The Gift of Our Wounds Read online

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  This book is dedicated to the people who lost their lives on August 5, 2012, and all of the victims, past and future, of hatred and violence.

  Forgiveness is a sublime example of humanity that I explore at every opportunity. Because it was the unconditional forgiveness I was given by the people I once claimed to hate that demonstrated the way from there to here.

  —Arno Michaelis

  Forgiveness is the ultimate vengeance against hatred. “Ek Onkar” means “Our Creator is One.” It is in this Sikh foundation that we are being called upon to respond with healing the wounds of the past.

  —Pardeep Singh Kaleka

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PARDEEP

  I would like to thank our entire communal family domestically and abroad who have fostered transformative healing in the aftermath of hate. Because of your love, our community was uplifted and continues to heal.

  It is in the love of my mother, Satpal Kaleka, and father, Satwant Kaleka; and support of my brother, Amardeep, and the entire Kaleka and Nagra family that I have had the opportunity to find my purpose and strength. It is in my loving wife, Jaspreet Kaleka, that I have had the support needed to find my dreams. And it is in the eyes of my four beautiful children, Amaris, Jai, Rohan, and Taran, that I have been able to find vision.

  This memoir is in deep gratitude for my homeland of Punjab, India, and my new homeland of America. As a first-generation immigrant raised in Milwaukee, I have truly been nurtured by countless family, friends, and communities who affirm that this country and this dream are worth fighting for.

  Thanks to Jennifer Benjamin, who one day proposed the idea of writing a book because she believed in the mission of seeing humanity in one another. From that spark began a process. Thank you Elizabeth Evans, Jennifer Weltz, and Karen Wolny for the continuous support and guidance; none of this is possible without you. Robin Gaby Fisher, you have been our serenity, voice, and strength, and yes, we are connected for life, just as you told us the first time we met.

  Arno, you have become my brother, confidant, teacher, and personal therapist. My strength when I felt weak, and a true ally to our small community. You exemplify both the excellence of Sikhism and the humanity. You model transformation, and remind us that forgiveness, courage, and compassion start the process of reclamation.

  Our work could not be possible without genuine relationships of mutual love. Thank you to the entire team at Arts@Large, who have helped Serve 2 Unite foster peace and empower students and communities to see solutions within themselves. Today as a therapist, my work could not be possible without the guidance of my colleagues at D&S Healing, Alma Center, and the Milwaukee Independent, who remind me that healing the wounds of the past is a gift to us all.

  ARNO

  Everything I do is for my daughter. For her, I strive to bring about a society where all are valued and included, as I want her to be. Everything I am wouldn’t be possible without the eternal, undaunted love of my mom and dad, and my little brother. I know I put you all through hell. I can only hope that the work I’m doing today makes you proud and makes going through said hell at least somewhat worthwhile. Thank you for never giving up on me.

  Massive thanks to Robin Gaby Fisher, for doing all the heavy lifting to make this book happen, and for the love you’ve given us. And I’ll double down on thanking Jennifer Benjamin, Elizabeth Evans, Jennifer Weltz, and Karen Wolny for each having a crucial role in bringing our story to the world.

  The entire Kaleka family, and the Sikh community around the world—I am such a lucky guy to count you all as kinfolk.

  Pardeep, we’ve known each other a little over five years now and every day I find new reasons to be grateful for your friendship and inspired by our brotherhood. You have taught me so much about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a human being. At your side, I have realized my life’s dream of waging peace professionally. Together we have reached so many young people that I can’t help but feel great about the future they will create.

  All of the wonderful students, educators, and Global Mentors who have made Serve 2 Unite the engine of peace that it is today. You all lift me up when I feel discouraged, and inspire me to be the best I can be.

  Big ups to all of the peacebuilding orgs around the world that I’ve been so fortunate to collaborate with. Listing all of them and all of the brilliant individuals therein would be another book unto itself. Maybe the next one.

  Finally, I must thank Chris and Melissa Buckley, and their lovely children, my nephew and niece, CJ and Miera. So proud of all of you!

  PROLOGUE

  What does hate look like?

  Hate looks like the body of a devoted mother of two teenage boys, crumpled inelegantly on a cold tile floor near the altar where she had been praying moments before her death. It looks like a young husband and father the way his little girl last saw him—his face ravaged by the fatal bullet that ripped through his eye and blew his head apart. And the kindly family man who lay in a vegetative state, with no hope of awakening, while his wife and children sat at his bedside praying for a miracle. And the tortured expression of a leader, mortally wounded, as he tried but failed to save his flock and himself.

  Hate looks like the bullet hole in the doorframe leading into the prayer room at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin—a vestige of the carnage that took place there on August 5, 2012, when a troubled man with a distorted view of what America should look like executed peaceful people inside.

  Life goes on. Services still take place at the same time every Sunday. Congregants continue to worship in the prayer room. All people are welcome to the langar (kitchen) for the free communal meal. Families who lost loved ones persevere as they continue to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.

