![]() The practice is called Jauhar and palaces to this day display the handprints of these women. And, if they did die fighting, the women burnt themselves in a mass pyre. Women in ancient India – mostly led by the Queen herself and members of the royal family – would tell their men to return victorious or die fighting. ![]() There’s only a small difference – in some such cases, we know the fate of the women. The fate of the Apache warriors, was it any different from that of all those men and women of my ancient history, who chose to give up their lives rather than fall into the hands of a cruel enemy? And well, this is what it did to me: put into perspective life as it used to be. So then, I went around the Internet looking for more references to The Legend of Apache Tears. Choices, numberless as grains of sand, had layered and compressed, coalescing into sediment, then into rock, until all was set in stone.‘ By the warriors, by the women themselves. ![]() Long before the warriors’ leap it was decided how the women would live and how they would die. Like the sandstone altar on which they had died, the shape of their lives had been determined years before – before the horses began their gallop, their sorrel bodies arching for that final collision. They died as heroes, their wives as slaves.Īs we drove to the trailer, the sun dipping in the sky, its last rays reaching across the highway, I thought about the Apache women. A slaughter was the likely outcome of the warriors’ bravery. We slaughtered chickens, we didn’t fight them. The word slaughter came to mind, because slaughter is the word for it, for a battle when one side mounts no defense. The Apaches were at war but had no warriors, so perhaps she thought the ending too bleak to say aloud. ![]() Grandma never told us what happened to the women. When the Apache women found their broken bodies on the rocks below, they cried huge, desperate tears, which turned to stone when they touched the earth. Unwilling to suffer a humiliating defeat, cut down one by one as they tried to break through the cavalry, they mounted their horses and charged off the face of the mountain. Soon after, the battle began, the warriors became trapped on a ledge. The tribe was outnumbered: the battle lost, the war over. ‘According to Grandma, a hundred years ago a tribe of Apaches had fought the U.S. Apache Tears is the name for black obsidian, so smooth they look soft. So, it’s the Legend of Apache Tears that’s worth sharing from this magnificent book: The story comes up when Tara recalls how she and her brother used to accompany their grandma look for these stones and rocks on the mountain side, which then grandma would like to sell. It’s kind of like going off the grid, only it’s far more puritanical than that. It means that often Tara’s father never let the family use the services of doctors or nurses, pulled out a few of his children from schools while some of them were never enrolled, stayed away from what we call ‘the system’, not seeking a birth certificate for Tara, not getting his car insured… etc. Wiki describes survivalists as individuals or groups that are part of a movement in which they are actively preparing for emergencies, including possible disruptions in social/political order, and are acquiring emergency medical and self-defense training, stockpile food and water, preparing to become self-sufficient, in order so that it all may help them survive. Tara Westover’s Educated is a memoir, the story of a woman born and raised in a family of Mormon survivalists. Absolutely love this book, one of the most talked about this year and hopefully will remain for years to come.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |