Death in a Rose Garden

If a man drops dead in a rose garden, and nobody notices, does he make a sound? 

 

There is a wooden pavilion in a rose garden I cross through regularly on my way to the walking trail. Yesterday morning, as I hurried through the garden, I noticed a big, burly man supine on the bench in the rose pavilion, one foot still on the ground, the other on the bench, one arm across his forehead, the other on his chest. About forty. Wearing an immaculate white t-shirt, blue running shorts and new running shoes. Catching his breath, I guessed, after pushing himself too hard, out of shape and overweight as he clearly was. He seemed actually to have fallen asleep, not just resting. 

 

An hour and a half later, having completed my walk and looped back to my starting point at the park, I saw the flashing lights of an ambulance. Still, I didn’t make a connection with the man until, striding through the rose garden, I saw him lying on the bench in the exact same position, but now three police officers surrounded him, and a fourth spotted me and shouted: “Ma’am! Get back!” As I turned and scrambled away, I heard another policeman say, “We have a heart attack victim here.” Others were blocking off the path with the yellow “Do Not Cross” tape. Then it was that I realized the man was dead.

 

They had just discovered him. He hadn’t moved a hair since I’d seen him an hour and a half earlier, so he must have lain there immobile for at least that long, in a public park with people passing constantly and children playing on the swings nearby, and no one had noticed or bothered to call for help until a few minutes ago. I hadn’t . What does that say about our society, even here, in a small, safe, southern college town? What does it say about me?

 

If he had looked like a person in distress, if he had been old or frail or a woman, would I have approached him and asked: “Are you alright?” I believe I would have. But I should have known he was in trouble nevertheless. Only homeless people sleep on a park bench in the middle of the day, and he was clearly not that.

 

This man looked like a family man, he had that look about him. He also looked like he’d once been athletic but had put on about fifty pounds over the years. Maybe his wife and kids finally talked him into taking care of his health and he decided to take up running, and pushed himself too hard. And now he would never come home.

 

One question torments me. Was he still alive when I first saw him? If I had called 911, would there still have been time to save him? I don’t know. I’ll never know. And not knowing will haunt me. 

 

 

How do you commemorate 9/11 twenty years later?

How do you remember an event that was a personal trauma as much as a global one? I was spared the loss of anyone close to me, thank God, although for the first few hours, I did not know that, until I received that reassuring phone call: “Mom, I’m alright.” Nothing can compare with that. 

But I lost other things: my right to my heretofore perfectly integrated, happy life as an “ordinary American,” unqualified by hyphenation and its accompanying stigmatization. I lost one friend I truly cared for, but was blessed by the support from so many, many more. I lost my voice, as a writer, for what seemed like a long time, but I found it again and published two books since then, partly inspired by 9/11 (Love is Like Water) or wholly inspired by the Iraq invasion (The Naqib’s Daughter.) 

So how do you commemorate 9/11? For me, reflection and solace in a morning walk in the woods today. Last night, watching the play Come from Away. Tomorrow, September 12th, giving a talk at Duke Divinity School about 9/11 Twenty Years Later: What has Changed? 

9/11 Twenty Years Later: What Has Changed? Talk at Duke Divinity School September 12, 2021, 9:45 am

 

Afghanistan today, Egypt in 1801: History Repeats, Tragically.

 Today, it’s Afghan collaborators with the American forces of occupation who are abandoned by the evacuating Western troops and fear retribution at the hands of their countrymen. Over two hundred years ago, the same scenario played out in Egypt when Bonaparte’s army of the East scrambled to evacuate after three years of occupation, as I described in my book, The Naqib’s Daughter. Arguably, the French withdrew with less precipitation and more consideration for their collaborators: they embarked some with them, and tried to negotiate amnesty for those they left behind. Ultimately, though, many Egyptians paid a heavy price in retribution, especially the women who, willingly or against their will, consorted with the French in Egypt. 

The Cataclysmic First Year of the Decade

 What is it about the cataclysmic first year of every decade of this third millennium? Events that permanently shake and shape the world stage. September 2001 needs no reminder. January 2011, the Arab Spring in Tahrir Square, Cairo. January 2021, the sacking of the Capitol in Washington DC. As I watched the inconceivable spectacle of a mob charging the very seat of American democracy, the sense of déjà-vu was acute and yet overpowered by the far more alarming implications. When a million Egyptians gathered in the streets to demand, first the reform, then the ouster, of the thirty-year autocracy of Hosni Mubarak, the uprising fell into the category of the familiar, the rational, and even the expected, along the pattern of similar popular revolutions in Eastern Europe and elsewhere around the world. But the mob assault of a few thousand

on the hallowed electoral process in the iconic Capitol building on January 6^th, 2021, was truly unprecedented, an earthquake opening a chasm under our feet. Above all, irrational: a response to an alternative, conspiracy-fueled version of facts. And consequently, the chasm opening under our feet is dividing the nation into two camps with irreconcilable world views. Egypt’s 2011 Revolution presented no such challenge to reality, only irreconcilable positions on whether, or how, to bring about change. In America today, there is no consensus on reality. 

The contrast is particularly salient to me right now, as I am in the process of writing a novel set in Egypt during the Arab Spring.