Numbers

One. One seven-year-old girl made the news today. She was flying back from vacation with her family when the weather took a turn for the worse and the family jet crashed. She took some fire from the fusilage to light a torch so she could walk through the underbrush to the nearest house, almost a mile away. One survivor. One night that she will visit again and again in her terrors for years to come. 

Two. Two ghost ships filled with Syrian refugees. Two ships with over a thousand passengers in total seeking escape from a civil war that has torn apart communities, sent bombs falling on civilian houses and has made living conditions unbearable. Two ships filled with costly hopes, barreling across the Mediterranean Sea, abandoned by the smugglers who charged about $5,000 a head and then jumped ship. The Mediterranean Sea has been too dangerous lately, even, for search crews to find remnants of the Greek ferry that burned last week. Surely, the ship usually used for transporting livestock would have stayed in the harbor, close to terra firms, if cattle were awaiting the trip. Now, the fate of these journeyers is in the hands of Italy and refugee agencies, countries and organizations which are doing their best but which feel overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. 

6.5 million. The population of all of Los Angeles and Chicago.  Or, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia.  Or, the population of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. (Add Staten Island and the Bronx and you'll have about 8.5 million.) 

6.5 million. Think how many boatloads. How many survivors. How many classes of children and broken hearts and theater productions. Think about how many people enter the lottery each day, or pray for good news from a doctor. How many hungry people there are and how many pieces of pizza get thrown out. 

I've taught for almost twenty years. Because I used to be a "specials area" teacher (responsible for all the Spanish instruction in a school), my caseload used to be a little higher than your average teacher, but my best calculations indicate that I've taught about four thousand students in these two decades. I remember them and love them and laugh with (and about) them...and they are the biggest part of my life. My friends like to joke that I can't go anywhere without running into my students (past or present.) Four thousand-- a drop in the hat when I try to think of 6.5 million.  But it is the biggest number of people that I can truly visualize. 

 5.5 million children affected by the Syrian crisis. That's the population of Berlin and Paris combined. 7.6 million internally displaced people in Syria. People in shelters, in tented communities, without easy access to supplies, without the comforts of the homes they once knew. People fearing what is to come, and remembering dangers just past. This is happening now, not in 1940.  And it is not only happening in Syria. 

I've heard the nasty phrase "Oppression Olympics" and I don't want to be part of any comparison of "my people have it worse than your people"; we are all my people and we all need to look out for one another. But I shiver when I think of the numbers of the Holocaust. Over 11 million people killed in concentration camps. Then countless (tens of thousands) civilian deaths. Over 20 million military deaths.   Humans have a terrifying power to destroy, and technology has only increased that destructive potential.

One girl. One girl made it out of the rubble.

One student of mine, now in her senior year of high school, a Syrian immigrant who loves Anne of Green Gables and who helped her class win a Mock Trial competition, who learned French and English, but never forgot her Arabic... One student volunteered at a refugee camp in Jordan and translated for the Syrian American Engineers Association as they were assessing damage. Hiba is preparing for college and is empowering herself to make an even bigger difference in the world. 

One hope: as I go through my days with amazing students, may I help them light torches with the fusilage of past sorrows so they can use their talents and passions to repair the world.