Nothing prepared me for the birthing process of our son and nothing ever will. I would imagine the Spanish inquisition torture chambers were of a similar make up. And I was only a spectator - I have never heard Ana talk of her birthing nightmare. But I will try to explain what I saw and felt. I have blocked most of it out for a long time, but here I will describe the part most easily recalled for me – my emotional response. (And a stern caveat: Having witnessed this at close hand, I’m not sure I would be strong enough or brave enough to have a baby. So this is a coward’s account).
Ixim was late. We were pretty sure he would pop out on Jan 1st, 2003, 9th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising especially when 20,000 Zapatistas came marching into town that day as we looked on in the overflowing plaza of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, our home. But no, he stayed put. Ana was huge, but in good spirits; no complications. We had a kind midwife on board to oversee proceedings – Dona Isabel was an indigenous Mayan woman who had delivered literally dozens of babies and subscribed to traditional methods. She didn’t think the baby was late although we were sure it was.
Almost 2 weeks later, the first contractions begin. 24 hours of chilling around the house ensues, playing cards and getting at once excited and then tensed up. It is a surreal, timeless period, in between worlds. Our hope is for a home birth here in our warm nest. Contractions come, and we all trip over each other with growing anticipation. The midwife checks Ana out and in her opinion, all is fine, we are on course for delivery. But midnight of day one passes and she still hasn't entered into proper labor. Around 3am that night, Ana is worried and we go to the local state hospital in downtown San Cristobal. All is fine, the hospital doctor says after a brief check-up, it was false labor - go back home and wait it out.
No sleep, and day two dawns, with contractions coming heavier. The midwife Dona Isabel still says its all fine. While Ana concentrates on breathing and exercises, I feel stuck in some kind of limbo territory. More chamomile tea, dear?
That evening it comes on strong. We will be here all night in our bedroom, with the midwife, her daughter, a close friend Katja, and a couple of women who had had their babies with this midwife and knew Ana - cheerleaders of a sort. All night Ana pushes and takes up different positions and still the contractions and dilations come, but no fundamental movement of that great mass in her belly occurs. Endless massaging and walking around in circles, squatting and words of encouragement. Ana is quite absent now, she has left us hours ago, so totally centered on her body and the pain and the task at hand is she. The room is becoming increasingly claustrophobic.
I'm spacing out too. Too much hurt, watching Ana in such pain, and feeling utterly powerless. This isn’t happening as everyone said it would. She has being 12 hours in hard labor, 2 whole days really since the contractions began, and now we are all disintegrating a bit. Something has gone wrong. Ana continues pushing and breathing and concentrating on the massive shift in her body as six or seven of us focus on her belly, collectively willing that child to come out. 12 hours of intense willing. But the child isn’t coming.
“By the grace of God it will all be fine,” insists the midwife, optimistically. My doubts are creeping in - this is Dona Isabels first interracial birth, I'm thinking. Maybe she underestimates the size of the child – I am so much bigger than Ana. Or maybe the problem is the lateness of the child. Who knows, but when anybody starts to summon God's will in what should be a straight medical procedure, I hear alarm bells ringing. But what do I know? Dona Isabel is the experienced midwife.
“By the grace of God,” she insisted, “it’ll come.”
Around midnight, by the grace of a car, a doctor of sorts comes, and he puts a lid on the spiritual reveries.
“This is a critical situation”, he says, as he assesses the strange mucus coming out of Ana.
“Get her to hospital immediately.”
Fuck. We piled into Katja’s Volkswagen beetle and drive to San Cristobal’s general hospital, the emergency room. All is quiet. The anonymous people in white take her away with some urgency. The doctor comes out and says “Why didn’t you bring her in before this!” somewhat appalled. We came in last night! we say. “Who could have possibly told her to go home again!” he says exasperated.
Off he goes to perform the emergency Caesarian. The midwife exits, along with her entourage. I am confused as to what to say to her because, despite her being a lovely woman and very supportive all along, I am veering towards the opinion that ultimately her advice to wait it out and her insistence that by the grace of God it would turn out fine could have damaged both mother and child. But I don’t say anything – because what do I know anyhow? I get the feeling she is pissed off that the doctors have interceded. It is not appropriate in our circles to criticize anything pertaining to traditional Mayan medicine and cosmological things. Thank you, I said to her, probably somewhat unconvincingly.
So ironically for all our plans for a natural home birth, and indeed, leanings towards the traditional, it is modern medicine that saves the life of our child, and probably Ana’s too. But I soon learn to not trust one inch this modern hospital either.