  The bullet hole remains, now enshrined with a tiny plaque inscribed with the message WE ARE ONE.

  The victims were devout souls who strived to follow the tenets of their Sikh faith to live a meritorious life of honest hard work and service to others and God. Spiritual beings who graced this earth with love, inspiration, and Chardi Kala. Translated from Punjabi, the language of the Indian region where the Sikh religion was founded, Chardi Kala means “relentless optimism.”

  So why would anyone seek to harm these good people? Why would someone take the lives of his fellow human beings with such senseless cruelty?

  Because hurt people hurt people. Because when suffering isn’t treated with compassion, it seethes and spreads. Because when fear isn’t met with courage, it deceives and disconnects humans from humanity. When ignorance isn’t countered with wisdom, it festers and takes root in the hearts of the fearful. When hatred isn’t cradled with kindness, it can corrupt the beauty of existence to the extreme that causing suffering is the only thing that makes sens
e anymore.

  The killer, once as innocent and lovely a child as any other, became mired in a cycle of misery that ended in tragedy at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin.

  … And brought us together.

  Rather than cultivate hatred with vengeance, we choose to commemorate our lost loved ones with the glory and grace of our common humanity. We choose to sow seeds of kindness and compassion.

  Monsters are not created by God. They are shaped by the society we live in. By us. The ingredients that make monsters are hatred, suffering, isolation, and minimization. Seven people died that day, including the shooter, because one man’s untreated suffering was inflamed by fear, ignorance, and rage. What if, instead, it had been met with compassion, courage, and wisdom?

  If we can find the strength to forgive the one who took the others, we can answer the tragedy with unconditional love for the entire human race. We can address conflict with care and cooperation. We can meet fear, ignorance, and hatred by teaching truth. We can shape the reality we create collaboratively to be one of uplift and healing.

  We can live in honor of Paramjit Kaur and Suveg Singh Khattra and Prakash Singh and Ranjit Singh and Sita Singh and Satwant Singh Kaleka; of the lives lost in Oklahoma City and at Columbine, Sandy Hook, the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, the Boston Marathon, the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the bicycle path in New York City; and of the people dying every day on the north side of Milwaukee, and on the South Side of Chicago, and in Syria, Afghanistan, the Holy Land, Mexico, Africa …

  We can find the gift in the wound

  … if we can forgive

  … with vengeance

  … with purpose

  … with love.

  ONE

  A MEETING

  Freedom is not an achievement but an opportunity.

  Bhagat Puran Singh

  October 2012

  Pardeep

  The shaggy block on Milwaukee’s east side was dark, save for a single flickering streetlight and the neon glow coming from a string of ethnic restaurants. I arrived a few minutes early and parked my car at the curb, on the opposite side of the street from the Thai place. Arno recommended we meet there. It was his hangout, he said. I’d know it by the red vinyl awning and flashing CARRY OUT sign.

  I left the car running while I waited. The rhythmic sound of the wiper blades scraping freezing drizzle from the windshield was almost hypnotic, though not enough to slow my racing thoughts. I wondered if maybe it had been a mistake to get there early. It gave me too much time to think. Too much time to back out.

  More than once I shifted into gear, and then didn’t leave. Why did I stay? I’ve asked myself that a million times. I think it was that my need for answers outweighed the misgivings I had about being there. Still, sitting in my idling car, I wondered if I should have listened to my mother when she begged me not to go, lest I end up like my father, a victim of violence. She had asked why I was so blind to the dangers of the world, as he was, always seeking the good in everyone. Look where it had gotten him! Look where it had gotten us! We were a family without a husband or a father. Victims of the kind of senseless hate crime that most people only read about. A tragedy from which there would be no return to the good life we once knew.

  * * *

  A LITTLE OVER two months had passed since August 5, when my father and five other Sikhs were executed in our peaceful Wisconsin temple by a self-avowed white supremacist. Two of the victims were brothers, both with families and young children. The only woman killed left behind two teenage boys. Others had suffered grave injuries. Lt. Brian Murphy, the heroic police officer who was cornered by the killer and shot fifteen times at close range, survived by the grace of God. Baba Punjab Singh, a Sikh priest, a husband, and a father, was shot in the head and is still in a coma, likely never to regain consciousness.

  From the start I’d been haunted by the question of “Why?” I wondered about it day and night. I couldn’t ask the killer because he was dead. So who could tell me why he had chosen our place of worship? Why he’d gone after such peaceful people—men, women, and children whose religion was based on the practice of harmony and equality for all people? And yes, I’ll admit it, I asked myself the question, “Why us?” Why had we been put through this hell? Because we had brown skin and wore turbans? Because we were mistaken for Muslims? The Taliban? ISIS? Because people were uninformed about who we were and where we came from? Although others ascribed to the theory that the shooter was targeting Islam, I thought it was as likely he chose our temple because it was open to everyone and secreted behind the crest of a hill. A soft target, if you will. But even if it were true that he mistook us for Muslims, how did that change the tragedy of innocent people murdered because they were different from the shooter’s idea of what America should look like? Would such an act be somehow less horrifying, or more justifiable, if the victims read the Quran and worshipped Allah?

