Ethos Magazine Fall 2016

FALL 2016 /

VOL.9, ISSUE 1 / FREE

Malala

YOUSAFZAI: Make Your Heart Beautiful Pg. 8

From the Wreckage of War Pg. 20 - The Election’s Muted Voice Pg. 10 A London Rapper’s Quest to Build a Legacy Pg. 26

contents ETHOS MAGAZINE /

FALL 2016

6 Film Review: ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’ 8 Malala Yousafzai: Make Your Heart Beautiful 10 The Election’s Muted Voice 13 Poetry & Play: Pappas Beyond Running 18 Ethos World 20 From the Wreckage of War 26 A London Rapper’s Quest to Build a Legacy 30 From Body Guard to Uber Driver 32 Fish Tanks to Fisheries 40 In the Heart of Terror 43 Art by Moga

s PHOTO BY KJ HELLIS: Elizabeth Camarata leads the way through shoulder high brush in search of elodea patches. There are typically no trails for the Forest Service to use in these remote locations.

EDITOR’S NOTE

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t is 2016, and there are still people who object to powerful depictions of women. As vehemently as these people may argue that their case for why they believe women are less qualified for certain things is based on facts – whether it be the excuse of genetic makeup, the tendency to nurture, etc. – the unfortunate truth is that in their core, they simply reject the capability of women.

I have fought those who have denied my capabilities since high school. I began realizing the differences in standards people had for me versus my male peers. I officially understood that ‘feminism’ wasn’t a dirty word. But once I had realized this, it was so much harder to ignore the frustrating underestimation and deliberate rejection of my potential success because of the simple fact that I was a woman. I so often ignored and later got in the face of strangers, family, and close friends who slapped me with statements like “Why are you even in college? Why don’t you just marry rich?” to “Just shut up, because no one cares what a woman says anyway,” and even, “It doesn’t even matter how successful you are, Jordyn.

I’m a man, so I’ll always get things handed to me first.”

But perhaps that is the difference. I don’t want anything to be handed to me. I, along with so many others who wish to positively influence the world, work to earn my success, and know when I’m at my best that I have done so by building people up. This is something I think this edition of Ethos Magazine really captures.

We see this ideal of strong women in the coverage of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai speaking out for education for girls worldwide, and in a stunning photo essay following the women in the Alaskan Forest Service. We see how women can live with one foot on each side of strong and soft in the profile on Olympic runner Alexi Pappas. These are just a few of our pieces in this edition that help bring to life the influence of women on our world, and the beauty of the human spirit in general.

Enjoy.

art CREATIVE DIRECTOR Brittney Reinholtz

EDITOR IN CHIEF Jordyn Brown

ILLUSTRATOR Miró Merrill

editorial

ethos world

MANAGING EDITOR Hannah Steinkopf-Frank ASSOCIATE EDITORS Junnelle Hogan

Jordyn Brown, Aliya Hall Phillip Quinn, Olivia Singer KJ Hellis, Mackenzie Moran Will Nielsen

COPY CHIEF Aliya Hall

contact

WRITERS Olivia Singer, Sarah Hovet Patrick Dunham

special thanks

ethosmag@gmail.com

ASUO

photography PHOTO EDITOR Sierra Pedro PHOTOGRAPHERS

Kaylee Domzalski, KJ Hellis, Phillip Quinn, Will Nielsen

JORDYN BROWN EDITOR IN CHIEF Ethos is printed on 70 percent post-consumer recycled paper Ethos thanks Campus Progress for helping support this student-run publication.

Campus Progress, the youth division of the Center for American Progress, is a national progressive organization working to empower young people to make their voices heard.

Published with support from Generation Progress.

Ethos is a multicultural student publication based at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. Ethos receives support from the ASUO. All content is legal property of Ethos, except when noted. Permission is required to copy, reprint, or use any content in Ethos. All views and opinions expressed are strictly those of the respective author or interviewee. Ethos is a publication of the Emerald Media Group.

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s ON THE COVER (See: Malala Yousazafi pp. 8)

Congratulations to the Ethos staff, both past and present, for its award-winning work. For its previous issues, Ethos received multiple awards from the Associated Collegiate Press and Columbia Scholastic Press Association, including a 2013 ACP Pacemaker Award for a Feature Magazine, its first Digital Magazine Silver Crown and two Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards. Generation Progress named Ethos Best Overall Publication in 2012-2013.

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Review:

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‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’

he year 2016 was the year of man’s cinematic exodus into the wild. Where before there was “The Revenant” and “Swiss Army Man,” now comes “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” the sprightly comingof-age tale from New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi.

When Ricky (Julian Dennison), a teenage troublemaker from the city, is sent to a new foster home deep in the country, an alliance between his rebellious-natured self and a patriarchal grump named Hec (Sam Neill) seems unlikely to blossom. The young miscreant would rather write haikus and spend time sulking around the foliage than hunt hogs with the grizzled man, but a tragedy forces the pair to join forces. With Hec unable to have sole guardianship over Ricky due to shady criminal history in his youth, and Ricky fiercely resistant to the alternative living situation of juvy, they wind up in the vast surrounding forest. .

After becoming lost wayfarers in the million-hectare kiwi bush, a national manhunt is organized for the fugitives, which turns them into a national sensation with a cash reward offered for their capture. Somewhere along the way, the wannabe-gangster and rugged isolationist break down their safeguarding and reach a point of wholehearted expression typically rejected within these masculine archetypes.

While this premise seems in the same vein of “Into the Wild” or a story of man versus nature, “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” proves to be a whimsical comedy with no dull moments.

Banter between Ricky and Hec shifts between serious bits of what it means to grow into adulthood and what we do to adapt to life’s constant flux, to exchanges that are light, genuinely funny (I laughed more than I have at the theater in recent memory) and peppered with seamless transitions of mood and backstory that blend into the narrative with ease. Ricky constantly references American movies and hip hop –he names his dog Tupac– and the unlikely buddies’ national notoriety grows as their trek continues.

The journey includes encounters with an antagonistic group of hunters, a conspiracy-theorist hermit, and an incapacitated forest ranger: three neatly paced narrative turns with the variety and change in environment needed to keep the film’s wheels turning. But it is the warming performances that are sweeping

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audience awards at festivals ranging from San Francisco to Edinburgh, which will win over any type of moviegoer in a wonderful slow-burn of friendship rarely put to the silver screen with such cursive lightness.

To say more of the plot would give it away, but imagine a travellers’ journey somewhere along the lines of “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Up.” “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” would be a tedious bore if not for the quippy writing and particular sense of humor that sets the narrative in its own terms.

