A New Faith: Part 2: Chapter 17

Camille Hansen had been standing all the way in the back when Kaija had made her sensational statement. Well - it was sensational for the people who were paying close attention to what was being said on the stage. Almost everybody else had only been listening to the speeches in an absent-minded fashion. Some, such as the journalists, were there just because they had been ordered to cover the event.

In any other country, a press conference where the Prime Ministers of three nations were standing on a podium would have been a major event. In the Oslo, it merely raised a few eyebrows. The mention of Sami people in the same breath as the three Prime Ministers made those precious few eyebrows go right back to their normal altitudes. If not for the ridiculous reactions of the three Prime Ministers to Kaija’s statement, this would have been the non-event that everyone had expected it to be. 

After a stunned moment of silence in the aftermath of Kaija’s invitation, all three Prime Ministers had collectively lost their minds. They had sprang up from their chairs and physically pushed Kaija away from the microphone. She had stumbled for a few steps and then crashed down on the stage. The Prime Ministers then proceeded to mindlessly jostle with each other to get their hands on the microphone to say something. 

After a few seconds of madness, they looked at each other and stopped fighting. The same unspoken thought seemed to have passed through their minds. The Swedish and Finnish PMs stepped back and the Norwegian PM took charge of the microphone. She cleared her throat but still she could only croak out, “please ignore what she said just now.” Then she made a sign to her team to end this event and along with the other two PMs walked away briskly before anyone from the audience had a chance to react. 

Camille and her fellow protestors had shown up for the event solely because of the three PMs and the TV cameras. They happened to be in Oslo that day and had nothing else going on. Camille had to cajole all of them into going with her to the event and do their usual schtick of shouting slogans and waving signs. She and her friends had been so de-spirited since the tragedy of the heat wave, that they had taken to getting high most of the time. At some point, Camille had been awake long enough to have scanned the local news. She had noticed that event and purely out of long habit, she had started preparing for protesting at it. The morning of the event, most of her friends had still been hung over. She woke all of them up and poured liberal amounts of strong coffee in them. None were in the mood to do any protests, but Camille’s steady stream of encouragement and infectious optimism had got them going that morning.

As a teenager, Camille had enthusiastically joined the Fridays for the Future movement that Greta Thunberg had launched several years ago. Initially, it had been fantastic. She had participated in the protests every Friday without fail and then some. She had become one of the top organizers of protests in Norway. She had also helped plan numerous protests all over Europe. Slowly but surely, though, she had gotten dismayed by the lack of change in policies.

The pandemic years had stymied their movement as all group activities were canceled. Barely had they started to get their act together after the pandemic, when the war in Europe had begun. A few good things did happen in Europe in the initial couple of years of the war, though. People switched to efficient heat pumps from gas/oil furnaces. Many others dumped their petrol/diesel vehicles and bought electric cars.  

The climate disasters continued to unfold all over the world including in Europe. Rivers dried up and heat waves killed thousands. Floods destroyed entire villages and towns. Experts grew hoarse as they tried to remind the politicians to do more. The grim reports forecasting future horrors kept piling up and the world grew numb to the daily tragedies that were taking place at some place or the other. Yet, the stranglehold of the fossil fuels on the world stubbornly refused to relax. 

The strident optimists would proudly showcase the successes. The weary pessimists had more or less given up any hope. The doomers spouted dark stuff that was almost tailor-made to bring down whatever little hope that existed in the minds of the few who were still thinking about these issues. Then there were those who had started contemplating the use of extra-legal force to enact the necessary changes. They were actually thinking of blowing up things such as oil/gas pipelines and coal/gas power plants. They knew that this approach could backfire and turn the masses against them. But they had run out of peaceful ideas to achieve their objectives. They were desperate.

In the end, some of these desperate folks found an outlet for their anger by deflating the tires of large SUVs and attacking works of art in the hope that their actions would catch the imagination of the masses. They hoped that, in turn, this would create a new bottom-up movement that could lead to bigger changes at the ballot-boxes. Of course, that did not happen. The elections in democracy after democracy were getting decided through the terrifying use of dark money that fueled the humongous growth of misinformation. Reasonable discourse almost vanished. People became too jaded to engage with any worthwhile topic.

