Anger, Despair, and Hope in the Time of Rendition

One ordinary Friday night, I came face to face with the kind of anger and despair that I didn’t realize I had in me. It was the kind that made me cry for people I did not know, for faces I did not see, for a society I did not understand. It made me question the pillars of my existence—everything that I had based my life upon—and it made me see the pettiness of human life. What is the point of all this?, I cried out. Nothing could comfort me then; these thoughts still haunt me until now.

I was watching Rendition, the 2007 film about an Egyptian immigrant to the United States who is abducted by the CIA for being suspected of having links to an Islamic terrorist group. Reese Witherspoon, one of my favorite actresses, plays Isabella El-Ibrahimi, the distraught and very pregnant wife of Egyptian Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), who seems to have disappeared from his flight home without a trace. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Douglas Freeman, a CIA analyst whose job it is to “secure information” about Anwar’s suspected terrorist links and their activities—no matter what it takes. Meryl Streep plays the cold, calculating, and unfeeling CIA boss, Corinne Whitman, who ensures that nothing about Anwar’s whereabouts or the CIA’s underground activities leak out to the public.

I shall not go into plot details here; I admit that there were times when I was too caught up in my own reflections to pay full attention to how the story unfolded. Nonetheless, I was riveted and engaged for most of the movie—to the point where everything seemed very real and close to home. And then the tears started falling.

At first, the tears were for all those men and women who have sacrificed their loved ones to the bitterness of war—to battles with neither principled death nor honorable victory, to horrors and pains without justification or absolution. Then I started wailing like I never had before, because I realized that no matter what we do, the killing will never stop. Rich and powerful countries will always find a way to wield power and force over those of us at the bottom of the food chain. Children will continue to die because of hunger and malnutrition and treatable diseases—causes that could be addressed with political will. Religious and societies and cultures will continue to exclude each other and try to justify acts that are ultimately uncalled for. All this while tiny circles of wealth go around the world in their yachts, eating the freshest, most exotic food and sipping the best wine. All this while teenaged brats prance around in their hot cars, flashing extensions of Daddy’s card and racking up luxury purchases that would already be enough to send an impoverished child (who did not choose to be born that way) to University. All this while coke fiends fill the party scene and crowd the already-overpopulated country with their meaningless, pitiful existence.

What is the meaning of all this?? I asked myself. You think your life is important—you think what you’re doing and the people you’re meeting are important—but what are you doing to stop the madness? What are you doing to feed or clothe one more person, to send one more child to school, to make sure that people don’t die meaningless deaths? What is your life really all about??

Silence.

I realized that what I’m doing now—whatever that is—still isn’t enough.

It was the most depressing thought in the world, at 3 A.M.