Editor,
This morning in Kabul, Afghanistan, a baby girl was born - a baby girl with a very special mind.
Maybe her neurotransmitters are in a slightly different balance; maybe her neurons form connections faster than usual; maybe her cells hold memories of hundreds of past lifetimes.
Who knows? No one truly understands the way the human brain works; no one knows where genius comes from. But in this little girl's mind, potential sleeps.
If this potential were awakened, nurtured and fed, this little girl would be the one who would finally understand the renegade cells that cause cancer, and she would be able to stop them. Or, she would understand the human heart and psyche in a way no one else ever has, and through her diplomatic skills, she would finally bring peace to the world.
But when she's 13, she'll do something scandalous - who knows why - or maybe ordinary adolescent rebelliousness, she'll show her face in public. And old men and young boys and men in their prime will reach down and grab chunks of concrete and bits of broken brick and they will assail her until her broken body lies lifeless in the street.
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Or maybe it won't happen that way at all - maybe it won't take that long. Maybe, just a couple of years from now, she'll be walking down the street, holding her mother's hand, when a guided missile slams into the building beside her, sending chunks of concrete showing down on her until her broken body lies lifeless in the street.
Either way, she is lost to us, to the world. Her potential goes unrealized; her genius wasted. She was born today, into a world where her value is measured by her gender and nationality. She is doomed.
Does it really matter, then, who kills her - them or us? Does it matter whose hate; whose anger; whose righteous indignation motivates the attack? Either way, her beautiful, miraculous brain ends up splattered on the streets of Kabul, and I weep for her - for all of us.
Beverly Benham
Graduate student