Instead of being a contrived coming-of-age story that rushes the protagonist’s growth, the reality of being lost in the bush for an elapsed seven months sets a leisurely pace in which we are left with the natural progression of the pair shifting from merely tolerant of one another to inseparable, as well as learning some buried truths that have influenced the duo to inhabit such opaque shells of protection. The film doesn’t hammer it out as a blindsiding thesis, but it has much to say about masculine vulnerability and what happens when we relax and drop the protective shield with someone to get to the core of who we are.

The only way viewers could have a bad time with this movie is the fact that it doesn’t try to adhere to realism. When hiding behind some foliage the duo evades a SWAT team no less than a meter away, all while Ricky is trying to whisper the situation’s similarity to a scene in “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.”

With sweeping helicopter shots showcasing New Zealand’s surreal beauty and dynamic editing, and a duo that never stops riling laughs with their polarizing differences, “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” is a solid crowd-pleaser, certain to draw laughs and reflections on what we can learn from the last person on Earth we’d think to learn it from. If you go in expecting a lovely romp through sweeping timbers and a newfound mentorship that transcends age and the strict delineations of “adult” and “child”, “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” will not disappoint in being a charming conclusion for the summer movie season.

WORDS PATRICK DUNHAM | ILLUSTRATION MIRÓ MERRILL

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MALALA

YOUSAFZAI:

Make Your Heart Beautiful WORDS ALIYA HALL | PHOTOS SIERRA PEDRO

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obel Peace Prize winner and author Malala Yousafzai was greeted to the stage of the Moda Center in Portland on August 30th, with a standing ovation and an eruption of applause. Yousafzai, now 19 years old, stood tall underneath the overhead lights, draped in vibrant purple. Her event, “An Evening With Malala,” brought people of all ages out to hear her personal story and mission for worldwide education. With the combined power of her eloquent speaking and enthusiasm for world change, by the end of the night, much of the audience had been moved to tears.

On October 9, 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban coming home on the bus from her school in Pakistan for adamantly speaking out against their policy banning women from the pursuit of education. Of the three close-range shots fired at her, only one hit Malala. As the bullet from the Colt. 45 went through her left eye socket and exited beneath her shoulder, the other two shots hit her two friends beside her. The shooting put Yousafzai in critical condition, and doctors had to remove a section of her skull and replace it with titanium plating— which she says she now keeps in a glass jar in her bedroom as a momento. She was later transported to Birmingham, England for further treatment and has continued living there after her recovery.

Yousafzai has not let the shooting stop her from speaking out. In fact, she says she now has a “new life” and the terrorists had made a “big mistake” in targeting her.

“I realized the cause I was fighting for was so important that God was supporting me, and even death did not want me yet,” she says.

Yousafzai has continued to fight for women’s rights to education by setting up the “Malala Fund,” designed to amplify women’s voices, invest in local educational leaders and programs, and advocate for safety in schools and educational resources, according to Yousafzai’s website.

She has since wrote a book, I am Malala. and produced a documentary, “He Named Me Malala,” as well as received the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.

After the initial introduction, the next section of “An Evening with Malala” was a Q&A with reporter Laurel Porter in a living room setting, which provided a certain sense of intimacy as Yousafzai opened up

about her personal life before the attack by the Taliban.

Yousafzai talked about her childhood in Swat Valley, Pakistan, which she described as the “most beautiful place in the world.”

She began her education at her father’s school, something that she said was very important to him because her aunts didn’t have the opportunity to be educated. Her father was met with a thunderous applause as he rose from his seat in the front row after being pointed out as supporting Malala on her tour around the nation.

Yousafzai says that her parents are her two biggest inspirations; she explained that when she was in surgery, her mother prayed non-stop and kept thinking about “the mothers of the men who shot her daughter.” When they talk about the Taliban, Yousafzai says her mother quotes a line from the Quran: “Truth has to come, falsehood has to die.”

Yousafzai didn’t shy away from mentioning her religion. When the questions shifted to how she felt about the rampant Islamophobia in the world she explained how “completely unfair” it was to blame the entire Muslim population for all the accounts of terrorism.

“We have to fight against terrorism by standing up with Muslims, then it will bring change and peace,” she says.

“Islam means peace. You can interpret the religion any way you like. To me it’s a religion of peace, tolerance, and love for one another.”

Even during her introduction, Yousafzai addressed Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s attitude regarding Muslims with the quip: “If you want me to come back here as a Muslim, you have to make the right decision.”

Her humor came across as well when she recounted to the audience how she received the news of winning the Nobel Peace Prize while in her chemistry class.

She was called out of the classroom by her principal and assumed that she was in trouble. When she found out instead that she won, she said her first feeling was relief that she wasn’t being punished. After the announcement at her school’s assembly, she celebrated by going back to her classes and finishing her school day, joking that she had to set an example of doing what she had just won for.

Beyond the laughter and cheering, the audience appeared enthralled by the humbleness Yousafzai carried herself with by never mentioning her Nobel Peace Prize

on her applications for college and by her fierce determination to achieve her goals.

She says her biggest dream is to have all girls go to school, but at the moment, she’s focusing her attention on educating the “lost generation” of Syrian refugee children because she believes that “education is the only way we can save this generation.” To underscore the importance of the issue to her, Yousafzai explained that for her birthday she visited Syrian children in some refugee camps, where the women and girls shared their stories, many of which she described as “heart-wrenching and touching.”

"If you want the future to be bright, you must educate the future of Syria," she says.

Yousafzai says that everyone she meets inspires her to do more, and in turn, she encouraged the audience to do more as well.

“Believe in your voice, work, and participate in this world,” she says. “Your voice, when the world doesn’t speak, is so important. Always believe in your voice.

Everything you do brings a change, whatever you do.”

As Yousafzai rose to say goodbye to the audience, the crowd was already on their feet. She had to wait for the applause to die down before she could say her parting words: “Believe in love. Make your heart beautiful.”

“

YOUR VOICE, WHEN THE WORLD DOESN’T SPEAK, IS SO IMPORTANT. ALWAYS BELIEVE IN YOUR VOICE. EVERYTHING YOU DO BRINGS A CHANGE, WHATEVER YOU DO.

”

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THE ELECTION’S

MUTED VOICE WORDS KAYLEE DOMZALSKI | ILLUSTRATION MIRÓ MERRILL

A

man who describes himself as family-oriented, intelligent, and hardworking is prohibited from voting by the state of Oregon’s constitution. Edmund Bradshaw, 49, is one of 14,648 individuals detained in Oregon’s prisons like the Oregon State Penitentiary who are barred from voting in November.

In the United States, whether or not an individual is excluded from voting because of a felony conviction – also known as felon disenfranchisement – is determined by each state. Because there is no federal law governing felon voting rights, there is a complicated patchwork of policies that vary state to state.

These policies range from permanent disenfranchisement for felonies to the restoration of these rights after completing a prison sentence, parole, or probation.

Two states – Maine and Vermont – allow convicted felons to vote while in prison through an absentee ballot. Not all prisoners in these states are disenfranchised.