Katja our friend and I wait in the waiting room from deep night to dawn. Around 5am Katja reports hearing a baby’s cry from the operating theater direction, as I return from my umpteenth visit to the bathroom. We wait excitedly. A boy, says a passing cleaning woman and that is all we know. The health of both mother and child unknown. At 9 am I am still sitting there in the waiting room without further confirmation. The doctor is putting his coat and leaving the building when I ambush him and ask him what was going on.
“Oh”, he says, casually. “Did nobody tell you? Difficult but ok, baby and mother alive.”
He tells me as if it was a football result. He doesn’t give a shit, and why should he? - its just his job. Off he goes.
The complete ineptness of the staff means that nobody can tell me anything further or even locate the two. Can I go see them? No, its against hospital rules, they tell me, but someone will come out and inform you. Visiting is between 11-12, they inform me. I can’t believe it. They won’t let me in. This hospital is overlorded with an infuriating paternalistic attitude : everything is in our hands, you just wait there and all will be sorted out in good time.
I am livid. Where is my fucking child and how is he? I get no response. It’s been over 4 hours since his birth and I still don’t know what’s going on. The mother is asleep - she’s OK - is all they’ll say. The baby is in an incubator somewhere. So now I have to track down my baby. Katja goes off to get us some breakfast and I sneak around the hospital trying to locate him. He is somewhere, but no one can or will tell me where.
I bluff my way past a guard and door-step a doctor near the baby sector.
“How is my baby?” I demand.
“He is …progressing”, he say vaguely. “We are monitoring him.”
I hustle my way into the chilling, antiseptic baby infirmary. I am presented with the macabre and terrifying vision of 5 or 6 plastic transparent boxes with tiny creatures inside them, each connected to a variety of tubes.
“Which is my son?” I ask, my voice trembling.
“That one, I think,” says one of the nurses, nonchalantly, pointing at the biggest one. “You shouldn’t be here”.
I remember the first sight I had of my child. He seems a good size, but he is a strange green shade, hooked up with an IV in his arm, as well as having some other tubes stuffed down his throat. He is lying in an unnatural position and obviously in pain, looking upset. His lungs, explains the nurse, are full of gunk from the over-extended pregnancy.
My heart breaks in two to look upon this tiny little naked thing so helpless and so utterly unprepared for this harsh plastic and bright strip-lighting world he has been thrown into. From the gorgeous womb to this artificial hell, being kept alive by ugly plastic tubes. Such trauma for a newborn child!
“He will be OK,” said a doctor walking in, as he begins to explain a bit. His words wash over me and I can’t take my gaze from the smallest, most humble human I have ever seen, struggling to survive. I stare, and feel like crying but also, conversely, overjoyed. He has got this far, and look at him, his little breathing body, his translucent chest, not even the size of my clenched fist, beating vigorously and his big eyes… they are beautiful. It’s going to be OK.
Ana is conked out somewhere else in the hospital, her whereabouts unknown to me. And her child in this fucking plastic box under bare strip lighting. It is heartbreaking stuff.
“You have to leave,” says a voice.
“I’m not fucking leaving..”
I want to stay by my son, protect him, look after him, even in this plastic box. He needs me! I open the little door on the side of the incubator and touch his tiny greenish hand. He reacts and grasps my finger ever so slightly. I feel him garnering his tiny strength and responding to human touch. Of course! - in this plastic purgatory to touch human flesh is a saving grace. Between tears and smiles, I speak to him. I’m sure his face registered the familiar voice from the 9 months inside the womb.
“You’re going to be fine, Ixim,” I told him, “we’ll take care of you.”
I silently curse this grossly inhuman set-up while at the same time recognizing that he is in critical condition and it is hence necessary. Most of all, here he is, the one who took so long to arrive, who in the darkest moments of the previous night I had thought was a lost cause, here he is and he is, despite his perilous state, alive and ... cherished. I try to let him know that, touching his tiny hand. I desperately want him to know that he is not alone.
But I have to care for Ana too – who knows what could be happening to her in this inquisition torture unit. I locate her in a long, ubiquitous recovery ward with lots of indigenous women convalescing after giving birth, some with their babies, some not. As I approach the bed, Ana stirs. She is still groggy from the general anesthetic and the operation. Confused, she doesn’t know where she is or quite what has happened. She looks distressed.
