“Car la haine de l’Etranger arme toujours quelques Intrépides prêts à mourir pour une Idée.” Boule de Suif

It’s summer and I indulge myself in long strolls along wide, sunny, ocean beaches. The steady, rhythmic pounding of the waves on the beach and the piercing cries of seagulls fill my ears. Mingled with them, I can hear the rushing whisper of the gentle sea breeze and the faint buzzing of a solitary bee gathering nectar from the beach roses sprinkled over the dune. The sounds seem to fit together in perfect musical harmony: my own private concerto.

The cool breeze soothes my stinging sunburned face and back, even though the salt in the air accentuates its tenderness. The icy ocean water chases my feet and the damp sand grates between my toes when I walk. I spot a pure, snowy feather being tossed about by the wind. When I catch it, I find that it’s velvety and so fragile that it could almost slip through my fingers like quicksilver.

As I sit on the warm beach, a wave of contentment passes over me, and I become lost in daydreams.

A smile is the whisper of a laugh. -Anonymous

The memory of a muggy dusk in the suburbs flashes through my mind—an invincible body taut from exercise, sweat dripping from temples to asphalt. Two years ago—only nineteen—immortal. My legs breezed me past a spot on the road where a bird lay, the life knocked out of it. I paused, startled by this rude intrusion into the sanctuary of my life—graph paper—where everything fit into perfect little boxes.

I walked on, but again paused, thinking of the bird, bothered by my mind’s image of its last moments. I went back to the spot and stared down, not knowing what to do.  I thought, maybe if I looked at it long enough, it wouldn’t be so foreign, so intimidating. Then, I could be the compassionate saint to care for it and put its body to rest. I could take the responsibility of bringing peace to its soul, just like they had taught us in all those years of Sunday school.

I finally got up enough courage to jostle it with my toe. If it were stiff, inanimate, somehow it would become just another object, more touchable. But its legs were still flexible, its body warm. The life oozed out of it and spread itself on the tar. And I stood motionless, saying out loud, “I can’t touch it. I just can’t.” I didn’t want death to ooze out on me, corrode my hands, invade my body, spread over me like a fungus. I ran away breathless and cowardly, seeking refuge in those little boxes. But, I couldn’t outrun the shadow that crossed my conscience.

Now, I wince as I recognize my surroundings. The blue light of the street lamp casts shadows on the walls of my hospital room, and I’m immobilized against the odor of sanitized sheets. Bit by bit, the cancer hollowed me out, dug a canyon inside me that echoes when I scream my despair across it. The disease squatted my body, evicting me, merely a tangential witness to its destruction. In two years, all semblance of life has been sucked out of this pale shell with sunken eyes, bloated cheeks and awkward limbs. I’m waiting for the paralyzing, maddening pain to end. Relief. I’d hoped death would come like this, dark and solitary after too much running. Just a body turning cold, waiting for a familiar bird to raise me on its wings.

I’m trapped in a blue-green memory,
a tidal pool that is my world.
Washed up on this rocky shore,
shattered, splintered and scattered
like seaglass and driftwood.
The thousand pieces of me
crawling to sanctuary.
Landlocked and imprisoned at the moon’s whim.
The deluge of my solitude
engulfing this vibrant spawn of life.

Your familiar face floats
like a distorted wave before my eyes,
then vanishes.
Your musk still lingers in my mind
and your gaze still pierces the hole in my heart.
I fill the stagnant, brackish puddle with my tears
and helplessly drown
in a bitter sea of reminiscence,
entangled in the seaweed of you.

Enfoui
dessous,
un
cadeau
attend.
Tenter.
Interroger.
Ouvrir.
Naître.

“…On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.” – Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

You revealed your secret to me,
Then told me to destroy the shame-filled confession
With flames as wild and burning as your passion.
Now all that reamins is a single sheet of ash.
All semblance of life
Burned away forever
Like the love
that was once
between
us.

C’était une belle journée de printemps, ensoleillée avec une légère brise. Nous avons passé l’après-midi à nettoyer les bordures du jardin pour planter des graines de tournesol et de radis. Mes filles ont mis leurs chapeaux et leurs gants de jardinage, et nous avons travaillé toutes ensemble pour réveiller la terre après ses mois de somnolence, à retourner le sol et à enfouir les graines. Tous les jours, les filles amèneront de l’eau à leurs trésors jusqu’à ce que la promesse de la vie nouvelle, qu’elles attendent avec impatience, devienne une réalité, comme faire un vœu sur l’étoile du soir, jusqu’à ce qu’il se réalise. Elles leur ont même chanté une chanson pour les aider à pousser.