Oregon is one of 14 states including D.C. that prohibit convicted felons from voting while incarcerated. However in these states, once a prisoner is released, the right to vote is restored.

There has been some momentum to change these laws in the state of Virginia: Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a bill on April 22 to grant voting rights to convicted felons in Virginia after serving their sentence. After the Virginia Supreme Court

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overturned this bill in July, McAuliffe personally pardoned the 13,000 Virginians it could have affected.

Despite their separation from civil life, prisoners at the Oregon State Penitentiary watch the local news and keep up with national politics through CNN and Fox News. Many, including Bradshaw, watched the primary debates. But with the election nearing, Bradshaw is faced with the issue of wanting to participate in the voting process, but being legally unable to.

“With everything that’s going on out there, as far as for voting, it’s going on in here, too,” Bradshaw, who is an avid Bernie Sanders supporter, says in a telephone interview from the Oregon State Penitentiary. “We just can’t vote.”

Since he started his 25-year prison sentence in 1996, Bradshaw has not cast a single ballot in the nine general elections that have taken place. Though he did not vote before the beginning of his prison sentence, Bradshaw says it is his civil duty to do so once he’s released.

“It’s something that I believe in now,” Bradshaw says. “In order to change the system you have to vote.”

The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that approximately 5.85 million people are unable to vote under these restrictions. It also cites the state of Iowa, where disenfranchisement has met a “disproportionate incarceration rate of black people… [resulting] in the disenfranchisement of an estimated one in four

voting-age black men by 2005.”

The Sentencing Project, a national non-profit organization, estimates the total number of disenfranchised is around 2.5 percent of the population, or one in 40 Americans.

“Too often in both our distant and recent history, politicians have used their authority to restrict people’s ability to participate in our democracy,” McAuliffe said in a written statement.

But there is disagreement in terms of allowing prisoners to vote while incarcerated. Proponents argue that prison sentences are supposed to separate an offender from civil society. This separation naturally includes the loss of freedom and certain civil rights in order to reinforce the law.

Bradshaw understands this political view.

“I think that’s a right that we had,” he says. “It shouldn’t be taken. But I do understand it. You know when you go to prison you lose certain rights.”

Opponents of prisoner disenfranchisement argue that it undermines the rule of law and further separates a prisoner’s social connections. After release from prison, a convicted felon is less likely to become a repeat offender if he or she is able to find a stable job, housing, and community ties. Opponents see voting as a way to strengthen a prisoner’s sense of social responsibility, making it less likely for he or she to feel disconnected from society.

“I do believe that once a person gets out of prison that they ETHOS Fall 2016 11

should get their voting rights back,” Bradshaw says. “I can do things like a normal, productive citizen.”

Crystal Archdeacon, the public information officer for the Oregon State Penitentiary, did not respond to requests for comment. Betty Bernt, the Department of Corrections Communications Manager in Oregon, and Jeff Premo, the Oregon State Penitentiary Superintendent, also did not respond.

This lack of response from elected and public officials on felony disenfranchisement is not uncommon. Attempted communication between reporters and officials often results in unanswered phone calls, emails, and bureaucratic runaround.

But just because prison officials are cited as reluctant to talk about prisoner voting rights, does not mean prisoners are politically apathetic.

The most important topic inside the Oregon State Penitentiary are mandatory minimums, which are sentencing laws that set the minimum sentences for certain crimes. Bradshaw is under mandatory minimums for three counts of robbery.

“We’re expressing the same values” Bradshaw says. “If everyone could vote in here, they would. If we knew a politician working for mandatory minimums, there’s no way we’d vote for that guy.”

For Bradshaw, this means more than just being unable to vote on mandatory minimums. The disenfranchisement separates his ties with home.

“I’d love to be able to participate and vote and repeal that mandatory minimum so I can go home and try to be a father to my children, even though they’re adults,” Bradshaw says.

As with cases like Bradshaw’s, the effects of disenfranchisement can spread further than the walls of the prison, to impact felons’ relationships with family, and even further to impact their communities.

POETRY

&PLAY

Pappas Beyond Running

WORDS SARAH HOVET | PHOTO JEREMY TEICHER

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it is wow. there’s no thing like this thing.

W

@AlexiPappas

hat does an Olympic athlete do after the Olympics? For Alexi Pappas, the first woman to represent Greece in the Women’s 10,000 Meters at the Olympic Games, the answer is to run a few legs of the all-night Hood-to-Coast Relay. It is to make a trip to the Jaqua Center with fiancée and creative partner, Jeremy Teicher, in search of a white board for a brainstorming session concerning their next film project. It is to write a piece entitled “My Pal, Pain” for the prominent feminist newsletter Lenny Letter, to road trip from Eugene to Los Angeles to pick up her car, to schedule interviews with publications from the New York Times to Ethos Magazine.

Pappas’s zest for returning to Eugene flavors all these endeavors.

Almost every time she mentions the city, she tacks on “which is great” as if so caught up in its mulch scent that she must verbalize her rapture. She moved to Eugene in 2012 after completing her undergrad at Dartmouth to take advantage of a fifth year of eligibility for cross country and indoor track. She enrolled in the interdisciplinary studies program in the graduate school, which allowed her to design her own master’s degree through three respective individualized programs: entrepreneurial business, creative writing, and English/filmmaking.

In Eugene, Pappas can run on the Ridgeline Trail System, her personal favorite, a matrix of soft trails looping into various build-your-own-runs. The city served as inspiration for her film Track Town, which she co-wrote and acted in. She thrives living in a place where people recognize her on the trails and voice their encouragement. Many times, they are active runners themselves.

To Pappas, Eugene’s Track Town status means that encouragement continually flows back and forth on the bark chip trails, transmitted from one athlete training for the next big race to another athlete recovering for what’s next.

At Dartmouth, Pappas studied creative writing and poetry, describing herself in various interviews as “a serious poet who became a serious athlete.” She identifies the poets of the New

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York School, a group of American artists centered in New York in the 1950s and 1960s known for its avant-garde experimentation, as her role models when she first discovered poetry. The New York School poets are known for their spontaneous and immediate style.

She characterizes her favorite poetry as “whimsical but meaningful,” a style that also marks her signature Twitter feed, @AlexiPappas – a mixture of poetry fragments and inspirational words that earned her the number-one rank in the New York Times list of “8 Olympians Who’ve Got Social Media Game.”

In yet another New York Times article, journalist Sam McManis describes her Tweets as “part Tony Robbins motivational, part Tom Robbins surrealistic.” Playfulness within the limitations of form defines her style. Twitter’s 140-character limitation only adds to her creativity.

A Tweet from September 7th captures an exchange between a girl and a goldfish, with the girl asking “good luck hug?” to which the laconic goldfish replies “can’t.”

