I woke up this morning to the news that a suicide bombing happened at the Domodedovo Airport in Moscow. This is a truly tragic and shocking event. Our hearts go out to the people suffering in this event. Sadly it is not the first time that such things have happened in Moscow.
It can often be hard to process the news when things like this happen. I know it has been hard for us to process the news coming from Queensland about the floods, it is now much further away for us.
I wanted to comment on some of the things that witnesses and the media were saying after the event, such as:
A witness shot eerie mobile-phone footage of piles of lifeless bodies, none being attended to. A seemingly oblivious man, apparently in deep shock, pushes a luggage trolley.
There was no announcement at all, not in English, not in Russian.
Doctors are complaining that people are dying in ambulances," a law enforcement official told the Lifenews website. "In the confusion, someone sent a corpse with a skull blown in half to a hospital in Vidnoye."
But the scene inside the airport seemed surreally normal. People could be seen wandering among the dead and injured.
The light remained on as security men and attendants wandered in between the tightly-packed bodies. They carried on quiet conversations and poked flashlights in the victims' faces to see better through the heavy smoke.
Much of the tone that was written was of confusion at the response at the Domodedovo Airport. Despite the shock people still felt that perhaps enough was not being done to clean up the event, or respond to the tragedy, such as dead bodies lying around unattended and people walking by as if things were almost normal.
Russia is a complex country. They have a lot of suffering in their past, such that many of us in the west would not understand. Suffering can become common place in life. This is also informed by the fact that as much as Russians are Europeans, they are not Europeans. The world view here is more akin to the fatalism that exists in much of Central Asia and the MIddle East. People don't respond in the same way that we would expect because death is much more a part of life than it is for us in western countries.
An attempt to describe the English word fate brings out definitions such as "unavoidable" and "death", but almost a sense of accident, no one being to blame. The Russian word sud'ba, the rough equivalent of fate also carries the meanings of "destiny" and "judgement", something which is almost earned. Language gives us insight in to how a culture understands the world.
Our best response is to show compassion and pray for people when there is suffering. We are still a long way from the events here (3500 kms). I do wonder how people will behave when we interact with them in the next few days, whether they will think it is a long way away or if they will be affected by it.
(These comments all come from this article in The Age from Melbourne:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/witnesses-reveal-horror-of-moscow-airport-suicide-bomb-blast-20110125-1a385.html)
You can read some Russian perspective here: http://en.rian.ru/
Much of the tone that was written was of confusion at the response at the Domodedovo Airport. Despite the shock people still felt that perhaps enough was not being done to clean up the event, or respond to the tragedy, such as dead bodies lying around unattended and people walking by as if things were almost normal.
Russia is a complex country. They have a lot of suffering in their past, such that many of us in the west would not understand. Suffering can become common place in life. This is also informed by the fact that as much as Russians are Europeans, they are not Europeans. The world view here is more akin to the fatalism that exists in much of Central Asia and the MIddle East. People don't respond in the same way that we would expect because death is much more a part of life than it is for us in western countries.
An attempt to describe the English word fate brings out definitions such as "unavoidable" and "death", but almost a sense of accident, no one being to blame. The Russian word sud'ba, the rough equivalent of fate also carries the meanings of "destiny" and "judgement", something which is almost earned. Language gives us insight in to how a culture understands the world.
Our best response is to show compassion and pray for people when there is suffering. We are still a long way from the events here (3500 kms). I do wonder how people will behave when we interact with them in the next few days, whether they will think it is a long way away or if they will be affected by it.
(These comments all come from this article in The Age from Melbourne:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/witnesses-reveal-horror-of-moscow-airport-suicide-bomb-blast-20110125-1a385.html)
You can read some Russian perspective here: http://en.rian.ru/
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