Everyday violence - Page 3
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 13: The Next Big Thing
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Julienne van Loon
I TRIED TO IMAGINE MYSELF IN ANDREW'S SHOES, deeply drunk and shifting towards a moment of humiliation that gives way to anger – or worse, despair. It had already been announced to the court that Andrew was nineteen and unemployed. He was not a handsome man, either – not like Hasan. Judging by his body language, he lacked self-esteem. Where did the move toward violence originate, I wondered. Was it when the girls giggled at Hasan's joke? Imagining myself in Andrew's body, this is when it happens. It is as fragile as single glance, a spark of cruelty via mirth.
And had he really forgotten? Of course it was plausible. We all forget this and remember that after too much to drink. I was reminded, too, of something Hasan's friend had said, something about Andrew just standing there after he'd brought the bottle down on Hasan's face. He'd described a moment in which the accused seemed shocked at what had just happened. And only after it sank in did he start to run. Even without alcohol, it's possible to forget something you can't admit to yourself, a wilful act – especially if it's horrific. Could Andrew be suffering a kind of post-traumatic memory loss? Or was he just afraid to admit to what he'd done?
Then there was that carefully chosen word – "paranoid" – which the lawyer for the prosecution would repeat in her summing up of the case. I wondered whether Hasan, at twenty, knew the strength of that word – everything it suggested – and I thought again of my own friend, the schizophrenic. Was it normal to be out drinking at 3am without any friends? Would it be normal, if you were on your own, to think that the smart arse over on the lounge, the one who's more handsome than you and has the attention of all the girls, is saying something about you, making a joke at your expense – especially when he makes the girls laugh and you're left hovering in the corner near the fire exit, and he's just glanced at you, right?
The Macquarie Dictionary lists two meanings for "paranoid": "1. pertaining to or affected by paranoia. 2. Colloq. emotionally hypersensitive". Which meaning was Hasan suggesting in relation to the accused – the clinical or the colloquial? And this is where Andrew's silence becomes a risk, a liability. There's something abnormal about hitting a guy you don't know in the face with an empty beer stubbie, unprovoked. Two of the witnesses had demonstrated the hand-action involved. It required force, a fierce over-arm strike. I was cautious about the word "paranoid", and I was annoyed that the mere suggestion of mental illness could do so much for the case for the prosecution. How easily that one word instils fear, perhaps completely discrediting an otherwise ordinary young man. How could we know how sane or otherwise Andrew was if he wasn't willing to speak? And if he were clinically paranoid, where would that leave his culpability?
Something else was bothering me too: where did race figure in all this? Andrew was a Caucasian man; Hasan was not, nor was Hasan's friend. In this case in Tasmania, six months prior to the events at Cronulla, were the underlying tensions race-related? If so, nobody was mentioning it. And I was not in the least surprised about this particular silence. This is the kind of issue that's very normal for people to be silent about in Australia, especially in a formal setting such as a court room. How would the jury react, I wondered? Would they mention the word "race" behind closed doors? I would never know. If this case was really about two "young lions" and an "Aussie", no one was willing to admit it.
IT WAS MID-AFTERNOON. ANDREW SAT PERFECTLY STILL. He looked no different now than he had that morning when he'd first entered the court. I remembered the hand gesture he had given the lawyer who asked him how he was feeling: "So-so." Apart from an accidental fracture – three words – he had been silent all day.
The case was drawing to a close. The two lawyers each summed up their arguments and the judge counselled the jury. Earlier in the day, the issue of self-defence had been mentioned. It was now made clear to the jury that self-defence was not an issue they needed to consider. It was also made clear that Andrew was completely within his rights to remain silent before the court. The jurors were not to invent reasons for his silence, nor to question it. They had simply to go on the facts of the case that had been presented. When the twelve jurors filed out and Andrew retired to another room with his lawyer, the court staff placed bets on the length of time it would take the jury to come down with the verdict.
"Ten minutes," said the security guard.
"Fifteen," said the magistrate's assistant.
They were both wrong.
It took two hours, and even then the jury was not unanimous. Ten of the twelve found him guilty. But what was going on in the heads of the other two, I wondered. Did they detect that set up about madness and dispute it? Or was it that they didn't trust Hasan and his friend, the pair of lions? No explanation was given: ten was sufficient to put Andrew away.
The judge granted bail and set a date a month later for sentencing. As I left the court, I said goodbye to the security guard with whom I'd been chatting. We joked about his lost bet and I was still smiling about it as I passed Andrew's mother in the foyer. She was standing up now, waiting to hear the news. I suspect my smile turned into a look of pity, and I felt the shadow of a wall between us as she met my gaze placidly, sincerely. I was reminded of the stare I'd been given by the woman in the Magistrates Court and I suddenly regretted my presence there, my interest in the case. Who was I? Andrew's mother craned her neck to see if her family's lawyer was in sight somewhere behind me. I was conscious for a moment that I already knew the verdict and that she did not, and part of me wanted to stop and speak to her. Instead, I looked away and walked on; I didn't know how to begin.
Outside, the cold winter air on Salamanca Place forced me to pull up my collar. Here I was reminded of my old friend and her impossible travel guide. In the ten days or so I'd been in Hobart, I'd been picking up all sorts of glossy tourist brochures about trips to Port Arthur and the like. So far, I hadn't taken any. And now I felt as if I had just travelled the state vicariously from the back rows of the local courts. There was nothing more to see.
As I continued along the footpath, I couldn't bring myself to think about simple things like what I was going to eat for dinner or whether I would walk straight down the block or turn right at the next corner. I was suddenly very unsure about everything. I felt completely disoriented.
The image I couldn't get out of my head was this: the beer bottle – that gleaming brown glass appearing from nowhere and about to shatter against the skin of a young man's face. The glass shards themselves are beautiful, in my mind's eye, glistening and almost liquid, just before they turn into blades. Here is a single, frivolous action: from it will come the wounding, then the retaliation, and then the police, the court room, the mother in the foyer, me, the armed guard, the jury ... all the way to an overcrowded cell at Risdon. But right now, I'm locked on this image of the action. How did it come to be, this raised hand, this sinister magic bound up in the moment before impact? What was it born of?
"Andrew!" I wanted to call out to him, even to grab hold of him, like a mother might. "You didn't mean to do it, did you?"
(Silence.) ♦