By GHK Lall- A six-year-old dies in horrific circumstances. There is little more to say to the family than, please feel the warmth of my love, the love that all Guyanese should still be capable of, in the loss of Saraya Bourne. Anybody could have been at that gas station, any other 8 or 80 Guyanese. It was Saraya Bourne on a Sunday night along with seven others, who were lashed from that bomb blast. May all seven survivors be able to recover fully, overcome the nightmares that can haunt the conscious and subconscious. I thought of an accident first that was due to negligence. It went from that to suspicious, then mysterious, and all the while nationally serious. Who? Why? What else?
I read of suspected Spanish-speaking man and, by now, all Guyana has seen the endlessly shared and repeated images of a man with a bag, and an attentive security guard. First, a world of gratitude to that heroine of a security guard who saved the day from the unthinkable, what could have been an immeasurable disaster. All the accelerants were present. Second, and treading carefully, has the home front just had its first (??) taste of what an internal, close-the-bone, battlefront is like? I read of Spanish-speaking and I rock back.
I read of a second explosion at a GPL substation and I reel. Coincidental or monumental in the planning that went into it to open a new front that is no longer one of words, but one of dangerous determination. I stick to the former (coincidental); don’t take that leap yet to anything else, for the days are too early. But there was a precedent involving Spanish-speaking men with Spanish-sounding names around another blast development near a police station. Was anyone ever apprehended?
I only table these thoughts publicly, so that all Guyanese are alerted to the thick, menacing cloud that blotches this country’s existence. And the deeper meaning of it all. The busier Guyanese are, from top to bottom, tearing each other apart, the more that comfort and encouragement are given to those who want an arm and a leg out of Guyana, and a part of its head also, if that could be had.
I had written before that if America is an overwhelming juggernaut, then there is always Guyana to undermine. With a bomb on a Sunday night, when vigilance is at its lowest, i.e., if it ever existed. Who could envision such a development? I am thinking of that bag and bomb, if both were properly placed near to propane gas bottles in a gas station, and the vast damage resulting on people and property. The latter can be rebuilt; the former can’t be, about which the family of the once young and now gone Saraya Bourne (and the seven injured others) can furnish the best testimony.
Third, I take this in another direction. Do the immediate suspicions and reactions to the presence of a bag-carrying Spanish-appearing man still point in a northwesterly direction, despite the arrest of three, of which one stands out, for being a part of that detonation? Or, was he part of a plot, where a migrant is cornered and coerced for perverse purposes? I don’t know. The hope is that the facts, and nothing but the truth and fullness of facts, will spearhead the official response(s) to this unsettling episode in Guyana’s existence. Guyanese need those facts for their own peace of mind. They need the most expansive awareness of where they really are, in a country that is openly vulnerable and exploitable, and in a time when tensions have never been higher. Using that as a launchpad, I venture into the fourth and final point in this writing, which builds on a snippet mentioned earlier.
When Guyanese see and make enemies of each other, for whatever reasons, an already limited sovereignty transforms into its own worst enemy, and renders itself prone to all manner of intrusions and nefarious excursions. I hope that I am wrong, and that the Sunday night blast was not the opening salvo, a precursor of things to come. Here, there’s a love affair with talking about unity, grand productions are made through speaking about national harmony. I urge that that Sunday night blast inspires every Guyanese-from president to pauper-to discern how vital it is that each citizen sees himself or herself as a soldier. As a sentinel for a homeland that may already be in a state of siege, except that it is unknown. When soldiers fight against each other, then their utility in standing for the most sacred of causes is sabotaged from the inside.
In leaving, my hand and heart reach out to comfort the departed Saraya Bourne’s family in this their tragic time amid their threnodies of grief.
