IRA MATH­UR

This Sun­day the Guardian Book­shelf fea­tures Caron As­gar­ali, an au­thor who is a gun vi­o­lence sur­vivor.

In 2013, at age 47, Caron As­gar­ali, then a Chem­istry teacher, was shot point-blank in her face, chest and shoul­der by a masked man. Her life and ap­pear­ance was “vi­o­lent­ly” and abrupt­ly tak­en from her and she feared she was “slip­ping from this world.”

As­gar­ali was bat­tling for her life, hos­pi­talised in ICU and Ward 8 at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, “con­fined to a bed and un­able to speak be­cause of the in­juries, and un­able to sleep de­spite be­ing med­icat­ed” as her mind played over the sce­nario of the shoot­ing “over and over.” Her fam­i­ly was left trau­ma­tised, out­raged, and want­i­ng re­venge.

Writ­ing gave As­gar­ali a voice when hers was bro­ken, the courage to car­ry on, and a means to heal: “Not be­ing able to speak in 2013 af­ter life-threat­en­ing in­juries be­cause of gun vi­o­lence, I had to write. This writ­ing, out of ne­ces­si­ty, tran­si­tioned in­to writ­ing as a form of ther­a­py and us­ing my ex­pe­ri­ences to help oth­ers. Writ­ing helps me to think clear­ly.”

Out of that trau­ma, As­gar­ali wrote her first non-fic­tion book, From Li­on To Lamb – A Spir­i­tu­al Jour­ney, be­came a mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er and be­gan an NGO called RARE through which she ad­vo­cates for peace and for­give­ness.

And she didn’t stop writ­ing. She wrote four more non­fic­tion books on top­ics such as re­silience, for­give­ness, and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and a com­pi­la­tion of sto­ries by oth­er trau­ma sur­vivors “as nat­ur­al fol­low-ups to the mem­oir.”

In 2018, came glob­al recog­ni­tion of her work as As­gar­ali was named a BBC Out­look In­spi­ra­tions nom­i­nee when her sto­ry was cho­sen “to in­spire the world.”

The fol­low­ing is an ex­cerpt with the au­thor’s full per­mis­sion:

“Bang! Bang! The ex­plo­sive re­ver­ber­a­tion brought the si­lence and tran­quil­li­ty of the evening to a sud­den and de­fin­i­tive end. What was yet to come would be death…or life…

My whole life was turned up­side down that night, the night I was shot in the face. This is not a sto­ry about pity, though; this is a jour­nal of spir­i­tu­al growth. Through di­vine in­spi­ra­tion, I dis­cov­ered strength in the face of ad­ver­si­ty, a strength I would nev­er have imag­ined.

I have been asked many vari­a­tions of the same ques­tion, “How did you cope?” My an­swer was al­ways the same. My God was with me, lift­ing me in His arms, car­ry­ing me every step of the way.

On that night, Tues­day, the twen­ty-ninth of Jan­u­ary 2013, I went for a dri­ve with a friend. On the way home from La Ro­maine in South Trinidad, we pulled in­to a va­cant lot to turn be­fore head­ing back in the di­rec­tion we had come from. In a split sec­ond, the tran­quil­li­ty of the night was blown away. It was like in the movies when the mood of the mu­sic changes to some­thing sin­is­ter.

The dri­ver looked to his right and saw a masked man with a mas­sive gun. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, I looked to my left and no­ticed a shad­ow.

Al­though I did not see any weapon, I some­how re­alised some­thing was wrong and in­stinc­tive­ly moved to pro­tect my­self. There was a loud, dull noise, and the car win­dow was shat­tered. The dri­ver sped off im­me­di­ate­ly. Thank good­ness for the quick ac­cel­er­a­tion of my Toy­ota Corol­la!

I thought a piece of wood had been used to hit the glass. I re­alised I was still hear­ing nois­es and gun­shots as we sped off.

I felt my face and prayed to God. I felt splin­ters from the win­dow that had ad­hered to my face. On­ly when I felt some­thing warm flow­ing from my chin did I con­firm that I had been hit…in the face.

How can I de­scribe the myr­i­ad of feel­ings and thoughts in that in­stant? I kept think­ing maybe it was noth­ing, but the warm cloy­ing blood kept re­mind­ing me that some­thing had hap­pened. The enor­mi­ty of the dam­age was like an oc­to­pus - there were many ten­ta­cles, each rep­re­sent­ing the ef­fect of this in­ci­dent on dif­fer­ent as­pects of my life. This su­per­seded the pain of the wounds. The car sped away as if the dev­il him­self was af­ter us.”

End of Ex­cerpt.

Cur­rent­ly Caron As­gar­ali is work­ing with oth­er writ­ers to pro­duce her Hot Co­coa on A Rainy Day Se­ries (on can­cer sur­vivors) “to give voice to the many every­day he­roes in our midst.”

Since giv­ing up teach­ing As­gar­ali has al­so been an ed­i­to­r­i­al as­sis­tant to books by econ­o­mist and politi­cian Mr Win­ston Dook­er­an and di­as­po­ra jour­nal­ist Paras­ram Ra­moutar. She ad­vo­cates for peace through Project RARE and hosts a free on­line plat­form, Writ­ing to Heal.

In 2022, 57 women were mur­dered in Trinidad and To­ba­go (Source: TTPS).

On April 18 the heads of gov­ern­ment of Cari­com ex­pressed their grave con­cern on gun vi­o­lence and called on the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca to “ur­gent­ly take ac­tion to stop the il­le­gal ex­por­ta­tion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion to the Caribbean.”

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian colum­nist and the win­ner of the non-fic­tion OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture 2023. www.iras­room.org