In our January issue, we wrote facetiously about tsunamis. When we went to press before Christmas the comment was mildly funny. By the time you received Eureka Street in late December, it was in deplorable taste. A small but emblematic instance of the difference made by one wave that turned life into death, struggle into defeat, and ordinary states of mind into unimaginable grief.
To speak decently of the tsunami continues to be difficult. Not merely because it is hard to find words that fit, but because when we speak of it, we say more about ourselves than of the event. The tsunami measures our words and our hearts.
Sometimes they are found wanting. Calculations of how the tsunami and reconstruction might affect the stock market, for example, of its effect on various Islamic groups, and of how aid might be tailored to Australia’s strategic interests say more of what has been washed away in the writer’s heart than on the shore. Exclusive grief for Australian victims and exclusive adulation of Australians who did what common humanity required of them also disclose smallness of soul and not the greatness of the disaster.
Sometimes, though, proper things are said—more often in human lives and gestures than through words. Images of people who have lost everything, themselves lost in grief, caring for others, clawing their way back to life, speak deeply to us.
Among Australians, as elsewhere in the world, generosity and compassion have also found silent words. At the most basic level many have simply allowed the tsunami to enter their imagination, perhaps enjoying the beach with their families while grieving compassionately with those for whom the sea became an enemy. Some have put their gifts and their wealth unnoticed at the service of those affected by the tsunami. Helpful words have been modest: they tell stories, like that of the medical student who, spared by the waves, offered her skills to help identify those taken.
In Australia, too, the Government has spoken powerfully through large gestures. Mr Howard and Mr Downer, in particular, have responded with exemplary leadership, generosity and sensitivity. If the less-publicised needs of others who make a claim on us were handled in this way, we would indeed be a fortunate society.
Among the questionable words spoken about the tsunami were comments about God’s part in it. When we mention God and the tsunami in the one breath, either to assert