He’s gone, but his freedom endures.
Now the sadness, the loss is settling in. Last night I was trying to be there for Farouk’s son Tariq as I broke the news to him. At that time I didn’t feel sad for him, because he died right where I believe he would have chosen to — speaking to a gathering of people, inspiring them to engage in the struggle for human rights he lived out from his marrow.
But hearing his voice in the archives of Democracy Now! I can’t help but feel grief that I’ll never hear him speak again. And I’m sure an unavoidable sorrow will grip me in the coming months as I hear him again and again, sifting through the hours of footage and audio I’ll be struggling to shape into a worthy testament to the man and what he embodied.
The profound victory shared by Farouk and all the friends who fought to win his freedom will always remain. For me the sadness of his death is tempered by gratitude that he died a free man. That the long struggle of those who loved him was rewarded — we all got to hug him, talk with him and share the bounties of normal human life with him, which were stolen from him for those 22 months — the fact is his strength of spirit and our political and legal work all brought this about. But imagine if he had died in one of the prisons our government saw fit to put him in. Though I’m not religious, I can’t help but think of the providence of a Creator when I think of his freedom.
As dark as the prospect of Farouk’s release seemed at times, darker still are our times. Among the many gifts Farouk gave us was a human embodiment and a channel for our fight against the controllers of our government, whose words and deeds following 9/11 could not have been more destructive if they’d simply announced at a press conference, “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!!!”
If it hadn’t have been for Farouk, I wouldn’t have learned how government agencies sworn to protect our life and liberty have instead become infernal machines calibrated to separate life from liberty. And I wouldn’t have had the privilege of knowing a man who literally gave up his corporal existence to saying “no” to our government whenever and wherever it chooses to devalue human life.
In his life and in the very moment of his death Farouk redeemed our lives and paid the price of the evils of power. So I feel loss, but victory — I feel sad and happy.
