We have never gotten used to it

Retraumatizing Middle Eastern People during Ukrainian War

There is no doubt that war on every scale brings physical, emotional, and mental trauma for people directly involved in it, close witnesses, and those exposed to battle through the news. Indeed, individuals' trauma levels differ based on their distance from the war zone, both geographically and culturally; however, every single human cannot see pictures of invasions and not be upset by what happened to people there. In addition, the war news interrupts everyday life and destabilizes everyone's safe zone by bringing the thought that it is possible to happen to us. Stevens, in" Trauma is as Trauma Does, "maintains that "Trauma is trauma in part, because it disrupts what is otherwise a fairly coherent and seamless object: the subject." (P:25)

So the question is, what about people who have been surrounded by war news for most of their life? As one can say, war news is a part of their life, is a routine for them, we cannot consider a new war as an interruption of routine because war news is itself a routine for them. I want to talk about it from my experience as a woman born and raised in the Middle East.

I was born at the time that Iraq had attacked my country, Iran. They were bombarding all cities of Iran, and my family had to flee their town and take shelter in a small village. When my mother was pregnant, my father had to leave us and go to the front line of the war as a soldier. When my mother was in labor, my grandpa had to take her to a hospital in Isfahan, which was 60 miles away from that village. He had to drive all the road without turning on the car's lights because air raid sirens were alarming from the radio, which meant Iraqi warplanes were in the sky, bombarding the city. The war ended two years after my birth, but its effects entirely altered my life.

Since then, there has been no exterior war in Iran, but we were neighbored by countries that, most of the time, have been involved in war. Moreover, in recent years, Media has been full of the news that ex-President Trump will bombard our country. This type of news resulted in economic problems and catastrophic events like the Iranians shooting down Ukraine Airlines flight 752, killing all 176 passengers and crew. Although this statement doesn't want to justify the corrupted Iranian government and their unforgettable fault, the effects of Ghasem Soleimani's murder by the US and war news on this tragedy is not deniable. Following up on the question, as a woman from the middle east, I am familiar with the trauma of war, but I firmly claim that we have never gotten accustomed to war news. In my parent's generation, the war news brings all memory and trauma of the war to the surface. For my generation, it threatens all plans and hopes for the future, so regarding Stevens's definition, war news is still an unsolved trauma because it interrupts our routine repeatedly.

In the war between Ukraine and Russia, compared to other people of the world, the trauma faced by people from the Middle East had another layer. While we all were heartbroken and tried to establish a campaign for fundraising to help Ukrainian, we noticed that the way Europe had opened its borders to Ukrainian was utterly different from their behavior with other emigrants' waves. It was perfect that they behaved nicely with Ukrainian, but it didn't mean they made progress in understanding human trauma. Video clips of European journalists and war news reporters completed the puzzle as they pointed the whiteness and Christianity of Ukrainian people and compared them to the Middle Eastern people. They unashamedly used the word civilized to describe Ukrainian in this comparison. It indicated how racism plays a role even in responding to war news. Even when Middle Eastern people are not on any side of a war, they are bombarded by a racist approach in which they are told that you don't reserve sympathy and hospitality since you are not white and Christian.

To sum up, I reaffirm that living in a country surrounded by war doesn't normalize the trauma of it, and every war news retraumatizes it by activating all memories and ruining all future. The trauma Middle Eastern people encountered was not only because of war memories or sympathizing but also the memory of the constant historical fight against racism. Also, all the propaganda European created about the war between Ukraine and Russia became a mirror reflecting their real face and reminding them that there is a long way to stop racism.

Source:

Stevens, M. E. (2016). Trauma is as Trauma Does: The Politics of Affect in Catastrophic Times. In M. Casper & E. Wertheimer (Eds.), Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict and Memory in Everyday Life (pp. 19–36). NYU Press.