Camille and a few like-minded folks had toyed with the ideas of destruction. But they just didn’t seem to make any kind of sense when one started to think about the impacts of those actions. Although, the fossil fuel companies would be affected to a certain extent, the predominant impact would be on the poor who would get even less fuel because they couldn’t afford it. She had defaulted back to organizing protests throughout Europe. It was an empty gesture, but still, it felt like she was doing something rather than nothing. The heat wave tragedy a few days ago had snuffed out even that pitiful spark of enthusiasm. Everything just looked bleak.  

It was during this funk that she and her friends were forcing themselves to go through the motions of protesting at yet another official event where the three PMs happened to be on a stage together. Camille had read about the event but by the time she and her friends had showed up, she had forgotten what it was all about. She hadn’t even been paying attention to the speeches as she was busy distributing flyers and shouting her usual slogans. No one else in her group had been listening to the speeches either. 

They all looked up toward the stage when there was the sudden silence. Camille glanced at the large screen where the speech was being projected. Maybe this silent moment was in remembrance of the recent global tragedy. She fully expected to see everyone on stage standing still with their heads bowed. Instead she could scarcely believe her eyes when she saw the three PMs physically assault the young woman who was giving the speech at the podium. She was livid with the unfairness of that action - justified or not. What the hell was going on?!

Without realizing it, Camille started running toward the stage to not only express her indignation but to try and help the poor woman who seemed to have collapsed on the stage. Subconsciously, she noted that none of that woman’s colleagues had stepped up to help her. In fact, not a single person came forward to help. That was strange. To top it off, one the PMs mumbled something and then all three of them were whisked away by their security entourage. The crowd was not sure how to react to what had just unfolded in front of their eyes. The nimble people of the press were the only ones who had registered the words and actions. They understood the full import of it and instantly broke up in two teams, one headed to the stage to interview Kaija while the other rushed off behind the three PMs.

“What had this woman said that would elicit such a reaction from these famously peace-loving and polite politicians?” wondered Camille. It all seemed incomprehensible. 

One of her friends joined up with her as she neared the stage. The press beat them to it and completely surrounded Kaija who seemed to be sitting now. Camille managed to barge through the gaggle of reporters and their camera-persons. She dropped down to her knees and asked Kaija if she had been hurt. Kaija shook her head. 

“Did you really mean what you said?” a young man with glasses and unruly hair yelped.

Camille helped Kaija to her feet. She still did not have a clue about what Kaija had said on the stage a few moments ago. She held on to Kaija to steady her. She noticed that the young woman’s body was almost vibrating with emotion as her eyes blazed at the reporter. 

“Of course - I meant every single word!” she snapped.

Then regaining some amount of her composure she repeated what she had said in a steady even voice, “we must offer refuge to the people who are most affected by the climate disasters. We cannot idly watch as millions and millions of them suffer and die. On behalf of the Sami people, I invite them to the land that has historically belonged to us and was today formally returned to us. It is the right thing to do. It is the only thing to do!”

Camille was awestruck by this young woman. She didn’t even know her name let alone have any idea of who she was and what she represented. But the statement she had just made was so blindingly simple and straightforward, that it felt like she had been plunged into a bucket of ice-cold water. Duh! Of course, it was the right thing to do. Of course, it was the only thing to do. And just like that Camille found a way out of the depression that she and her friends had been afflicted with. The fact that the PMs had rudely and forcefully pushed Kaija aside meant that the resistance to Kaija’s statement was staunch. In that instant, Camille decided that she would do anything and everything to make Kaija’s simple proclamation a reality. Even as she was making this resolution, some of the cops who had been on duty at the event firmly separated her from Kaija. Then they formed a small circle around Kaija as they escorted her away from the reporters. Clearly, they had been ordered to do so by someone, albeit somewhat belatedly. That small delay in quelling Kaija’s voice was sufficient to ensure that her idea would not die prematurely.