Heralds of Atrocity and Shame

From the national dilemma of a country reminded yet again that it hosts among its refugee and immigration population miserable discontents who find it difficult to derive comfort in being able to live in an advanced and free society, and choose instead to cast their grievance with the United States in a terror mould of violent Islamism, to the personal dilemma of family seeking to bury their dead in honour of religion and custom, when the deceased just happens to be a jihadist with blood on his hands, society is afflicted with dissonances difficult to comprehend.

How can a normal mind digest the unpalatable reality of a country opening its welcome to people fleeing oppression and misery, conflict and homelessness, that can result in the following generation spewing forth a handful of individuals blighted with the ardour of mass murder as a solution to alienation? That families, even while living in comfort and liberty, taking advantage of the generosity of a political system that provides welfare and higher education to all those who seek it, still begrudge the fount from which it spills?

Suspect No. 1 of the Boston Bombings is dead, and his choices cannot be questioned, nor can those whom his malevolence murdered, nor the hundreds injured be restored to the wholeness they were before Tamerlan Tsarnaev began his rampage of revenge against America. From their distant position in Russia, his parents both deny their son ever harboured terrorist tendencies, and cast the blame on America, which they claim converted him to fanaticism.

His young brother whose innocent appearance and seeming integration into the American way of life seemed so at odds with the casual, harm-oblivious persona captured on video, appears to have been infected with as viral a diseased apprehension of truth and reality as his older brother. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev suffered no difficulty in quipping lightly to his friends over the terrorist bombing that cast such a dreadful pall over the city in which he lived and thrived.

A video frame from surveillance footage showing two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings investigation. The suspects were later identified as brothers Tamerlan (left) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Yet it was Dzhokhar, in the melee that resulted when police confronted the brothers in a stolen vehicle as they searched for the plot perpetrators, whose actions in all likelihood took the life of his brother. Police did shoot Tamerlan, in response to the knowledge of who he was, and what he did, and the evidence before their very eyes of homemade bombs tossed from the SUV, and the subsequent shoot-out.

The coroner's report indicated that Tamerlan died of blunt force trauma to his head and torso, and gunshot wounds. The blunt force trauma represented the mortal injuries he sustained while grappling with police who leaped to safety when Dzhokhar drove the SUV directly toward them, and in the process driving directly over his brother, killing him.  All of that describes the days of disaster and diligence.

Now, Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the two young men, is attempting to arrange his nephew's funeral in alignment with the traditions of their religion, but is finding difficulty in making those arrangements, since "no one wants to associate their names with such evil acts. We take an oath to do this. Can I pick and choose? No. Can I separate the sins from the sinners? No. We are burying a dead body. That's what we do."

If at all possible.  Worcester funeral home director Peter Stefan is sympathetic; he has been unable himself to locate a cemetery in Massachusetts that would accept the body for burial. Offers to aid have come in from other states. "They just want to get it over with. They want to get him buried", said Mr. Stefan, referring to Ruslan Tsarni who was unequivocal in stating his nephew brought shame to the family and the Chechen community.

It is true that the evil men do lives on long after they expire.