On a packed subway platform in Harvard Square, Katie grimaces at her Razr, which is utterly without bars. Then she looks around at the other passengers. One frumpy woman’s visible frustration with the train delay stirs reflexive apathy in Katie, even though she herself is 25 minutes late for drinks with Lana and Jacqui on Newbury Street. If anyone should be spazzing over a late train, it’s her.
But instead, Katie stoically scans the front page of an abandoned New York Times. A small headline at the bottom catches her eye: “Darfur Rebels Kill 10 in Raid of Peace Force.” Darfur! Katie knows all about Darfur, having attended the “Rip the Runway for Darfur” gala in New York last month (sponsored by Level Vodka – here for pictures). Like, she knows it’s pronounced “Dur-four,” not “Da-fer.”
Katie reads the first paragraph: “Hundreds of Darfurian rebels overran an African Union peacekeeping base in the central Darfur region of Sudan in a surprise raid over the weekend, killing at least 10 soldiers, possibly kidnapping dozens more and seizing supplies that included heavy weapons, African Union officials said Sunday.”
Kate reads the paragraph again. And then a third time, parsing its meaning within the context of her knowledge about Darfur. She’s confused. Wasn’t the Sudan government the bad guys? So, shouldn’t the rebels be the good guys? But why would the good guys kill the peacekeepers? Then Katie realizes: The peacekeepers are the ones who are supposed to ‘save Durfur’ from all the rape and genocide, and they’re getting killed! If the peacekeepers are killed, then who will ‘save darfur’?
Just then the train came, and Katie squeezes on the car, gripped by sadness. She aches to tell the strangers around her, to raise conscience, about the chaos and hopelessness in Darfur. She wants to – omigod, that girl is carrying the latest Jean Paul Gaultier bag that was featured in Vogue! Katie discreetly assesses the purse’s buttons, belt and buckle on the woven tartan pattern, and is thrilled to be appalled by its gaudiness. What a colossal waste of $1500. She can’t wait to tell Lana and Jacqui.
