mesogeios:

I left the Pompeii exhibit thinking: how strange that museums are so quiet when history is anything but. 
The next room was littered with remnants of wars waged 2000 years ago. 500 years ago. 100 years ago. Dull blades and rock stuff. Metals, chains, rusting guns each beneath a sheet of glass. 
Small descriptions of artifacts that stitch them to centuries before our time. Other civilizations. In other parts of the world. So unlike us: our connection with them has eroded over time. 
We are intrigued by their brutality. Savagery. Inhumanity. 
We are repulsed by the intimacy of daggers: warfare where one had to be as close to their prey as they would their lover. 
We look at their weapons and we raise our brows and nod and point and press our hands against the glass.
We do not think of the weapon that has been killing us since we first began sharing our thoughts. We do not ask where the most dangerous weapon of all is displayed—the one that defines us yet punctures our hearts without touch. “Where are the books that have brought us to our knees?” “I’m looking for the labels that have bred prejudice and hate.” “Could you help me find the words that make the back of my throat feel like it’s on fire?”
Where I am from, it is impossible to speak without giving yourself away. Dialects have created borders with heavy security. Employed weak men with strong words. I am from a place where words are bullets: where a single language and community tore into three. We left home because there are still whispers. 20 years after the war and there are still whispers. Pompeii remains quiet.
I once heard a story about a Yugoslav man that was shot dead in a café because of the way he pronounced the word ‘coffee.’ Language danced in smoke.
Listen: Some mouths are like fat cannons. Tell me again how ‘Hitler was a great speaker.’ Stones have broken the bones of an adulterous woman, but the words of the law have killed her. We spill ink, unaware that we are spilling blood. 
In a room littered with remnants of war, I think of echoes. Language dances in smoke. 
Every time I go to the museum, the display glass seems thinner. I look at the daggers and think of tongues. People still point and press their hands against the glass. 
My mother left a country that doesn’t exist anymore. 20 years later, she is still covered in ash.
I do not pity the people of Pompeii: they are lucky to be frozen in time with their home, forever silent.