Pappas simply craves the galvanization of words on the page: “Even if it’s a poem I don’t like, I get stimulated by seeing words, refreshing my vocabulary, reading other people’s words,” she says.

Collaboration as illumination features in Pappas’s running as well as her mental and creative work, especially in her performance during the women’s 10,000 meters in Rio. Accolades go to her coach of the past three years, former Olympian Ian Dobson, for preparing her to be at her physical pinnacle. But competing only fueled Pappas so much, though – contributing allowed her to match her mindset to her physical condition. Being in a world record-setting race would intimidate some athletes. It energized Pappas.

“I was my best running self out there and to be in a race where a lot of people are their best running selves … you felt like you were contributing, you were a piece of this really remarkable puzzle,” she says.

“hold my hand & take me with you & i might just lift us both up didnt i tell you im a balloon” In order to achieve the sense of community and empowerment she feels in Eugene, Pappas traveled to Greece to train for Rio. There, she primarily trained in the mountains near Karpenisi.

She also visited the stadium in Athens where the very first Olympics were held. She saw it once before when she was younger, as a mythic site of one-days and might-bes. But now she saw it

as an about-to-be Olympian, with the games a month away.

Moreover, training in Greece gave her the opportunity to get to know her teammates and for the Greek community to get to know their representative on the national stage.

Greek citizens expressed support and pride when they found out Pappas would launch them into the women’s 10K for the first time. She received notes and letters. On one occasion, a young Greek runner approached her and told her his whole town would be with her in Rio, in spirit. Then he gave her a T-shirt representing his local running club team for her to take to Rio. These experiences equipped Pappas “to go to Rio with a sense of purpose.”

In her last big race before the Olympics, Pappas experienced a disappointment. She put on the Greek uniform for the first time to compete in the European Champs in Amsterdam and then tripped and fell in her race. Favored to place high, Pappas got up and kept running with diminished prospects. She finished the race lower than she had hoped, covered in blood. But when she saw her teammates from Team Greece post-race, they said, “You are a true Greek.” She teared up not from her bloody wounds, but from feeling she resonated with her teammates. Pappas claims a high finish could not compare to the chorus of “You’re definitely a Greek, you’re definitely a Greek.”

In Rio, Pappas finished seventeenth with a time of 31:36. After all the press coverage of her leading up to the Olympics, finishing in the middle of the pack might smack of anticlimax. But for Pappas it was a personal best. For Greece a national first.

This sense of wonder also appears in her poetry. In her poem “Twig,” published in Women’s Running, human toes are a “kingdom” to a twig lodged in a runner’s shoes, the runner the “best taxi/a twig ever had.” In a YouTube video about her senior poetry thesis, “Lion Eat Me At One Mouth,” Dartmouth professor of English Cynthia Huntington says “she’s wakening this language” to describe what she terms the “energizing” aspect of Pappas’s poems. A sense of wonder accomplishes this “wakening,” this transforming. It transforms the choice to run into the choice to define her life.

“like most days, my dreams will have the last word”

“not just for fun, but definitely fun” Where does the energy come from? Pappas didn’t only return to the U.S. to run the Hood to Coast after the Olympics. Her recovery is a brief prelude to base training for another season with the Nike Oregon Club Elite.

“Doing it all again, but better,” Pappas says with relish.

It has to do with a sense of possibility. No one is required to be an elite athlete. No one is required to make movies or write poems. It is all optional. But Pappas identifies this very “sense of choice” as the source of her energy.

The choice involved is infinite and purely personal: jotting down notes while flipping through a poetry anthology or getting off the couch on a gray day to run six miles. Pappas sees choice as the essence of meaning, no less than the substance that makes up our lives. She emphasizes the need to tackle these choices with “optimism and a sense of wonder.”

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From the

WRECKAGE of F WAR

WORDS AND PHOTOS ALIYA HALL

ikret Ibrakic stopped to read the seemingly unending stack of names etched into the slabs of stone before him.

Although he had been at the memorial for the slain citizens of the Srebrenica village massacre multiple times before, he still had to take his time to find the exact ones he was looking for. After a moment of silent searching, he pointed to a cluster and said quietly and simply that those were his in-laws.

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When Ibrakic speaks, the passion he holds for his country becomes obvious. He speaks with intensity, and his English is only slightly broken, an impressive feat when most of the adults in Bosnia can’t speak English, which he taught to himself when he was 30 years old. Ibrakic is in his 40s and fit, and his style of black slacks and fanny pack across his chest reflects the professional and prepared air that he is working towards. When looking at him, it would be hard to guess that 24 years ago, he was a soldier in the Bosnian army.

The Bosnian war began in May 1992 after the breakup of Yugoslavia, when Serbia decided to extend territory into Bosnia. This escalated into a genocide of Bosnian Muslims and ultimately led to the massacre of the village of Srebrenica where over 8,000 people were killed. The war lasted for three years until the United Nations created an agreement for the two countries, which gave Serbia a piece of Bosnia, now known as the Republic of Srpska.

Since then, the two parts of Bosnia & Herzegovina have been forced to live together as one.

Ibrakic was one of many who fought to defend his country. Although he had the opportunity to escape to Germany, he calls himself a patriot who “needed to do something.” He wanted to keep his life and success in Bosnia, but says his biggest reason for fighting was his family.

“All my family is here, my mother and three brothers. What if one or all is killed? What would my life be? I will be killed or I will survive with them. . . and we all survived together,” he says.

Ibrakic was injured in battle when a bullet shot him in the leg — breaking it on site. He was out of the war for 18 months, but after recovery he went back to fighting. He says the scars still haven’t gone away.

“When you see someone who fought in the war, the first thought is he must be killing the enemy,” he says. “In many cases, it’s not like that. Waging a war isn’t years of constant killing.”

Ibrakic explains that war isn’t like the movies where “enemies come in and you shoot them.” There is either capture or kill, depending on the mission.

He describes one time when he came face to face with three Serb soldiers, and though his group took them prisETHOS Fall 2016

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s PHOTO: Flowers

are placed on a section of names at the memorial that belong to one family line. Many of the names on this memoir show multiple deaths from the same family. oner, they still gave the Serbians half their meals. If there was fair play, they would trade “their men for ours.”

However, he recalls shooting someone, and having the roles reversed.

He says that “many people have suffered, had a terrible life, [and] terrible struggles.”

When the war did end, US forces hired Bosnians to work as miners in Afghanistan. Ibrakic spent the next seven years of his life there, where he started to teach himself English. By doing so, he was able to work up to being a translator. Since the war had ended Ibrakic has married and is the father of two sons. Both boys are learning English in school and his wife, Sadeta Ibrakic, has expressed how happy it makes her, especially because she can’t speak it.

The Ibrakic’s boys — like all Bosnian children — have grown up with the aftermath of the Bosnian War, and are expected to bridge the gaps between the older generations, even with the tensions that they created.

