A Commemoration of the Victims of Flight 752 on 02.02.2020

Maurice Ravel’s Bolero was playing on 96.3 FM on my way back from the ceremony held in Vaughan, Ontario today in keeping with the sombre; yet, forward-looking mood that I had been experiencing upon taking in both the sights and sounds that testified to the beauty of two loving souls that are no longer in our midst. Back at Terrace Banquet Centre where Dr. Eghbalian’s wife (Parisa Eghablian) and daughter (Reera) were commemorated, there had been mention of a series of topics ranging from the importance of keeping the memory of those who had perished on the Ukrainian plane alive to the hardships of immigration especially for women who have to find wings to fly from the proverbial qafas (“cage”). There was also talk of childhood: a realm where a “pink elephant” (in reference to Reera’s pink stuffed elephant, Elli) makes just as much sense as a “real” grey one; a colourful phase in which the portal to all possibilities is open.

One need not have known these beautiful souls in person to appreciate the beauty which they embodied: both extrinsic and intrinsic, but more so the latter than the former. There was also mention of the poignancy of the loss a beautiful woman that chimes in with Edgar Allan Poe’s remark in “Philosophy of Composition,” which is said to have, incidentally, influenced Ravel, where the so-called “Tomhawk man” asserts that “the death of then a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world,” going on to say that “equally it is beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”

Everyone had been waiting to listening to the “bereaved lover,” who has become the voice of other relatives of the victims of that ominous flight. And speak, he did... at the very end. His composure was admirable. He thanked those who had sponsored the event and graphically imagined what may have transpired in the final moments of that horrific flight. He pictured the crying of the youngest passenger Kurdieh and the exchanges that could have taken place between a number of other doomed passengers including Pouneh and Arash, who had gone to Iran to get married before embarking on, what could have been, exciting and enriching adventures together. Dr. Esmaeilion went on to compare their lack of knowledge with our awareness of the reality on the ground: that what occurred on the flight was no technical error, but the killing of innocent lives. He told us of how Reera had been perplexed at how there could be people who could have no qualms about killing another human being and in so doing, once again, there was a comparison and contrast between the innocent world of children where the villain is a Darth Vader whose evil aspect does not lead to the downing of a passenger plane and our own. It was also moving to hear him express his lack of belief in an Afterlife, believing that the very paradise that some may depict for his loved ones in another world was very much what they had here on this planet, on this earth. 

While I am not sure whether there is life after death, having been an avid reader of Dante’s Commedia at one point and being fascinated, in particular, by his catabasis, I do wonder if we could assert the absence of Afterlife with such certitude. Nonetheless, speaking of our earthly abode, I wonder if t is better not to burn all one’s bridges and leave the door open for an eventual return to one’s homeland in whose bosom one has spent many a formative year and may wish to be enwombed once again towards the very end, prior to being entombed.

Dr. Esmaeilion’s concluding remarks were around the importance of seeking full justice; of having the black box examined. It is important that one not forget the tragedy that befell so many families as result of the plane crash. Yet, sadly notwithstanding the outcome of any possible litigation or black box examination, those who have departed have gone to that “undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”  

The loss of so many promising lives, including those of Parisa and Reera, has touched me and so many others. The loss will be compounded in the event that it should be discovered that the downing of the plane had occurred not by error but on purpose. Yet, what I have come to see once more is that we grieve in different ways: some more in the closed quarters and the privacy of their homes more so than others; some in more exaggerated forms than others; some in more covert forms than others. What is clear is that the loss of so many lives on Flight 752 has turned into a collective grief: we are all mourning—in various degrees.

Our grief has brought us closer to each other, hopefully, in a way that will stretch beyond the hic et nunc that we are in. As we saw images of Parisa and Reera unfold during the ceremony, we bemoaned the loss of a happy family life and felt for all of those who have lost their loved ones in the plane crash.

We realize that in our world even a grey elephant, let alone a pink one, may soon disappear without being swallowed by a boa, in which case, it could have become the source of florid imagination (see Antoine Saint Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince). Yet, it is encouraged that we hold onto what is left of our imagination which will allow us to visualize an elephant as being pink and a rose as being green in the same fashion that James Joyce did as he recounts in A Portrait of the  Artist as a Young Man (1904). It is only through imagination that we will be able to engage in a defamiliarization that will turn our currently grey world into one which is endowed with colours and possibilities. It is also by virtue of imagination that the Italian conductor, Arturo Toscanini could imagine a Bolero more refined perhaps than the one that Ravel himself had composed.

I am writing as we in North America are still going through a uniquely palindromic day as today (02022020). I remember having been fascinated by the palindromic, yet, otherwise ridiculous question of “Was it a car or a cat I saw?” as a child in a way that I am no more today. Nonetheless, I am hoping that our gathering together in such large numbers in honour of the lost lives of the passengers on the ill-fated 752 flight on this day has marked a momentous occasion beyond its commemorative significance.

Hamlet wishes to keep alive his quest for revenge, as he asserts: “And spur my dull revenge,” or later on, “O, from this time forth,/ My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!” (VI.vi). It is a noble thought, especially, when so many more beyond one’s own self are involved. Yet, let us hope that, that unlike in Hamlet, there will be no more blood baths and that sooner rather than later, the truth will out, as painful as it may be, for one would rather face a painful truth than a horrendous lie.