SignOn San Diego Special Reports | Young Lives at Risk -- Revenge is a dish best not served

Revenge is a dish best not served

April 15, 2001

Maybe I'm in no position to judge.

After all, I'm not a torpedo, a don or a capo de tutti capi.

I'm not an Israeli settler who's buried a child on the West Bank, or a Palestinian with memories of the Sabra and Shatilla massacres.

I'm not a Belfast survivor of sectarian terror; a Tutsi or a Hutu; a Christian or Muslim Bosnian.

Through a happy accident of birth, I'm none of those things (although it's conceivable that a real-life Don Corleone could have made me a job offer I couldn't have refused). But the summons never arrived. Nor was I ever invited to join a gang, or fight out a messy divorce.

Perhaps, then, I lack the proper frame of reference.

But I'm sure that Americans are more experienced in forgiveness than that virtue's flip side, vengeance.

Feuding and bowling

Feel free to disagree. A colleague noted that this country embraces the death penalty. But the average American doesn't administer the lethal injection, pull the switch, drop the gas pellets; if this is vengeance, it is vengeance at a distance.

In a country of 281 million souls, you can find occasional instances of direct payback. In fact, on the Internet you can find www.thepayback.com,
offering its services to the vengeful. Send a cheating spouse a dead fish ($19.99) or box of melted chocolates ($24.99). Dispatch an angry, unsigned letter to a cruel boss ($11.99).

But cruelty by charge card is minor league stuff. Nothing online or in the national news can match the viciousness of the 19th-century Hatfields and McCoys.

It can't be -- it won't be -- matched by their heirs.

When a joint Hatfield and McCoy family reunion was held in Kentucky last June, several complained that the feud had been blown out of proportion. "We want people to see where the families have actually gone," Sonya Hatfield told The Associated Press. "We are not ignorant, illiterate hillbillies who killed each other over a pig."

By one count, the 28-year vendetta took the lives of 10 family members. Clearly, this was a savage feud. But it ended in 1891, 110 years ago.

The 2000 reunion included visits to a cemetery, a hanging tree and other shrines of the tragic feud. But most of the weeklong gathering was devoted to softball games, golfing, the "Hatfield-McCoy Bowling Tournament," and pie-eating and hotdog-eating contests.

The reunion ended, not with a bang, but with a prayer.

Go home, Tony

It's easy to foreswear vengeance when our loved ones are safe. On TV, Tony Soprano is an entertainer who's welcomed into our homes. In real life, he's a nightmare; if he came to our doors, we'd call the cops.

Last month, I attended the San Diego Mediation Center's annual dinner. In the audience was Azim Khamisa, a man who has gained a great and terrible insight into what drives others to seek revenge.

On Jan. 21, 1995, his 21-year-old son Tariq was murdered while delivering pizza in North Park. Azim Khamisa and Ples Felix, the killer's grandfather, co-founded the Tariq Khamisa Foundation. Together, they work to prevent youth violence. Together, they accepted the Mediation Center's 1996 Peacemaker award.

Didn't Azim Khamisa want vengeance? "There is tragedy at both ends," he told Mark Sauer, a reporter for this newspaper. "My son was the victim of an assailant; his assailant was the victim of society, and we are all responsible for that."

This response is compassionate, challenging and not at all vengeful. As the Bible advised: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

Most of us find this a good bargain. Vengeance is the Lord's? He can
have it.

Peter Rowe welcomes calls at (619) 293-1227 or e-mail at peter.rowe@uniontrib.com.