writing a different story and kept coming back to this one.
The Crying Tree is a complex tale about a boy who is killed, his mother who — after much struggle — forgives his killer, and a secret that twists the family's every move. The title describes one icon of the mother's pain: a tree by her son's grave. This passage from the book is just before his funeral:
At the grave she reached for her daughter, but the girl broke free and took off for the tree. It was a scraggly-looking thing, with a thick trunk and wizened branches holding fanlike tassels of green. A few minutes later, Bliss was back with a small handful of yellow, sap-filled pearls.
"They look like tears," she said, showing them to her aunt Carol and then her mother. "Like the tree's crying."
Irene ran her hand down her child's arm, then looked away. There are certain things you should never have to see in life. A crying tree standing beside your son's grave was one.
Rakha says the novel is not intended to take a position about the death penalty. She describes it as one family's internal struggle to manage a situation as they can. You can learn a bit more about the author on her blog and check out the attention her first novel is getting.
Thanks to harriets on our blog, Robin Beerbower at the Salem Public Library, and Thom Chambliss of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association for suggeesting Rakha. Keep the ideas coming!
Tagged as: death penalty · forgiveness · naseem rakha · northwest passages
Photo credit: Gretchen Mashkuri
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I don't know if your timing was deliberate, but the Jewish High Holy Days start tomorrow. Ten focused days of repentence and forgiveness. It has been an extremely challenging year for me--shutting down the community hub that we had created and losing 3 extremely beloved cats. While my trials are nothing compared to the death of a child, I am also in mourning; For my community and a place to call home.
I feel completely unready to start the work and introspection required by Rosh Hashanah. I haven't been able to put my finger on why, but your introduction clarified it for me. I am not yet ready to forgive. I know I will be someday, but now it is too soon. So my question is this: how do I manage this season of introspection knowing that I am not ready?
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Eva,
I'm embarrassed to say that the timing wasn't deliberate. But I'm always happy to find unexpected resonances.
Thanks for your comments, and question.
Dave
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I came back to this story for just this reason. As a rabbi, I am thinking of talking about the forgiveness issues raised in this story over the High Holidays. Perhaps a way to think about this is as a process, not an end result. The 10 Days of Repentence are about moving yourself, step by step, along the way. You can't begin at the end. May this be a time of movement. Shanah Tova. - Rabbi Michael Cahana
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I was lucky enough to read The Crying Tree early on. It is searingly poetic, though-provoking in the extreme--and impossible to put down.
It's charismatic author will be reading at Annie Bloom's Books at 7:30 pm, Monday, September 21 (7834 SW Capitol Highway, Portland).
Mary
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I have not yet read the book, but have added to my "find & get immediately" list.
5 years ago my nephew murdered my sister (his mother). As a family we worked to have him charged with manslaughter, not murder. He is serving time, but will still only be in his early 30s when he is released. I don't wish revenge, but I don't know what I will want to do when he's released. I can't say that I've forgiven him yet, but I want him to be released and be able to make a life for himself. My brother doesn't want to talk to him or see him. Part of me wants to make big offers (he does not live locally) and part of me wants to maintain distance.
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just placed my hold request at the library...
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Naceem - wonderful to hear your voice - and about your experience and book. cynthia griffin
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Though I grew up in church, I don't think the meaning of forgiveness was ever really taught.
Forgiveness means you must first have blamed. - Wayne Dyer
That quote gave me a place to begin that changed my life and gave me a lighter body. I now collect forgiveness quotes.
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I agree with Ms. Rakha that it's important not to be trapped in anger for the rest of your life. But I don't think the point is forgiveness, I think the point is acceptance. To escape the trap, you have to accept that this bad event has happened in your life. This acceptance hopefully will allow you to move on and be involved with other things.
But to forgive and befriend someone who murdered a loved one? That seems to me both a step too far, and a way to get caught in the mirror image of the trap of anger. I think that the woman Ms. Rakha mentioned, who befriended the murderer of her child, is still trapped in her reaction to that sad event. She's just painting the walls of the trap a different color.