  I remembered going to Dad’s gas station after September 11 to support him in case of any misunderstandings. His English wasn’t good enough to explain that we were not terrorists, or even Muslim. It felt strange having to differentiate ourselves back then, but ignorance about Islam and the backlash against Muslims after the terrorists identified as such made me feel as if I had to explain who we were. We were Sikhs who loved our adopted country and whose hearts were broken just like everyone else’s by the attack. I discovered then that a little education went a long way to understanding. Our customers did ask questions about our faith and our homeland and we answered all of them with the same respect with which they were asked. Luckily, we didn’t need to defend ourselves. Dad had taught by example during his time here. His customers knew his heart. If only the shooter had been able to know my father, to know our people, he and the others might still be with us.

  Was I angry? Hell yes. My anger was eating me alive. The head of our family had been violently taken and we were all struggling to find our places in this new and terrible reality. Everything was different now. My mother didn’t want to live and my brother seethed with rage and bitterness. Time hadn’t healed my grief or frustration either. I didn’t know how much longer I could control the feelings I had locked inside, but I couldn’t continue to wallow in cynicism and gloom. That would be a stain on my father’s legacy. It went against everything he stood for, all that he was.

  I was always surprised at how little people knew about the Sikh faith. Sikh means “learner,” and our religion teaches us that teaching and learning, and learning and teaching, are the basis for our lives. We worship in the Gurudwara, “the door leading to God.” Our theology is based on love, equality, and service to God and all others. Many Sikh men wear turbans and have beards in honor of our cultural and religious heritage. In India, the turban is a sign of valor. But, especially since Osama bin Laden, the turban has become an object of enmity in America. People see it and think terrorist, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Maintaining uncut hair is an expression of accepting God’s will, and the turban is a symbol of our commitment to our faith. A man in America who is wearing a turban is almost without exception an Indian Sikh, and those bearded, brown-skinned men are less likely to commit violence than just about anyone on earth. They’re much more apt to take in stray dogs or deliver meals to homeless people living on the streets.

  Ours is a gentle, benevolent faith. We believe that everyone is equal before one Creator and that a good life is lived truthfully and in service to others. Our scriptures don’t dwell on what happens after death but focus on our earthly duties. From an early age, we are encouraged to live as sant-sipahi, those who strike a balance of cultivating spirituality while also contributing socially to our communities. We are bound by the Golden Rules of our religion, as taught by Guru Nanak Dev, the first Sikh Guru: Kirat Karo—work hard and honestly; Vand Chhako—share what you have with those who are less fortunate; Naam Jappo—always remember God throughout the day.

  Perhap
s most importantly, our scriptures tell us that forgiveness is the only way to heal. My father was a student of the Guru Granth Sahib, our Holy Book, which we interpret as the living word of God. Dad strived every day to follow Sikh principles. I know he forgave his killer before he took his dying breath, but I needed answers to be able to get to that place.

  * * *

  WAITING FOR ARNO to arrive, I pictured my mother’s face as she pleaded with me not to go. She had aged considerably in the short time since my father’s murder. Grief had cut deep lines in her skin, and her once lustrous brown eyes were dull above moons of dusky shadows. Her suffering was so potent that sometimes it seemed to seep from her pores. She had lost the only man she ever loved, her husband of nearly forty years, the father of her two children. With him went her faith in the sanctity of our adopted country—a place she and my father loved so much that, as new immigrants, they’d erected a flagpole in our front yard and flew the red, white, and blue every day until my father’s death. The irony was inescapable. My father, an American patriot, a proud immigrant who moved his young wife and two small boys from their poor farming town in India and assimilated into Midwestern culture through hard work and community service, murdered because his skin was brown and he wore a turban.

  How could I not seek answers for that?

  As my mother begged me to reconsider my meeting, my wife, Jaspreet, looked on, her brow creased with concern. “You have our children to think about, Pardeep,” she said softly. Yes, two kids and a third on the way. Jaspreet was just weeks shy of her due date. I knew what she and Mom were thinking. I had never met this man with the violent racist past. How could I be sure he really had rehabilitated himself? Once a white supremacist, always a white supremacist, right? Yes, that was their fear, and maybe mine, too.

  So what was I doing here? Jaspreet and Mom had been right to question my judgment. My introduction to Arno was through email. Anything I knew about him I’d learned second- and thirdhand and from searching his name on the internet. How did I know I wasn’t walking into an ambush? Arno was one of the founders of the same racist skinhead group that my father’s killer belonged to. He had disavowed the group years earlier, but what was the point of taking the risk? What was I going to ask him? Mom had wondered, tears welling up in her eyes. What could he say that would matter? Dad was dead and nothing was going to bring him back.