Courage under fire

Christian Science Monitor has a fantastic story today about Sheema Kermani, a Pakistani playwright whose shows challenge the religious conventions about women’s education, the clergy (her new play deals with an Islamic cleric who’s a child molester) and other issues. Needless to say she generates a lot of opposition from the powers that be. I’ve never really shared the feeling some men have of yearning to test myself under combat, wishing that I’d served in World War II or Vietnam or any other conflict. But the kind of challenge Kermani’s taking on, that’s something I sort-of yearn for. Not really yearn for because I don’t want to live in the kind of theocratic climate that makes such courage necessary. But I can’t help wondering how I’d perform if tested the same way, and if I’d have the same courage. I have the same reaction to a story in Explaining Hitler about the Munich Post’s efforts in the 1920s and thirties to expose the Nazis for what they were; author Ron Rosenbaum describes them as always just one exposé away from putting the Nazis out of business. To do work that important is an awesome thought, even given that it didn’t work out that well for the Post’s staff, of course. Nothing unusual here, really: I’m sure most people have a dream of heroism, of how well they’d perform if they were ever called on. As a writer, that’s my dream—though on the whole, I’m happier if I’m never called on to live up to it.