Where do we go from here?

It would only be a trade in clichés if I were to say that 2011 has been the year of noted deaths, but in all this demise, the most tragic would surely have to be the passing away of immunologist Ralph Steinman.

The Canadian was first heard of on October 3 when the Nobel Committee for Physiology and Medicine announced that he was one of the three biologists who would be sharing the year’s prize for medicine. Reason for cheer surely, but while the two other recipients issued statements of surprise and gratitude there wasn’t a squeak from Steinman. Then came the shocker. Three days before Steinman was marked for the high honour, he had lost a four-year battle to pancreatic cancer. Technically, the Nobel Prize is only reserved for the living, and though the committee appeared red-faced for its faux-pas, one felt empathetic because calling to ask if a recipient was still around would just be rude. The tragedy though, still lies elsewhere.
Steinman’s discovery of the dendritic cells had finally been noticed, but Steinman himself could not step out from the isolation of the laboratory and face the bright flash of a hundred cameras.

He couldn’t sit down to write a speech for that dinner in a wintry Sweden. Nor could he plan out an investment for the prize money. Does a prize matter if the recipient doesn’t stand to reap the benefits of its generous adulation? Does achievement count when the achiever’s life remains unaffected? Steinman’s has unfortunately been the story of a year of cataclysmic events. Even if the world stands changed, its inhabitants haven’t been able to unwrap the gifts under their tree.

Barack Obama would possibly agree. When we all woke up to the news that a bunch of US Navy Seals had found Osama holed up in a garrison town in Pakistan, the leader of the free world must have surely smiled. The sheer multitude of exultant voices outside the White House would have given the growingly unpopular president his own share of needed hope and audacity. But the enthusiasm didn’t last too long. The Americans were short-sighted enough to admit that Osama’s death may have an impact on the hierarchy within al Qaeda, but that the organisation was already too defunct to salvage. Osama, it then turned out, was never the real enemy. He was a mere father figure who was close to losing all control over his sons, prodigal or not.

As a result of its fearless expeditions into Pakistan, the US also helped unravel the civilian-military power structure that its ol’ pal had always found too precarious to balance. A memo, they say, was sent from the Pakistani president to the American establishment. An SOS — a promise to do what it takes — a call for shelter from a ruthless army. The US didn’t meddle much, but it did kill 24 Pakistani soldiers on what seemed like a whim a while later. Relations between the two now fluctuate with such predictable frequency that the only revelation one may remember from Pakistan this year is actress Veena Malik baring her all for the cover of FHMIndia. Her courage — if she had indeed shed the dress — can perhaps only be beaten by the martyr of the Arab Street.

In April, I found myself sitting in the living room of a doctor’s house in Cairo. A Coptic Christian whose faith seemed resoundingly secular, he briefed me on the situation in Egypt in the most lucid terms. The obvious problems of unemployment and poverty apart, the country simmered with religious tensions. The military itches for power, he said, and the people would never vote for democracy even if given the chance.

They would go for, what he called, “the beard” —someone who diluted all democratic right with religious compulsion. My doctor predicted violence, a repetition of Tahrir, a revolution against the army, a surge of political extremism. All of the above has happened and continues to. I remember him saying — “I had no love for Hosni Mubarak. I am glad to see his back. But if this is what I get in return, I don’t know if I want it.”

Then came that final image of a bloodied Muammar Gaddafi rotting in a meat locker. The moralists had reason enough to claim that ‘evil’ has been definitely battled, but surely a country with little understanding of democratic protocol and an insurmountable surplus of guns should appear more satanic.

Moreover, the fear that the British government expresses when a new Libyan establishment just about mentions the word ‘sharia’ seems contradictory when David Cameron comes out and prescribes a more robust Christian faith for his riot-hit society. The figure of deaths in Syria is now so large and complex that it is hard to trust any one agency, let alone any one government while trying to determine the number of lives lost in a country on the brink of civil war. In countries such as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, any voice of resistance is being squashed with a repression far too fierce to withstand. The Arab kings, dictators and despots are unfortunately proving to have far more fire than the now-petering heat of the Arab Spring.

Hope then only lies with Steinman. He didn’t live to realise his glory, but his research on adaptive immunity has. There may be another year when we will find a metamorphosis that might seem like progression, but in these twelve months we have just made our desires known. The Occupy Wall Street protester, for instance, has weathered the November cold in a park with a little placard saying he makes up the “99 per cent”. Wishing to keep his country safe, the Fukushima worker has gone back to work knowing the obvious risk — a slow protracted death. A Tibetan nun has burnt herself to ash on a street, hoping there might be a practical freedom at the end of her displaced life. 2011, you see, has just conveniently dropped the ball in 2012’s court.