“You have a beautiful little baby boy,” I tell her, and her look of quiet confusion turns fleetingly into a radiant smile.
“Is everything Ok?” she whispers.
“Yes,” I said, not going into details, and we embrace.
These fuckers of course hadn’t told her anything. They had also let her drip run dry. A nurse passes by.
“You let the IV go empty!” she scolds , as if it was Ana's fault. I'm sure that this nurse is overworked and underpaid, but I hated her then at that moment.
A while later, I brought Ana around in a wheel chair to see Ixim. She was still somewhat absent from the drugs, like an old person with Parkinson. She gazed at her child for the first time in the plastic box with quiet, rapt wonder. The baby moved his head in the direction of her presence. She moved her finger into the little side door and touched him. Despite the wheelchair, her groggy state and the green-ish baby in the godforsaken incubator, there was a strange and terrific rush of energy, and mother and child re-connected. I watched quietly and cried.
Not the picture perfect birth one imagines, quite a fucking nightmare actually, and so many contradictions there within. These people who were treating us so uncompassionately – devils at this stage in my eyes - who were blocking our every move, were the same ones who held the life of our child in their hands. Of course its not their fault, it’s the system. This is the state hospital, government run, free. Were the conditions similar in the expensive private hospital up the road? Of course not.
“You are not meant to be in here,” said a nurse.
“I’m his mother,” explained Ana, as if she should have to explain.
I was remarkably strung out and an emotional wreck to boot at this stage, but I still managed to dwell upon the thought of how Ana might feel at this moment having carried this child for 9 long months next to her heart.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or madder.
@ 2008
Clandestines Review.
Village magazine, Ireland, September 2006.
The revolution starts now
by Michael McCaughan
Thursday, September 21, 2006
^^
Michael McCaughan looks at two sets of memoirs written from the front lines of global battlefields by witnesses who join the revolution with no agenda other than their passion and idealism
Brigadista: An Irishman’s Fight Against Fascism. By Bob Doyle. Published by Currach Press, €14.99
Clandestines: the pirate journals of an Irish exile. By Ramor Ryan. Published by AK Press, €14
The nation's book-shelves are creaking with radical ideas these days. Writers like Noam Chomsky and Greg Palast enjoy mainstream exposure at a time of deepening public scepticism over the course of world affairs.
However, it is much harder to find contemporary memoirs which take the reader to the heart of today's global battlefields by participants who are neither UN workers nor NGO delegates applying Band-Aids to matters of grave urgency and social justice. It is rare to find witnesses who owe nothing to anyone and who join foreign conflicts in a spirit of self-sacrifice and idealism.
Some good examples of the genre include Gioconda Belli's The Country Under my Skin; Stuart Christie's Granny made me an Anarchist and the captivating Nor meekly serve my time, which takes the reader on an unpleasant journey into the H-Blocks in the company of some of its former residents.
So it is heartening to discover new books in which Irish rebels who have travelled beyond these shores share their wisdom upon return.
Bob Doyle is a veteran of the international brigades who fought fascism in Spain during the civil war, risking his life for his ideals.
Ramor Ryan is half-a-century younger and motivated by similar ideals. He visited dozens of hot-spots around the globe, from Kurdish guerrilla camps to a Croatian Rainbow Gathering, always striving to understand radical experiments, his role shifting from observer to activist.
Both men have penned their experiences in two fascinating books which combine action and reflection to give a profound insight into the human condition.
Bob Doyle's Brigadista: An Irishman's Fight Against Fascism begins in Dublin in the era of worker struggle and general poverty in 1916. One of five children, his mother was "confined as a religious lunatic" to Grangegorman asylum and his father shovelled coal at sea. He spent nine years with the Sisters of Charity, who allowed no contact whatsoever with his family.
As a teenager, Doyle found work as a houseboy for a wealthy family and soon became active in the struggle for workers' rights. His growing awareness took him to Spain, where thousands of foreign volunteers took up arms to defend the republic. Doyle was on the front line, and was lucky not to be killed as his comrades were cut down beside him.
Captured, he was sent to a concentration camp where starvation rations barely kept him alive as he awaited his inevitable execution. He escaped with his life, on agreement that he would never return to Spain. Before long however, he was back in the country, secretly raising funds for prisoners' relatives and passing messages to the anti-fascist resistance.
