Two weeks into the search for the missing Malaysian jet, the manager of the agency coordinating the search for debris has raised a hope that those on board might still be alive. “We want to find these objects because they might be the best lead to where we might find people to be rescued,” he said. The effect of these words on the relatives, most of whom are still waiting in hotels, is painful to imagine. While the general public exchange amazed theories about the mystery, the relatives’ situation is the nearest one can imagine to a living hell.
In the past fortnight these relatives have been subjected to every possible emotion connected with a sudden horrific accident. There was traumatic shock at the initial disappearance of the plane, then assumed to have been unsurvivable. Afterwards, their hopes were raised by improbable scenarios involving the passengers’ survival. Now the catastrophe scenario has resurfaced, but with a faint whiff of hope. They have been going through all this in the context of bewildering, contradictory (and sometimes withheld) information, all the while cooped up in hotels with other distressed relatives.
The media have fed us glimpses of these relatives: photos of faces puffed with grief; a mother giving way to hysteria, occasional interviews with parents trying to cling on to shreds of hope. Some stories have emerged. We know of the Chinese couple travelling back from New Zealand to be reunited with their toddlers whom they had sent on ahead to China; of the son waiting for news of his 67-year-old mother; and of one woman’s hopes that her American fiance’s resourceful personality will have helped him live.
Some might call this intrusive or prurient. But the truth is that while we may be riveted and astonished by the thriller-like aspect of the plane’s disappearance, the morbid fascination that disasters provoke is about the people involved. One part is imagining the end of the victims and how much they knew. Air disasters particularly lend themselves to this. But the morbid fascination is also with those left behind, how they will react and cope with the deaths of their loved ones.
With September 11 there was initial distaste, disquiet even, that desperate last-minute calls from the burning towers were made public. But they quickly became the defining aspects of the disaster, a dual revelation of the last moments of those caught up in the disaster and the about-to-be bereaved spouses, children and siblings. The extraordinary nature of the attack —with its prolonged ending and the use of phones by the victims as they faced death — laid bare our compulsions around disaster. We wanted to know about the individuals involved, their stories and, with horrified fascination, how they confronted their fate.
Days after September 11, the British novelist, Ian McEwan, wrote an article describing how in the first moments after the disaster, “In our delirium, most of us wanted to talk... We knew there was a greater reckoning ahead, but we could not quite feel it yet. Sheer amazement kept getting in the way.” “The reckoning, of course,” he continued, “was with the personal.” Once the spectacle was over we began “hearing from the bereaved”. “Each individual death,” he said, “is an explosion in itself, wrecking the lives of those nearest. We were beginning to grasp the human cost. This was what it was always really about.”
Suggestions of political skullduggery, withheld information, and deliberate secrecy have somewhat disguised the human cost of the MH370 disaster. As time progresses, however, the bedraggled group of relatives is coming increasingly into view. But, unlike in other disasters where public empathy would soon give way, allowing relatives their private grief, in this case we are witnessing the unpleasant scenario of relatives becoming victims themselves.
Part of their suffering is caused by the lack of any definitive information — but some of the victimisation is being inflicted by insensitive treatment. It’s hard to imagine worse circumstances in which to deal with tragedy.
Being holed up with others in the same situation may give some initial solidarity, but it denies the relatives their own unique loss. Similarly, denying them all available information leaves them prey to anxiety. It’s a painful spectacle. Maybe a rescue mission for the relatives is now as urgent as for those on board the flight.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Ros Coward is author of Speaking Personally: The Rise of Subjective and Confessional Journalism.