“It worries me a bit, I’m not sure that we as adults aren’t fueling the hatred,” Ibrakic said. “I’m not sure if we are teaching them to understand, to forgive, to mourn, and to go on. . .We can’t let our children hate, if we

keep doing that we do nothing but push [them] into another war.”

His children are not hidden from the reality of the war, and Ibrakic speaks openly about his experience and opinions in front of them. Although the family has adjusted to life now, the war took from them all as well.

His wife, Sadeta Ibrakic, was a survivor of the massacre at Srebrenica in July 1995. At 17, she watched from a bus as Serbian soldiers separated out the boys and took away her 18-year-old brother.

The Red Cross found his remains fifteen years later in 2010 and 2011.

Although he is missing his jaw and one leg, his body has been buried at the Srebrenica memorial, along with two of her uncles. Only her father and one uncle survived.

Sadeta’s brother was described as tall and sporty, and had a black belt in karate. When the Ibrakic’s visited the Museum on the massacre next to the memorial, she saw the sport pants that had belonged to her brother on display.

She now visits the memorial twice a year, but never on July 11, when there is a ceremony to remember and honor the victims; it is too emotionally difficult to go that day.

The land the memorial was created on was eventually given to Bosnia by the Republic of Srpska. Close to 7,000 bodies have been found and laid to rest at the memorial, but the Red Cross is still looking for at least 1,000 more.

After Srebrenica, Ibrakic now describes himself as nonreligious, even though his wife and family are practicing Muslims. He says he looks for excuses to be non-religious because he can’t understand why God would let these tragedies happen, he believes that the blame rests on the people.

“Genocide was created in an office.

Sometimes we can do nothing against an earthquake. We choose to hurt or not hurt our neighbor,” he says.

Ibrakic has chosen to live his life according to that statement, and focuses on making Bosnia the next big tourist location. He says he always wanted to help his local community and country, and by bringing in foreigners he can help raise the income of the locals, as well as meet new people.

To do this, he owns four apartments and leases them out on Airbnb, which he discovered in 2014, even though he had the plan to host travelers since he was in Afghanistan.

“I was collecting souvenirs and was

“

GENOCIDE WAS CREATED IN AN OFFICE. SOMETIMES WE CAN DO NOTHING AGAINST AN EARTHQUAKE. WE CHOOSE TO HURT OR NOT HURT OUR NEIGHBOR

”

buying blankets in order to show it to my guests. My friends laughed to my

plans but it came true,” he says.

Though his business has been slow in growing, Ibrakic isn’t discouraged.

He says that he “has enough time.”

As an addition to renting out apartments, Ibrakic also offers a tour of Srebrenica and the memorial for an

extra charge, though he says he wishes he could do them for free because in his eyes Srebrenica is “above business, profit, or any regular, everyday issues.” However, he has to charge in order to keep the tours going.

“Srebrenica must be shown to this generation as bloody warning of what we cannot let happen again,” he says.

Ibrakic also says that one of his goals is to educate the world about the war, but more specifically, the Netherlands.

After the war, the Dutch government had admitted that they could have done more to prevent the massacre in Srebrenica. According to an article in 2002 by The Guardian, the 110 peacekeeping Dutch troops responsible for protecting the village were vastly outnumbered by the Serbians and were incapable of stopping the slaughter. While the subject is still sore for a lot of Bosnians who blame the Dutch government for their limited actions, Ibrakic invites Dutch citizens to visit Srebrenica and the memorial.

“The message is, please come,” he said. “Please see. There is no revenge.

Just please come, please cry. Please talk.

If they come see, they can learn about the past, and the future so that nothing like this happens again, so they see we’re getting past it.”

Despite the hardships in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s past, Ibrakic is hopeful about his country’s future. He says that it’s important to talk about the genocide and to never forget it, but at the end of the day, they have to find a way to make their country successful.

“It’s painful, sad, and deep within us, but the past, crying, and playing the role of the victim doesn’t help when we send our children to school or do business,” he says.

s PHOTO: A

prayer for Srebrenica is translated onto stone into English at the end of the line of names for those lost in the massacre.

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s PHOTO: An

overlook of the Srebrenica memorial where 7,000 bodies have been buried. The Red Cross is still looking for at least 1,000 more.

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A London Rapper’s Quest to

BUILD A LEGACY WORDS AND PHOTOS PHILLIP QUINN

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haeem Wright sits in the garden behind his West London home on a balmy summer night. The trees sway with the soft breeze as a train comes screeching to a stop at the nearby White City tube station. Wright enjoys a spliff with a friend as they celebrate the completion of his fourth EP, Cosmos/Genesis.

“My main goal as an artist, it’s just… the legacy, you know what I mean?” He pauses. “I seen in a Max B video he was talking ‘bout how we is all gonna die but who is gonna leave the biggest legacy? Who’s gonna be remembered the biggest? Who’s gonna be the biggest influence?”

Under the alias Lord Apex, Wright started rapping in 2009, but he had not always dreamed of being a rapper.

In fact, he had not written music until his first day in the studio, when he ironically accompanied a friend to another rapper’s recording session. That trip sparked his interest in creating his own music and soon enough, he was making weekly trips to the studio.

“At first, it was more just fun to record shit,” he says.

“And then I just carried on doing it, and as I got into the groove of writing songs and finding beats, I just fell in love with it.”

He had finished his mandatory schooling and briefly attended a university to study business, but realized it was not for him. Once he had gotten in the swing of things, he started working with other artists and featuring on their tracks.

“It was just mad slow for a time, and then when I was on that early Soundcloud shit, I was just doing collaborations with different guys all around the world.” He mentions that the first song he gained a following from was the track “SENSEI // JETSON // BEATMACHINEARON” with the New Zealand rapper and producer Jetson. Getting over 200,000 plays, listeners took a liking to Apex as he gained fans from Jetson’s homeland, as well Australia and other parts of the world.

“I started being able to differentiate from other listeners, and that’s when I was like, ‘aight cool, there’s a little fan base out there,’” he says.

“

I WANTED TO GET TO A STAGE WHERE THE NUMBERS WERE SO COMFORTABLE THAT YOU AIN’T EVEN GOT TO FOCUS ON THE NUMBERS NO MORE, YOU JUST GET BACK TO MAKING MUSIC

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”

s PHOTO: Friends, Lord Apex and p-rallel, share a spliff and jam out to Desiigner’s “Timmy Turner” in a courtyard garden. s PHOTO: Headed to the studio, Lord Apex faces the West London traffic.

Feeling a connection to other black rappers with braids, Apex looked to men such as Bow Wow, Snoop Dogg, and Max B for inspiration.