In sharp contrast, Ramor Ryan came of age in the 1980s, a self-styled "idle youth" dispatched northwards to witness the funeral of three IRA volunteers shot dead in Gibraltar. The Dublin he leaves behind in Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile is "a grey, depressing place – populated by cynics and alcoholics, soggy from the relentless drizzle". The subsequent murders at Milltown cemetery proved a wake-up call and Ryan is suddenly faced with the significance of commitment and struggle.
From the outset, Ryan is brutally honest with himself, wondering why on earth he is attending these funerals. His response – "it feels necessary" – paraphrases Orwell's observations in Homage to Catalonia where he accounts for his journey into the unknown as simply something that any decent person would do in the circumstances.
In this respect, Ryan and Doyle are worlds apart. Doyle, the Spanish Civil War veteran, was a true believer in the communist cause, willing to overlook contradictions and crimes in the name of a higher freedom. But he was his own man too, and acted on his own initiative, following whatever path his dignity dictated.
An excellent add-on to Brigadista sees Doyle's two sons reflect on their father. This can be a touchy area, since activist fathers have a habit of leaving children and partners behind in their struggle to save the world. Robert and Julian are reconciled to their father's socialist principles, but they also have sharp words to say about some aspects of their upbringing.
In 1958, at the height of the Notting Hill Carnival riots (no, I hadn't heard of them either), Doyle takes his sons out in a van and drives around the area, offering a lift home to frightened West Indians.
These spontaneous acts of selflessness typify the spirit of Bob Doyle. The same spirit is echoed in the pages of Ryan's moving memoir. He writes of the global citizen's movement, publicly deployed in Seattle, Prague and Genoa, which was busy making a difference off the mainstream radar in places like Chiapas and Belize. In south-east Mexico, Ryan joins international volunteers to staff civil-observation camps, which acted as a buffer to a massive army presence surrounding Zapatista rebel villages. These idealists, often derided as over-privileged and ineffectual 'revolutionary tourists', were getting a fast-track education on the price of freedom and rebellion.
Ryan, meanwhile, seemed to have a guardian angel hovering above his head. He took a break from his observation duties just hours before a major military assault in which three Norwegian observers were beaten, slung into a truck and expelled from the country as "pernicious foreigners" before the army got down to the serious business of sacking homes and beating locals who offered resistance. He returned to help the community pick up the pieces, and learned that struggle is as much about defeat as about victory.
Bob Doyle would undoubtedly agree with this appraisal. In Brigadista, he describes decades spent trying to win formal recognition for the sacrifices made by international volunteers and the many thousands of Spanish who were tortured and killed by Franco's thugs. The long march from disdain to respect, which culminates in the decision to honour the international brigade veterans with Spanish citizenship, is one of the most impressive tales in his book.
Ryan, meanwhile, brings a breath of fresh air to the struggle for social justice. He started his own activist path as a squatter in Berlin, where the Autonomen, or Black Bloc rebels, celebrated mayday with mayhem and a ritual battle against the police. This was a useful laboratory of combat tactics for someone fleeing the stifling Dublin atmosphere and seeking new horizons.
Ryan's prose is assured and his adventures unfold across the pages with comic timing and flair, hinting at an emerging literary talent. At times, it is hard to believe that the events in this book really happened. Just a look at some of the chapter titles will illustrate: 'Sex and the Berlin Wall'; 'The Resurrection of Vampiro' and the 'Chicken Bus Diaries'.
Ryan is also a member of a new generation of Irish emigrants for whom sex, rebellion and adventure is all within the job description, and he flirts and bluffs his way in and out of dangerous situations. At times you wish someone would kick his arse, but mostly you cheer him on. There are also important reflections on the nature of revolution and radical change, with lessons from Nicaragua and Cuba underscoring the need for critical distance even in times of revolutionary fervour.
Ryan shrewdly observes the manner in which revolutionaries, once they are in power, reproduce the vices of the ousted regime. This book will not please anyone who wants certainties, as the more Ryan learns, the less he seems sure of – as befits an open mind on a journey without borders. There are few happy endings and lots of messy beginnings, a reminder that change can take generations to take root.
Strangely, in this book of causes, the strongest chapter is a whimsical stop-over in a grim Guatemalan port, where Ryan encounters desperate housewives dreaming of the USA and an escape from their mundane existence.
Ryan writes with compassion and avoids the temptation to judge others by some futile yardstick of political worthiness. This book should be obligatory reading for the Socialist Workers Movement and other lifeless lefty drones.
Colombia's best known guerrilla commander, Jaime Bateman, said, "La revolución es una fiesta." These are two books you can dance to.
