Intersections: Coverage of the Paris carnage lacked context

I was in Morocco when the Paris attacks took place, prematurely tarnishing the optimism I had for 2015. Amid the sights and smells of Marrakesh — perhaps the most colorful city in the world, where you share the crowded streets with motor bikes that whiz by at lightning speed and donkeys pulling overfilled carts of produce — I was disconnected from the larger world.

I spent days wandering the souks, watching artisans make outlines of bags from huge swaths of leather, drinking Moroccan mint tea and copious amounts of orange juice from the market stalls that line the main square once the sun starts to set. It felt nice to be lost.

I found out about the horrific carnage just as I was leaving the city, a few hours before I boarded a plane. The news came fast, spreading across every single social network I was a part of in an overwhelming, dizzying way, much like other major global events.

Everyone suddenly declared “Je Suis Charlie” or “I am Charlie” in an act of solidarity with a satirical French newspaper they had never heard of before in their lives.

Videos of the act were shared; journalists got to work on writing think pieces, analytical columns on what this meant for France, for Europe, for the world; leaders condemned the attacks, marched in solidarity and defiantly declared that Fox News made one of the most hilarious and shocking errors in its history, a footnote in the unfolding coverage that was extra poignant for me as someone who has actually been to Birmingham, which is only a no-go zone because it’s usually slated as the most boring city in the British press.

Despite the 24-hour coverage, mainstream news continually missed one larger point between no-go zones and declaring the terrible attacks a “war on freedom”: context.

We condemn these attacks, we are shocked by their occurrence, we vow to prevent them from ever happening again. Yet, we fail to explore their presence in the bigger picture of the world. We talk about “them” and “us,” simplifying the story between those who love freedom and those who want to take it away.

But our world is an evolving, messy shade of gray, not black and white. Narratives are not straightforward, they cannot be possibly summed up in spot-news reports or talking heads yelling at each other on cable networks.

We can’t just talk about these events without making room for the context involved. We have to address how and why things like this can happen, for which the answers aren’t exactly simple. I recently came across a piece by David Mednicoff, director of the Middle Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in the Huffington Post, addressing how simple narratives conceal the nuances behind events such as the Paris attacks.

“If violence can breed violence,” Mednicoff wrote, “the legacy of both violent Western colonialism and post-colonial repressive authoritarianism in the (Middle East and North Africa) should be confronted and connected more clearly to the broader nexus of the tragedy of Paris.”

Along with condemning these acts of violence, we need to understand what consequences they arise from, we need to realize how our governments and their decisions contribute to the context in which these things happen, too.

These nuances are important and lead to deeper thought and analysis. These are the same nuances that can be applied to understanding each other enough to see that we can often find ourselves in agreement rather than on separate sides of the fence.

From Glendale to cities across Europe, I have attended prayer services in both mosques and churches, interviewed refugees and immigrants and people of various religious backgrounds. I meet people who have vastly different cultures and histories than mine, sometimes even people I am meant to “hate” if we follow the rule of simple narratives.

But in this increasingly polarizing world, I feel lucky that the people who open up their lives to me see the same humanity in me that I see in them, that the context and nuance of society isn’t lost on either of us, whether I’m sitting in the office of an imam in Glendale, talking with a Turkish taxi driver in London or having tea in a Berber village in the mountains of Morocco, even if the world falls further into tragic divides.

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LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.