It was dusk, a time of transition throughout the unseen haunts of the homeless. At this hour there is much maneuvering as anxiety begins to rise in anticipation of the approaching darkness. At dusk there is the sense that one's options are diminishing, that events are already in motion that will determine the course of the dreaded night. And yesterday, this is precisely the time at which I met Sam.
Sam was starting to shift on the bus stop bench even before I first spoke with him, but what caught my attention initially were his bulging eyes. A quick google search will point out over 140 diseases that present themselves with this symptom, from iodine deficiency to hyperthyroidism, from goiter to malignant hypertension. But as we began to chat, I realized that Sam was not the least bit interested in this sort of diagnosis; he had far more pressing concerns than the slow, inevitable march of a degenerative disease.
"I can't take it out here," he said plaintively. "I'm a prisoner. I can't escape ... this." At 65 he was ready for it to all be over. His pants were a series of stains, what mostly looked like gravy, and his feet were shod in well-worn slippers. Beside him was the tell-tale grocery cart draped with garbage bags containing the bottles and cans he managed to pull from the city refuse.
As he began to narrate his recent events, I looked down to his left hand resting just inches from my shoulder. His gnarled fingers stretched their thinning skin and curved into thick, yellowed talons--and across his knuckles were the harrowing streaks of blood.
"I just needed a break," he continued, and before long he had described how, in order to escape the violence of his circumstances, deprived as he was of any semblance of human dignity, he had taken matters into his own hands. "I found a busted bottle lying in the gutter, and took it, and went to work on my arm here." And with that he made a vague sawing motion, bubbles of mucus blowing from a single nostril.
On that night, he had sliced and peeled his forearm to a mass of oozing lacerations.
He wanted to die, but this act of self-mutilation was a feigned suicide, for he proceeded to tell me how he sought out a sherif's deputy, this being the middle of the night, and presented himself with ravaged arm in full-view. "The sherif, he called an ambulance, and they took me to the EPS [Emergency Psychiatric Services] down there at Valley Med."
"What happened to you at EPS?" I inquired, not disguising my horror. I watched as his fingers repeatedly straightened, then curled back around his arm, more like tentacles than extensions of a human hand.
"Oh, well, they gave me some medicines, you know. But I got to sleep in a bed that night," he said with a grin that revealed some missing teeth and clearly infected gums.
"How long did they keep you there?"
"Oh," and then he thought for a moment. I was wondering if it was several weeks, or perhaps some number of months. "They let me go after 'bout 18 or 19 hours." He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of prescription medication. It was then that I noticed the orange hospital bracelet still encircling his rawboned wrist.
"What do you mean they 'let you go?' Where did they take you?"
"Nowhere." He said matter-of-factly. "They just pointed me to the door, and out I went. They gave me these pills here, but I ain't taken 'em." He rattled them in their amber plastic, then returned them to their place.
It is difficult to talk to people in Sam's circumstances and not be mindful of the persistent state of war that rages throughout so many of our neighbors' lives, a war with effects just as ruinous as any employing bullets and artillery. Families are being forced from their homes, adults are wandering from state to state in search of work, the elderly are languishing in out-of-the-way places, and children are being denied the opportunity of a decent education. The mental and emotional violence they suffer is real.
When we contemplate armed conflict, we cling to the hope that most nations--certainly our own--will adhere to the humanitarian guidelines laid out in the Geneva Conventions. However, there are no such conventions for our own citizens during an ostensible state of peace. Thousands of our neighbors must even now sift through garbage for their food, spend freezing nights without adequate shelter or covering, allow medical conditions to fester, watch their hygiene needs founder without the means to clean themselves, and endure the indignities that await those whose destitution is put on display for every passer-by to see and scorn.
Here are just a few excerpts from the Geneva Conventions:
Art. 26: The basic daily food rations shall be sufficient in quantity, quality, and variety to keep prisoners of war in good health and to prevent loss of weight or the development of nutritional deficiencies.
Art. 27: Clothing, underwear, and footwear shall be supplied to prisoners of war in sufficient quantities by the Detaining Power, which shall make allowance for the climate where the prisoners are detained.
Art. 29: The Detaining Power shall take all sanitary measures necessary to ensure the [prisoners'] cleanliness and healthfulness. Prisoners of war shall have for their use, day and night, conveniences that conform to the rules of hygiene and are maintained in a constant state of cleanliness.
Art. 14: Prisoners of war are entitled in all circumstances to respect for their persons and their honor.
Given the fact that so many thousands of our local residents are denied these rights each day, perhaps the sensible thing to do is formally recognize that a state of hostilities exists within our society and invoke the Geneva Conventions on behalf of our community's most beleaguered members.
Let it not be said that open war is safer for our own families and individuals than is our so-called peace.
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