“When I was growing up, I was fond of mixtapes and all my favourite artists were the artists that were the most consistent and put out the most projects,” he says. “That turned into me being an artist that just drops music consistently because it’s fun and honestly I don’t find it that hard. People act like it’s difficult to put projects together when I do it for play.”

Not only was he influenced by the music they created, but he admired the way they chose to live their lives and present themselves. Along with the rappers who pursued solo careers, groups like Outcast, Triple Six Mafia, and Wu-Tang Clan played a big part in his life.

Apex also says he honors the ways in which Wiz Khalifa integrated marijuana into his music, with songs that break down the criminalizing nature affiliated with the drug.

“Look, if you listen to my music, it’s clear I smoke a lot of weed,” Apex says. I’m trying to make a tape that people can smoke to that offers more concepts and meaning, not just stoners talking about being stoned, ya know? If you smoke, you gonna fuck with me. If you don’t, you still might fuck with me.”

After working to personalize his style by mixing funky beats with poetic lyrics about topics like ninjas, marijuana, and life as a whole, Lord Apex matured as an artist. Keeping heads nodding and feet tapping to his

beats, his music is truly able to make people groove. Apex says that the roots of his composition process for his new projects came from his breakthrough album, Hyoko Meiso (elevation - Meditation). On many occasions, he uses his own songs for inspiration when writing new content.

“I really liked the song, ‘geisha’ I done with Tunami so that leaded to us making Sounds of the Blade. I really liked the joint ‘how i met mary’ I done with n2deep so that turned into the Live from Los Santos EP,” Apex says.

“What started to happen was this branching off effect.”

The same effect can also be seen in a more recent EP, Bamboo Forest. In May, he released the song “Spliff in the Morning” with Walterwarm, a producer from California.

When the song gained popularity, the two decided to release a 14 track project together. The name of the EP was conceived from the mellow nature of the rising rapper’s beats and overall vibe of its sound.

“I wanted to be calm and listening to be more of a stress reliever,” he says.

When he reached 4,000 followers on Soundcloud, he noticed that a trend had developed in which around 100 new people would follow him each time after he released a song.

“Our generation now… it’s all about the Soundcloud numbers and shit,” he said. “I wanted to get to a stage where the numbers were so comfortable that you ain’t even got to focus on the numbers no more, you just get back to making music.”

For some time, to keep the number of followers growing, he was hitting the studio at least once a week. If things went well, and the recording and mixing had been finished, he released a song every Monday.

“Once I hit 10k, I was like… that’s 10,000 people.

I’m just going to be dropping music regardless if it gets 10,000 listens or 100,000 listens,” he says. Now at 18,000 followers, Apex gains around 100 followers every 48 hours from all around the world. As seen from the comments on his Instagram, fans show love from places like South Africa, Denmark, and the United States.

With a growing popularity, the Lord began taking his music to the stage. In 2013, following the release of his project HMEM, he performed on the costal English city of Brighton. The crowd went wild as he performed one of his hit songs at the time, “No Doubt,” and even cheered for an encore. Since then, Apex has performed a handful of shows around the United Kingdom.

This past spring, though, he decided to take a break from putting on concerts to devote more time to completing his EP. Apex describes his new, recently released project as “interplanetary funk” in which he mixes funky beats with conceptual lyrics. In doing this, he hopes to offer his listeners something deeper than simple rap songs talking about smoking weed.

As someone who started with no musical experience other than a self proclaimed good taste in music, Lord Apex has established a dedicated following. After living in White City, West London his whole life, his first goal is to take over the UK’s rap scene. From there, he hopes to expand to all corners of the world.

“There really is no end goal for me, because it just keeps going, you know what I mean?” he says. “It’s the legacy.”

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“Are you a safe driver?” we asked. He

FROM BODY GUARD TO

Uber Driver

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reached for his seatbelt. Click. “Of course.” Hector Luis Herrera Navarro, who drives for Uber in Queretaro, Mexico, says he sometimes forgets to use his seatbelt because his previous job required quick reaction time, not leaving enough time for them.

For 10 years, Hector worked as a personal bodyguard for the family of Sr. Roberto Ruiz Obregón, the principal director of Coca-Cola distribution in Mexico. For the next five years, he worked for María Asunción Aramburuzabala, a Mexican businesswoman, billionaire and wife of a previous United States Ambassador to Mexico.

“It wasn’t easy work,” he says. “It’s a nice job, but it isn’t easy to be alert all the time.”

To complete the training required of a bodyguard, Hector took courses in four different countries: Panamá, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru. It took two years in total with one year studying and another year training to prove what he had learned. During his second year training, he attended a camp in Guatemala with The Kaibiles, a special operations force who focus on jungle warfare tactics and counterinsurgency efforts. The training is used by the United States to prepare soldiers as well.

“I cried a lot because it was so hard, they (The Kaibiles) are crazy,” Hector says. He described the men at the training camp tearing the heads off of chickens with their mouths, which they had caught with their hands, to prove their strength.

When Hector finished his training, his cousin who was the President of the Supreme Court of Justice in Queretaro, Mexico wanted him to be his personal bodyguard. Though he was family, Hector refused because “the politics and government are too corrupt in Mexico. There is too much to risk.” Fortunately, he had the opportunity to work for The Ruiz family, where he got his start.

Though he loved his job very much and considers it the best career he has had to date, Hector made a job switch in 2013 when he realized he had missed half of his daughters’ birthdays because he was always working.

Thirteen months ago, Hector’s sister told him about Uber as it was just starting up in Mexico City. After five exams and a few thousand pesos, he was officially an

WORDS OLIVIA SINGER | PHOTOS WILL NIELSEN

*FULL INTERVIEW CONDUCTED IN SPANISH, TRANSLATED BY AUTHOR* Uber driver. In a country lacking financial stability, Hector says Uber drivers can make more than those with very skillful careers who have gone to school for many years.

When Hector was a child, he dreamed of being an architect. “I like to build not destroy,” he says. He hasn’t lost that dream and still aspires to pursue a job in the field one day. He carries an image of a mansion in his briefcase as motivation.

“I am only 44. I still want to do a lot of things.”

First on his list, he wants to travel and potentially move to the United States. “I am hoping Hillary becomes President so I can do this,” he says. Though his previous experience in the United States consists of only one visit to Houston, he has a great appreciation for the country.

“I like the idea of living in the United States because it is so diverse, there are so many different people, religions and languages. I bet you can learn a lot really fast,” he says. He carries around three keychains of monuments from Washington D.C. that were given to him as a gift, to remind him of his aspirations.

Hector never ceases to remember to open the door for his clients and is dressed in a suit nearly every day of the week. He credits his career as a bodyguard for teaching him to be polite and professional, and how to always make the best decision in the moment. He also tributes his acts of chivalry and values he lives by today from his grandfather. “I want to be an example for my kids like my grandfather was to me.” Hector is now the father of four children.