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My experience with forgiveness is that it is not really possible without the work of seeing myself in the other. Sometime this is a many decades long process. The motivation for this seemingly impossible task is indeed the reallity of having our life poisoned by the alternative.
One of the illusions that keeps many of us from going down that road is that; if we understand the "offender" we somehow minimize, or condone what they have done. This has not been my experience. On the contrary, knowing the mind of the offender is not only the best defense from further offense, but also puts you in a possition to effect any possible rehabilitation. -
I think that retribution can also help keep the rest of victims' lives from being poisoned. I've seen the destructive effects on family members when punishment for a heinous crime is insufficient.
The perpetrator has forfeited any right to something better than his victims' fate. I think that helping the surviving family should take precedence over the welfare of the perpetrator.
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I am not suggesting that the process of seeing myself in an offender always leads to forgiveness. The process is more like an accurate diagnosis, that both frees the victim of the burden of hate, and sometimes locks up the perpetrator and throws away the key.
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This was one of the best radio programs I have ever heard; rich and deep, graceful and mindful. Thank you, all of you, for what you did.
I tried to respond here during the program but had forgotten my log-on name and there was a glitch in the password reset function, only now resolved.
Yesterday, I had the high privilege of working again with other members of the cast of The Telling Project Portland, a stage production performed last May and June, dealing with the schism between veterans' experiences and society's perceptions.
We conducted two workshops in the Oregon Department of Human Services Diversity Conference. The theme of our workshops was the struggle veterans and society find in re-engaging with each other after the vets have seen combat, while society at large is insulated from it to an almost obscene degree.
There were profound parallels between your presentation and ours; we were even dealing with some of the same people in that Department of Corrections personnel were some of the most engaged attendees at our workshops. We could have gone on for hours, and discussions like these should. In any case, thank you for a program of importance and beauty.
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There was one aspect I'd love to discuss further, that of forgiveness. Many offensive acts are committed by people with personality disorders, and many of them cannot conceive how they hurt others. I believe it is impossible for them to truly want forgiveness, although they may prefer to think we no longer hold a grudge (perhaps so they can proceed as before!). For people like that, I believe the only remedy is to get away from them and stay away, and find healing within ourselves.
We have investments, willing or not, in the experiences, often felt as pain, we carry within us. These memories can continue to erode our existence if we let them; they often destroy lives completely. If we project them onto others in attacks or other forms of retribution, we almost guarantee that more negativity will come to us.
But if we take possesion of them, see them as a gift of unusual insight we have been given, we can make them ours to use productively and to generate compassion for ourselves and others. Think of it this way: We have a finite amount of energy to expend. If it is used antagonistically, we'll have to expend even more to defend ourselves from others' reactions. If it is projected in positive ways (and I'm not talking vapid new-age silliness) it may even be reflected back in ways that build us up and make us feel safer and more loved. Imagine that.
End of my moralistic meanderings for today!
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Ms. Rakha is exquisitely attuned to the complicated busines of being human. I looked forward all day to hearing this superb program a second time.
I realized while hearing one of the survivor's stories that by forging a human connection with the man who had devastated her family, she might well have accomplished several worthwhile things, none of which might have happened if the system had simply imprisoned the murderer, or even executed him:
She may have helped him find his own humanity. She may have made it possible for him to realize that he had taken the life of a beloved, breathing person. She may have helped him feel the agony of the survivors. She made it possible for him to express his bottomless remorse, and had quite possibly laid a heavier burden upon him than "simply" facing life imprisonment, or even a death penalty.
Aren't these outcomes at the heart of what survivors hope for in the wake of any violent crime? Of course a wish for violent revenge may be there – I think I would feel that myself. But achieving any or all of these outcomes would seem to me to be more soul-satisfying than imprisoning or killing an unrepentant, resentful, disconnected person.Thank you, TOL, for a provocative and moving program. I plan to find and read Ms. Rakha's book.
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Comments are now closed.
I think the book is outstanding and everyone that I have given it to, loved it and thinks you write beautifully. Your characters all become very real and unforgetable.