Fair-y Tales: A Message to Us in the Wake of the #ChapelHillShooting

Fair-y Tales: A Message to Us in the Wake of the #ChapelHillShooting by Anwar Omeish We weren’t born with fire in our veins and metal on our fingers, when our mothers crossed an ocean to bear us here they didn’t come ready to slay dragons, they thought the Fair Knight had slain them long ago, but perhaps they should have known better. We know that human babies are born unable to care for themselves, but it’s something else entirely to be born missing the suit of armor no one ever knew you’d need. Who knew we’d have to sail through a moat of crescent-star blood, walk through gates lined with stab wounds and gunshots and flung slurs, enter the castle whose walls are etched with reasons why we’d never really be from here – who knew our very hearts would be fighting a battle beat by stuttering beat? But no. This armor came from standing on the castle steps looking in wishing we had a real room like the princess inside, looking down and finding out that we just don’t fit the dress code – try again, build something new, ‘I’m not exotic, I’m exhausted.’ ‘you can tell me if you’re oppressed,’ look both ways before you cross the road in case someone might want to hit you, ‘your English is so good!’ ‘why won’t your people just stop killing ours?’ ‘go back where you came from’ ‘I’m surprised our dad hasn’t been arrested yet; all of his friends have,’ ‘we should solve them with a bullet to the head,’ forget the pounding phone calls that come at night, ‘they just hate our freedom,’ the guy who spat at you while you were selling girl scout cookies, ‘please don’t blow me up ha ha ha,’ the stories (or lack thereof) of the deaths and the beatings and the tragedies – we took all of this, layer upon internalized layer, built ourselves suits of armor forged by the smiths of an identity all our own, they say that the best armor isn’t born, it’s made, but the moment you think that nothing hasn’t been touched by the Styx, an arrow hits you in the heel, you tumble down and realize no suit of armor is well-forged enough, no amount of goodness hard enough, to keep everything inside you from shaking. You never quite lose the fear. It bleeds out from the execution style gunshot wounds, oozes from the ground beneath the parking lots where truth is buried, stares up at you from the pictures that you see yourself and your family in, leers from the one degree of separation between you and your lord, whispers the names of your fallen, warning or omen you don’t know – Deah, Razan, Yoser, chasing you in your dreams, trailing scaly claws down your back trying to engulf you in a ball of flame. My friends, the Fair Knight is a myth, thought up to douse fiery fears in fiction. I wish I could tell you that he will happily-ever-after save you, but the truth is the only knight that’s here is you, the only armor, the one you fashioned for yourself; and though your mother didn’t bear you with fire in your veins and metal on your fingers, she bore you with power in your lungs and trut