He ends each day between 1 to 2 am and is up before sunrise the following morning. Although he is still very busy, working as an Uber driver allows him to be much more independent and to never miss his children’s birthdays. He says he looks at his Uber clients as friends, and friendship is one of the things he cherishes most. He finds many ways to tie his two careers together. As a bodyguard he says everything was done in teams. Ev-

eryone had each others backs. “There was a lot of trust and decision making.” With Uber, Hector takes the opportunity to build relationships with each of his clients and then, trust.

Soon he will be starting a three-month program, payed for by Uber, where he will take classes to learn English for three hours every Saturday. “If you know English, you can live in almost any part of the world, the language is indispensable,” he says. He is excited to begin learning the language in hopes of opening more opportunities for travel in his future.

Driving to the airport with Hector on my final day in Mexico, a stray dog bolts into the road right in front of his car. With a slight swerve, Hector avoids hitting the dog by inches and smoothly transitions back to normal in his lane. “Nice job,” I say, though my stomach was still on the floor. “Thanks, I learned to react quickly like that as a bodyguard too,” he says.

“

I LIKE THE IDEA OF LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES BECAUSE IT IS SO DIVERSE, THERE ARE SO MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLE, RELIGIONS AND LANGUAGES. I BET YOU CAN LEARN A LOT REALLY FAST

”

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Fish Tanks

to Fisheries

How an invasive species could change the cultural landscape in Alaska.

PHOTO ESSAY BY KJ HELLIS AND MACKENZIE MORAN

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p to my chest in frigid bog water, I cling tightly to my waders, hoping not to flood them, as I trudge through thick clay that covers the bottom of the ponds. “Where is the elodea?” I ask one of the members of the Alaskan Forest Service as I look down into the murky water.

“Everywhere,” she says.

Elodea is a seemingly unassuming plant. It is small and narrow with flat, leafy segments that snake down to the roots. The aquatic plant floats peacefully in ponds, lakes, and bogs but the Forest Service is in the process of killing the plants, which have the potential to wreak havoc on Alaska’s thriving salmon fishing industry.

Elodea is not a native plant to Alaska and was first discovered in 1882 at Eyak Lake, Cordova. Since then, it has been documented in several other locations including Fairbanks, Anchorage, and even farther away in Germany which shares a similar climate. The theory most scientists subscribe to is that elodea came to Alaska in an aquarium. A popular plant to stock fish tanks with, elodea could have easily been dumped into the water system. It is an incredibly durable plant and is able to survive even through ice. As long as the plant has a viable fragment and doesn’t completely dry up, it can survive up to 24 hours outside of the water and begin to grow a new colony.

Because it is such a tough plant, it can be distributed on the soles of shoes, on the bottoms of float planes, and on fishing equipment. In Alaska, elodea is not as harmless as it may appear.

A MEMBER OF THE FOREST SERVICE HOLDS UP A SEGMENT OF ELODEA.

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FLURIDONE IS APPLIED USING A COMBINATION OF LIQUID SPRAYS AND SMALL TIME-RELEASE PELLETS.

Elodea has become an invasive monoculture type species in the region and has the ability to change the complexity of aquatic ecosystems, which are important to the economy and culture in Alaska. It can overcrowd or outcompete native vegetation which can change the distribution and richness of the native plant species. These minute changes could have cascading effects in the food web, water quality, and fisheries. On the flip side, the herbicide used to kill elodea – fluridone – has been called into question. 2016 will be the first year the treatment has been implemented in Cordova, and if the control experiments go well, the Forest Service is looking to treat 75 acres of wetlands.

Fluridone is not known to be harmful to fish directly, but experts worry that changes in the aquatic plant density may change oxygen levels and create an anoxic environment where fish cannot survive. A few species of native plants including milfoils, coontail, duckweeds, and lilies are expected to die after application, but the other side effects won’t be fully understood for two years after careful observation.

ELIZABETH CAMARATA LEADS THE WAY THROUGH SHOULDER HIGH BRUSH IN SEARCH OF ELODEA PATCHES. THERE ARE TYPICALLY NO TRAILS FOR THE FOREST SERVICE TO USE IN THESE REMOTE LOCATIONS.

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My experience with the Forest Service came from a trip to Cordova with the Science and Memory Team where I had the privilege to learn about complex environmental issues, such as the elodea problem. Alaska is one of the last few places left in the United States that is still predominantly wild. The skyline alone will take your breath away, and the sense of community that surrounds the fishing industry is an undeniably essential part of culture there. The Alaskan people genuinely care about the diverse environmental systems down to the smallest leafy, aquatic plants, so much that the Forest Service cared enough about it to drag me along through frigid bog water so I could tell the story of this tiny plant with such large implications.

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s PHOTO - Elizabeth Camarata applies the elodea treatment fluridone by spraying it into the water supply.

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In the Heart

OF TERROR WORDS JORDYN BROWN | ILLUSTRATION MIRÓ MERRILL

T

here is something strange that happens to the human body when there is a sense something is about to go terribly wrong. You can wake up one morning feeling completely normal, and the next with a knot in your stomach, and an unsettled feeling moving beneath your skin for a reason you can’t quite place. Regardless, there is a whispering in the back of your mind that something is not right.

This is not the feeling you want to get while in the middle of Germany with your only lifeline being your best friend sitting next to you, feeling just as helpless.

On the night of July 22, 2016 a shooter opened fire at a mall in Munich, killing nine people and injuring up to 16 others, including children, before being shot by police.

9:30 am We had everything planned for our final day in Munich. My best friend Brooke and I had got up extra early to repack our large backpacks that held all of the belongings we had to our name on our three week independent journey across Europe. We left and got breakfast like any other day, and made our way to the train station to catch the subway to our first destination.

To this day, I still believe there were some workings of fate, or God, or whatever you may believe that kept us from getting there on time. We had to buy tickets which meant we had to break our E20; I desperately needed to use the bathroom; The first machine we chose wouldn’t work. These simple delays frustrated us; we were on a tight schedule.

When we finally got our tickets, as we approached the subway, we were shoved back by Munich police officers who began to tape off all entrances. Confused and nervous, Brooke and I politely asked an officer the reason. “Unattended baggage,” he said simply.

And there it was again, the feeling that something was off resting in my chest. So we left and took a much longer detour, determined to make it to our destination.

1:00 p.m.

When we finally made it to Dachau Concentration Camp, Brooke and I fell into silence. We quietly walked in disbelief through the camp, listening and reading stories of both survivors and those lost to the cruelty of man.

We stepped solemnly through the series of rooms where people were forced to disrobe, shed their identities for a number, and even stood in the dark silence of the chamber. My heart was gripped with sorrow.

At the end Brooke and I stood mute in front of the crematoriums.

