Through the Wall of Fire Armenia Iraq Palestine From Wrath to Reconciliation
by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
R.G. Fischer, Frankfurt, 2009.
In my book, I have tried to suggest an approach. Its title, Through the Wall of Fire, is taken from an episode in Dantes Divine Comedy, actually its turning point. At the end of Purgatory, the pilgrim Dante is confronted with a Wall of Fire which he is told he must pass through in order to enter Paradise. Paralyzed by fear and the vivid memories of those he had seen in Hell tormented by fire, he is unable to move. It is only when his guide Virgil tells him that his beloved Beatrice is on the other side of the Wall of Fire that he is able to act. Abandoning his obsession with himself to shift his focus to the Other, and willfully casting aside all irrational emotions that had governed him earlier--wrath, hatred, fear, and desire for revenge,-- Dante succeeds in entering the flames and crossing into a new, morally superior realm. There in Paradise he joins with political leaders, intellectuals, religious leaders, and others to build a society founded on justice, a reflection of the City of God.
The episode is a powerful metaphor for the challenge posed to the leaders of Armenia and Turkey today: can they, through a determined act of personal and political will, cast off the heritage of a century of enmity and mistrust, and, dealing rationally with the historical past, enter a new universe of political discourse?
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