Years Later On Ground Zero

Although I weep

With visions of walls tumbling

Men and women falling from the sky

Like rain

And though I’ll see forever

Thick, white dust contending

With plumes of smoke,

Blacker than a northern night

Today, the sun pours down

Upon so many nameless graves

And children, who skip lightly

Across the plaza stones

Whose voices float

Like bells from smiling faces

Are unaware of those

Who sleep below

Walls and Hedges

My friend Nev was raised in India, but his papers say that he is an Arab. His darker skin and foreign accent distinguish him from our group, although we, who work and study with him, barely notice a difference. Nev is intelligent, articulate and kind – a wonderful and rare combination. I admire him greatly. His unusual status didn’t dawn on me until this week’s job fair, when three out of twenty something vendors, vying for our attention, were from the armed forces.

Dozens of respiratory and nursing students milled around the room, gathering brochures and business cards, pens and key chains and weighing one job offer against another. There were delegates from hospitals, home health agencies and nursing homes - and there was the military. None of our group were interested in being shipped to Iraq, so we stayed away from the Army/Navy booths, although they were loaded with free goodies and manned by enthusiastic recruiters, eager to make our acquaintance.

“So, are you going to join the army?” I asked Nev, jokingly, when I saw him make a wide circle around the table.

“Are you kidding?” he laughed. “They hear my accent, they’ll think I’m the enemy!”

As funny as that was, it made me painfully aware of our national xenophobic attitude. Folks who once would have qualified as fascinating and unique are now considered suspect invaders. Our much-lauded American openness has given way to anxious exclusiveness. We have become a nation of haters, protecting a country with invisible, but oh so tangible walls!

But what is it that we are so ferociously protecting? And against whom have we erected the walls? Some say, our freedom is at stake, and I couldn’t agree more, but it is not our foreign guests who present that danger, but our very own government, our very own people, our very own antisocial attitude. Freedom is lost when we give in to xenophobia, because we give up the independence of mind which served humanity so well over tens of thousands of years. All our knowledge and most of our cultural heritage were acquired through the exchange of thought and the sharing of ideas from tribe to tribe, from country to country and from ethnicity to ethnicity.

America is a country, rich in diversity, but it could be even more so, if we didn’t hide behind walls and hedges of seething resentment. With the constant influx of multinational visitors, our cultural knowledge and understanding could expand to vast proportions and increase our power in the international market and the world political scene. Instead, we build walls and label skin colors. We rank religions, according to how closely they resemble mainstream. We fiercely protect a language we don’t even speak well for fear that another might gain too much importance. And we hate.

The Hippie generation, with its ‘live and let live’ or ‘make love not war’ philosophies and its openness to change must be slumbering somewhere in cryonic sleep. Otherwise, they, who are now old enough to hold office and wield power, would surely advocate openness and liberal thinking and provide a link from culture to culture, from color to color, as they did back in the sixties. Where is their wisdom now? Did it drown in a sea of too many drugs? Or did it fade from memory, as their music faded from the airways?

I am an American, but I have lived in and seen other places in the world. I have experienced cultures that are very different from the one I now encounter day by day. There is value in all of them. They all contribute to the human community.

The world has become small enough, we can be its citizens. And we have the unique privilege of world communication, far beyond anything possible in previous generations. For the first time in human history, we can truly learn from one another. So why, the hell don’t we do it?

Time Passes Slowly

This week’s Time Magazine has a special treat. Or so I thought. I read the cover as I walked back from the mail box, my arms full of mail, eager to “crack its shell” and read its usually fascinating content. The top right corner advertises, “The Year’s Best Pictures.” I expect an amazing display of artful photography, composition and color. But that is not what I find.

The pictures are eye opening. And shockingly dismal. And hauntingly real. And mostly about war.

A whole double page shows a neighborhood, leveled to the ground and a lone figure walking through it. Israeli raids ripped an alleyway through Beirut, leaving nothing but scrap metal and dust. On the next page over, red is the dominant color, blood splattered over skin and clothing of a terrified teen who huddles crying with his mother, injured from shrapnel.

Another double page: a funeral, this time of an Israeli paratrooper, only twenty-one years old. And a truckload of heavily bandaged American soldiers, leaving Afghanistan. Iraqi women and children, huddled together, terrified, as US troops search their house for insurgents. Their faces betray their distrust. Surely the memory of the raped and murdered girl and her family is still fresh on their minds.

Refugees form long lines in Chad, hungry and cold under the ever present shadow of violence and persecution. And the charred remains of vicious attacks on human life are immortalized through photography. Us Marines gather around a makeshift campfire, seeking some kind of community. And a series of pictures show an American soldier heroically dragging an injured comrade to safety.

A picture truly must tell more than a thousand words, because I stare and time passes. It passes ever so slowly, while the reality of human suffering sinks into my very soul. I could stare at these images for ever, even as my whole being recoils in horror. I feel the overwhelming tragedy of being human, of belonging to a species with no boundaries and no code of honor. And I realize that in a pinch, we are all capable of unspeakable cruelty.

I close the magazine and leave the carnage behind, but I feel years older. I am surprised that only minutes have passed, since I first paged my way to the pictorial. For a moment I feel lost but then I recover. My child needs me and reality’s other side is calling. Life goes on, but it does so at a snail’s pace.

And the images are burned forever into my heart.

Mr. America

After living on a Green Card for thirty-five years, my friend recently became an American Citizen. The diploma on his wall represents another step in his mastery of life, another accomplishment, another building stone of pride.

Born in Saltillo, Mexico, he grew up hard and fast. He was one of fifteen children, whose family was not blessed with wealth or property. He spent his youth on the streets, learning the rules of survival, sleeping wherever he could find shelter.

His first visit to the US was brief and he was not able to stay legally. He was merely a boy then. Back on the dangerous streets of Mexico, his determination to return grew stronger and his dream of a better life persisted.

Once he obtained the proper legal documents, he arrived in South Texas alone, penniless and with no knowledge of the English language. “Weren’t you afraid?” I asked him once, but he shook his head.

“I had no time to be afraid. I had to work…for to eat,” he replied with his heavy Spanish accent.

I have done what he did, started life over in a new country, but I had distinct advantages: Money and a working knowledge of the native language. Even so, I can attest to the difficulties, obstacles and the unexpected culture shock. It boggles my mind how he managed to adjust with all the odds against him.

Unafraid of hard work, he has at times held several jobs at once, and with his equally hard working wife, raised five strong, healthy children. He owns property now, is politically savvy and much loved in the community. The family home is a favorite gathering place for kids and grandkids.

We call him “Tata”, Spanish for “Grandfather”, and his grandkids adore him. A man of short stature, he has the heart of a giant. He formed a special bond with my bed-ridden, gravely disabled son. I fight back tears when I see them smile at one another.

Now, “Tata” is an American citizen, and no man could be prouder of his chosen country. He called to tell me when he passed his exam. Tongue-in-cheek, he quipped, “Now I’m a white guy.”

It is wonderful that our country has a way for great people to naturalize into citizenship. They bring a richness of experience, a wide-open gift of the world. I treasure this part of our heritage. And I treasure “Tata”, the American, who proudly displays his hard-earned diploma on his bedroom wall.