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set of them, posing for a picture. It was perfectly clear to me in that moment that some are so lost in their pursuit for ‘memories’ that they are unable to take a moment to think about where it stops. We walked toward the exit through the seemingly-endless rows where barracks once stood, both humbled and sick to our stomachs thinking of how easily we allow darkness to hide in this world.

5:30 p.m.

Because of the detour and delays earlier, we were forced to ditch the rest of our day plans. Everything had been messed up.

We were already past check out time, and our overnight train to Rome left in three hours. So, Brooke and I swung our large packs on and set out to find somewhere close by to have one last authentic German meal before leaving.

We came upon a quaint-looking restaurant called Gasthaus Isarthor. We made our way inside and found a table.

“Those are some big bags you’ve got.” We looked up to find two men who looked about 30 years old at the table next to us.

Brooke and I laughed and nodded, as we had gotten that remark a lot so far. “Here,” said one, who we learned was named Robin, in a thick german accent while holding out his glass. “Try some, they have the best beer.” While we insisted on not doing so because it was a little strange, we were eventually convinced. While this would be weird in the United States, Germany so far had been all about sharing and hospitality and interacting with strangers. So when they asked us to talk about our trip and share dinner with them, Brooke and I just thought, ‘what the hell?” and went for it. It would be a fun story for later, we figured, after our unsettling day.

So we dined on german food and beer Robin ordered for all of us, as his friend was just visiting Germany too and none of us spoke the language. Toward the end of dinner Brooke and I were preparing to leave to get to our train early, but they convinced us to split one more beer, ‘on them,” after persistence and promise of more stories about their lives and Germany. So it is ordered, and

we are laughing and talking, sharing stories of culture and travels.

Suddenly a shrill noise cuts through the laughter as a large group of about eight people burst into the restaurant. There is a girl in the front who looks about 16 years old, sobbing hysterically.

An elderly man in the front of the restaurant begins to scold them in German when a tall man in the back of the group gets in his face and yells back. A feeling in the air changes and we look to Robin, the only german native. His face is pale, his eyes stone cold with panic.

“Get up. Get up now, we have to get up,” he says low under his breath, frantic. Brooke and I reach for our packs when he stops us.

“No, leave the stuff, leave the stuff!” For some reason I grab my bag of souvenirs. Why, I don’t know, but my brain told me to just grab something I owned.

Brooke and I grasp each other’s hands, moving quickly to the back of the restaurant. We make our way to the back near the bar, and I can feel both of our hands sweating and shaking.

After a moment, Brooke asks Robin what’s going on. He takes a deep breath and calmly and a little drunkenly says, “They say there has been a shooting.”

My stomach falls because the rest of my day has finally caught up with my body. I squeeze Brooke’s hand just to know she is there, and look around the restaurant seeking a back exit or a sturdy lock on the bathroom door to hide in.

We expect people to panic, to lock up, to be afraid, but after a few minutes of standing rigid in the back, there is no change. So Brooke and I tentatively follow Robin back to our table. All is as it was before – only there are people still sobbing in the booth across from us and I am still shaking and watching everyone who goes in and out of the restaurant critically. A man comes in clutching his bag, and both Brooke and I confess we later thought, “What’s in the bag?” and smiled at him when he looked our way just in case, hoping he would spare us.

My stepmom had seen the news first and wept when she heard my voice after the call went through, thinking when I hadn’t picked up at first that I was surely dead. We try to sift through the breaking news and tweets, our only information coming from jumbled misinformation from american news of where it happened, how

AND THERE IT WAS AGAIN, THE FEELING THAT SOMETHING WAS OFF RESTING IN MY CHEST. SO WE LEFT AND TOOK A MUCH LONGER DETOUR, DETERMINED TO MAKE IT TO OUR DESTINATION. ETHOS Fall 2016 41

HE TAKES A DEEP BREATH AND CALMLY AND A LITTLE DRUNKENLY SAYS, “THEY SAY THERE HAS BEEN A SHOOTING.”

when I close my eyes and the taste of stale beer and spätzle is still on my tongue, and despite all the moments of gut-wrenching anxiety, we are safe somehow.

So, Brooke and I don’t talk about it. We crawl into bed, and make plans for rescheduling our train tomorrow instead, because if we feel this moment and allow what has happened to us to creep into our hearts, we will surely rip apart at the seams. As I lay in bed that night, curled up with the sound of more sirens screaming through the dark city of Munich, I think, “Help this world. Please, help this world,” and fall asleep with the words echoing in my head.

many shooters, and if it is still unsafe.

We are in the heart of Munich, and completely in the dark.

Reports of all transit being shut down came shortly after Brooke’s first phone call out, marked 7:37 p.m. We are stranded with nowhere to stay besides this restaurant with its doors quite literally wide open. Robin drinks, a lot. We watch as he recruits more people to drink, and runs up a hefty bill in vodka shots and beer, all the while mumbling how “this never happens here.” The last half of our beer sits on the table, but I cannot even think about drinking.

As sirens wail past the main square we are in, my thoughts are racing trying to account for being in complete flight mode. I notice we’re sitting beneath a window and tell Brooke to scoot down in her chair a bit. My mind automatically imagines an unerasable image of a bullet shattering through the glass and hitting one of Robin’s new friends, a teenager named Bob, who sits right in front of us. To my horror, in my mind it hits right between his eyes, like you see in sniper movies. The image morphs and this time it is me, and then Brooke. There is blood everywhere. The image changes to Brooke and I hiding beneath the table, clutching each other trying to remain quiet and hide. I see her crying in my mind; Brooke never cries. The images keep rolling, an unrelenting reel that keeps me tucked tightly between wanting to break down and keep calm for Brooke. I close my eyes and try to get rid them, but even now I can still see them, immediate fear having burned the reel of potential tragedy into my brain.

We are working out a plan of where to go to leave, when one of Robin’s new friends insists on of all things, a selfie. I am suddenly brought back to the disgust and frustration I felt in Dachau just hours before, because I know that there is no room for feigned happiness where there is also death. He holds up his camera and when I smile it doesn’t reach my eyes, because instead I feel like I may throw up.

8:30 p.m.

Brooke and I finally decide it’s safe to leave the restaurant, sure we can make it the block and a half to the hotel we have just booked the last room in. We haul on our backpacks and power walk to our hotel. We later admit we hoped if we had been shot in the back during that walk that our packs would be thick enough to slow it down. Time has moved so slowly, and yet I feel I have been stuck in this mess of anxiety and uncertainty for days.

When we reach the hotel room, we lock the door and breathe for just a moment. We find out the shooting took place at the mall we had passed through on our detour today; The restaurant wasn’t even five miles away.

I slide down the wall and sit on the cold tile of the bathroom floor. I press my hands together in attempts to stop the shaking, and will myself to cry – but I feel nothing. I try to feel, to react, but my body is numb to the core, because the images are still burning ETHOS Fall 2016

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