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Finding Solace in Elie Wiesel’s Night
She remembers the crowd mumbling and moving about here and there. At
fourteen the girl was standing by the window and capturing the beauty of nature,
thinking, “why do the days come and go as night arrives? Why does the sun have to go
and the moon have to replace it each night? Why can’t they both come at the same
time?” The thinking of a person who is caught between two worlds can sometimes seem
like the thoughts of one who is dazed and confused. She had no idea what she was
thinking, but at the same time she knew exactly how she felt. Her thoughts seemed to
run together but at the same time were scattered. This young lady was too young to
understand what was going on. Though she didn’t know what she was doing at the time,
now she totally understands the plight of a refugee fleeing a harsh world.
That was her last day in Nepal. She was coming to the United States the next day. That
weird night, she didn’t eat nor did she talk to anyone. The day of her flight, everyone
woke up early and so she did as well. As they went outside of their home, neighbors
were standing outside to see them for the last time. Everyone came together and
hugged them as they started to cry. She couldn’t even talk or cry because her voice
wasn’t coming out. There were only tears coming out of her eyes like rain falling from
the sky. She didn’t know why, but the mass of people crying and waving their hands
made her feel like that was the last day of her life. This fourteen years old lady was
none other than me.
I can still feel people rushing just to say goodbye and hugging each other as if
they will never be together again. Though I was lost in my thinking, my family had a
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great deal of excitement and hope. My family thought that it would be a new start in a
new land where all souls are rich, happy and prosperous. We arrived in the United
States and settled on Rainier Avenue in Seattle in November 2010. At the age of 14, I
arrived in US and started my new life with ambition. So I started attending Rainier
Beach High School with a passion to study which grew exponentially. I realized this is
the best opportunity I have to show what I had always dreamed of. However, being the
oldest of five children including the children from my step mom, I had responsibilities to
guide them.
Everything in life was going better than what we had thought would happen.
Suddenly one day I was just sitting at home with my mom. I saw a strange expression in
her eyes as my mom asked me, “Do you think we made the right decision coming to the
US?” This was the first time my mom talked to me that way. I said, “Why mom? Is
everything okay? Are you missing your brother?” She looked at me with an expression
even more difficult to understand and replied by saying, “More than anything else. Since
you girls are gone the whole day, I am so lonely at home. I feel so much
dhukania, this translates to "sorrow" in English, but the idea is lost to some degree in
translation.
Though it was an unexpected attitude I saw in my mom, I just forget about it the
next day. I thought she was just missing her brother. So I was enjoying what the United
States has offered me until one Friday, February 10, 2012, I found out my mom had
killed herself. A week after we had this conversation, I came home from school like I
always did. Knock, knock, I knocked on the door. People were gathered in my home. I
couldn’t see my mom. I ran inside to check my room, kitchen, and restroom, she wasn’t
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there. My heartbeat suddenly began to race. I felt cold somewhere in my heart, and I felt
something was wrong. Two of my neighbors took me inside my room and said, “Your
mom got sick, and your dad took her to the hospital.” I started crying and told them to
take me to the hospital. Since I was crying so much, they finally took me to the hospital
where my mom was admitted. As I saw my mom laying cold in that situation, I was faint.
I didn’t know what happened to me after that or even how I got home. This was the
worst nightmare of my life, and I will never forget it. She was my hope, strength,
inspiration, and I always wanted to show my potential to her. We used to live in an
apartment with my mom and two of sisters with no one to pay our bills. Now without
mom, I was mentally paralyzed. Now, things were difficult, especially for me as an
oldest child. With no option left, my two sisters and I were taken by my dad to join their
family to live with them. I had lost much of my life's happiness, but I didn’t want my two
younger sisters to go through what I had been through. That day totally changed the
person I was and my personality has been different since that day. I had so many
questions.