Mais moi, j’arrache les racines de la menthe qui envahit mon jardin – la menthe, une herbe prisée des cultures arabes. Je déplore la futilité : la futilité d’essayer à sculpter la nature à notre convenance, la futilité d’arranger quelques mètres carrés du jardin quand des gens meurent dans une guerre lointaine que j’abhorre, une guerre qui a reclamé plus de vies depuis sa « fin » que pendant l’action elle-même. Ma conscience n’est pas tranquille. Je me réveille en sursaut dans des cauchemars où des soldats rampent par terre, mitrailleuse à la main, dans une poussière orange et le lendemain, je revoie ces mêmes images à la télé. Je suis impuissante devant ce monde méconnaissable et je compense mon incompréhension en laissant courir ma colère sur la nature. Je rythme mes interrogations sur l’injustice par des coups de pioche.

Depuis quand, la Constitution des Etats-Unis, a-t-elle été amendé à lire : « Tous les hommes sont égaux, sauf ceux du moyen-orient. » Peut-être qu’ils l’ont fait au même moment qu’ils ont voté le don de pouvoirs d’urgence, anti-constitutionnels, au Président. La paranoïa effrénée empêche-elle à chacun de se rappeler les droits inaliénables des prisonniers à Guantanamo ?

Je ne peux soutenir un gouvernement qui camoufle les réalités économiques d’acquérir, en vraie colonialiste, la deuxième plus grande réserve pétrolière du monde, derrière une charade de caches d’armes introuvable, des armes fournies probablement par les USA à une autre époque. Je ne peux soutenir un gouvernement qui permet que les intérêts privées récoltent les bénéfices d’une guerre meurtrière et la reconstruction d’un pays dévasté où les graines de haine poussent avec des racines profondes. Je ne peux soutenir un gouvernement qui ignore les options pacifiques et qui procède à la destruction sans preuve face à la protestation d’une planète entière. Je ne peux soutenir une culture gloutonne qui usurpe environ trois-cinquièmes des ressources mondiales pour seulement 5% de sa population, sans arrière pensée. Je ne peux soutenir un gouvernement qui ridiculise les organismes internationaux.

Alors, je montre à mes enfants le miracle de la vie. Je leur inculque la tolérance et la conscience sociale. Je leur apprends à détester la guerre et la destruction, détester des circonstances qui mènent des gens à faire le mal. Je leur enseigne la compassion pour toute chose vivante, la responsabilité pour ceux dans le besoin et le courage de changer au mieux le monde autour d’eux.

It was a beautiful spring day, warm with a light breeze. We spent the afternoon clearing a spot bordering the terrace to plant sunflowers and radishes. My girls donned their sunhats and gardening gloves, and we all worked together to loosen the dirt, clear away the leaves and push the seeds underground. They will diligently bring water to their treasures every day until the promise of new life that they await becomes a reality, like making a wish on a star until the day it comes true. They even sang a song to the seeds to help them grow.

But I rip up the roots of the mint plant that’s invading my garden–mint, a prized herb in Arabic cultures. I lament the futility: the futility of shaping nature to our guise, the futility of bringing order to a few square meters of garden when people are being killed in a war that I abhor half a world away. My conscience is unappeased. I wake from dreams where crawling soldiers in an orange haze wield machine guns, only to see the same dust-storm footage on TV. I am powerless before a world I don’t recognize, and compensate by letting loose my wrath on nature.

At night, like a good American, I fill in the boxes of my tax return, noting in passing that eighteen percent, or more, of the dividend will go to buy more bombs and tanks. I pause to ponder whether I should mark “conscientious objector” on the envelope in neon highlighter, as did my brother at another point in history. When did they amend the Constitution to say “All men are created equal, except for those of Middle-Eastern origin?” Perhaps at the same time they voted to endow unconstitutional emergency powers to the President. Is rampant paranoia keeping everyone from remembering the inalienable rights of the prisoners in Guantanamo? My perspective as an American expatriate in Europe enables me to see a side of the war that is filtered and sterilized on American soil—subject matter for a media event—and as a result, I feel increasingly isolated, uprooted from my native culture.

I am American. But I cannot support a government that camouflages the economic realities of acquiring, in true colonial form, the world’s second-largest oil reserves, behind a charade of would-be weapons caches, weapons possibly furnished by the US at another point in history. I cannot support a government whose private interests will reap the benefits of a murderous war and the reconstruction of a devastated country where the seeds of hatred are taking deep roots. I cannot support a government that ignores peaceful options and proceeds to destruction without evidence in the face of protest from an entire planet. I cannot support a government that triumphantly convoys care packages in front of television cameras to a riotous population of strong, healthy men while it encircles cities, cutting off their water and supplies for days on end, in a strategy reminiscent of the middle ages. I cannot support a gluttonous culture that usurps approximately three-fifths of the world’s resources for only 5% of its population, without a second thought.

So, instead I teach my children about the miracle of life that comes from Yahweh and God and Allah. I teach them of tolerance and kindness. I teach them to hate war and destruction, to hate circumstances that lead people to do evil things. I teach them compassion for all living things, responsibility for those in need, and courage to change the world around them for the better. This is the dream of hope that I have for their future.