Is Sheltered Safer?

Living in the United States, most people cannot even imagine what it is like to live in the Middle-East. In chapter 14 of Tony Horwitz’s novel, he explains his trip to Beirut in great detail. While spending time on a boat, he meets a young man named Marwan. They listen to the radio which happens to be describing the events in Beirut that day. What surprised me the most about Horwitz’s conversation with this man is that Marwan seems to have a very casual attitude on the entire Middle-Eastern conflict, illustrated by his comment on page 223, “ ‘I might as well do some tanning now, because I won’t get any sun down in the bomb shelter.’” This is intriguing to me because people who live in this region of the world for most of their lives are so accustomed to the violence, that they soon chose to make jokes about it. Growing up in a small sheltered community, most of us never even think about a bomb shelter, or have to worry about people planning to bomb our cities. Sometimes we take for granted the safe, sheltered life we live, not thinking about how people in other countries have to wake up every day wondering if their town will be bombed or if gunfire will break out near a school and kill a bunch of people. The fact is, people living in the Middle-East are probably much more intelligent and prepared for life than we are. They know how to survive bombings, and how to look for anything suspicious, while here in our small-town private school, it never crosses our minds that we could at any time be threatened by bombs or gunfire. Maybe it is about time we started learning from other countries and educate our people on how to protect themselves from danger, if it ever presents itself.

EJ