Since my family tragedy, it has been really hard to relate to anyone else’s sorrow
or experience. After reading Night by Elie Wiesel, has helped me understand a little bit
better the sacrifices and challenges that all people who are fleeing or refugee face. Elie
Wiesel is truly someone that inspires but also gives me a perspective to understanding
my own situation. His book reminds me of the power of resilience. Before I just couldn’t
understand whatever was going on. Everyone suffers through different thing. People
has their own stories about suffering. However, my family story was quite different than
others. I felt like it was horrible than anyone else. I just couldn’t imagine being
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persecuted from your own country just because you want to speak your own language,
follow your own culture, and wear your own cultural dress. How could anyone force you
or imply some random rules that hurt the huge number of people without doing anything
wrong? Since, my parents didn't wanted to copy someone else's culture, they had to be
apart from their friends, family, their homeland and their love once. They just had to
leave their country. Escaped from their country at night time without having any
transportation or anything. Forgetting their land, house, and their property. This was
how my parents had to be refugee in Nepal even though they were citizen of Bhutan.
As a young girl, each obstacle I have faced throughout my life has always
discouraged me from doing anything new until the day I began researching the life of
holocaust survivors and specifically Wiesel for this contest. I have found out about Elie
Wiesel, his history, his life experience, and his courage. He was born in Europe in 1928
and since he is Jewish, he and his family were sent to the death camps in Poland in the
1940's during the Holocaust. He survived, most of his family didn’t, and came to the
United States after the war. He became a writer, humanitarian and political activist. He
is a Nobel Laureate in Literature and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. His most
famous book is Night. Originally published as and the World Remained Silent, it is about
his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. Most of his books are about his
experiences. The courage he has shown toward his future and his life, considering what
he had gone through is just amazing. However, it was not always that way with him, as
it was not always that way with me. It actually made me speechless for quite a while
because the obstacles and hardships I have been through never gave me the courage
he has shown, yet we were both teenagers during our darkest night. He says in the
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book, "Everyone is alone at night, alone and by themselves. Everyone lives and dies for
himself alone." (p105) Though he had faced rough and deadly conditions as well as
inhumane hardships, he is not defined by them. Instead, he has taken those conditions
of life as his inspiration and motivation, whereas the hardships I have faced were
working against me instead of being an inspiration. However, after looking at his life and
learning about him and how he found the meaning of life through his hardships and
pain, he has changed the way I view my life. He has given me strength to fight through
any obstacles in my way to become who I am and doing what I want to do.
He has encouraged me to move forward in my life. It has been a solid motivation
towards my future. I feel some connection to him and his story, both of us being
refugees due to war and immigrants to the U.S. and having suffered the death of close
family members under difficult conditions. Like Eliezer in the story, he survives almost
everything with his father for over 3 year, but his father dies just a couple weeks before
then are freed. Similarly, my family was brave enough to survive 21 years of desperate
life in the refugee camp where there is no future nor such thing as second chance.
While how could you even hope for second chance in such a hopeless place where you
have to be the luckiest one to get even a first chance. So surviving for that long in a
place where problems and obstacles are always floating around you and you having no
idea about what to eat tonight and tomorrow, it actually make me feel proud of my mom
and dad. They have made it through such a horrible experience where I would give up
in a second. However, after living in the camp for 21 years, we got an opportunity to
come to the US. Now we arrived in a place where we won’t have to worry as much.
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Unfortunately that wasn’t true for my family, we though we have no more to worry about
until the day my mom left us alone. I can’t believe how she gave up so easily because
we had everything here compare to what we had in the camp. However, as I look back
through my life and even in my upcoming life I have always been through a lot and have
still lot to go through. But whatever I have been through is nothing compare to what Elie
Wiesel had gone through
Therefore, taking him as an example, both of us struggling at a very young age
with the responsibilities we couldn’t handle, I have now become a person who will
neither run away from her responsibilities, nor turn her face when it comes to my sister’s
happiness. Wiesel says, "God is there in the suffering." This reason has always pushed
me further towards my goal. I wonder how my mom would react if she was still here
watching me now. I wonder how his mother would react if she could see what her son
had become. Both our mothers died in anguish and in unfamiliar circumstances and
maybe both mothers would be proud to see how their sacrifice has strengthened their
children and given them motivation to become the best and be an inspiration to other
people in anguish. Wiesel reminds us, "Thou shall not stand idly by when such things
are happening. One must act."
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Wiesel, Elie, Night, Hill and Wang, New York. Page numbers are from Bantam Books,
paperback edition, 1982
Kremer, S. Lillian, Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Literature, An Encyclopedia of Writers and
Their Work, Taylor and Francis, 2002
Priluck, Jill, A Conversation with Elie Wiesel, Salon, Jan. 2000