Thursday, February 2, 2017

Do you
know the story of Jacob’s ladder? We have
Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, trying to flee from his twin Esau who had vowed
to kill him. Esau was angry with Jacob
for taking away his inheritance. On his
way to his relative’s house, Jacob laid down to rest, and dreamt of a ladder
descending with God’s angels upon it.
Jacob saw God standing above it, repeating his promise of support that
he had made to Jacob’s father and grandfather, saying “Behold, I am with you
and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you….” (Genesis
28:15)

In the
book of Genesis, Jacob’s ladder is the long link between earth and heaven, God’s
promise of redemption and support. This
image has revisited my mind so many times in the last few weeks. When I have read of bans and detentions. Of outcry and protest. Of fear.

Let me
tell you another story, of a woman who is tired and traveling with a fractious 2-year-old
which has only made her more so. She is missing
her mother, too ill to travel and visit her in America, but now she is looking
forward to seeing her husband and making sure he is eating. Her neighbors will look in on him, she is
sure but still. This trip had been
planned for months. Money scraped
together to make the visit. And it was a
wonderful one. But there is a
problem. Her greencard will no longer
permit her entry into the United States.
The TSA agent has detained her.
And her child sensing her fear, begins to cry. She tries to call her husband, who is frantic
with worry. He tells her he is trying to
find someone to straighten everything out.
He asks if she is well, if their daughter is all right? As the hours pass and the tension mounts, and
she is regarded with piteous suspicion she looks forward to the double doors
that clear customs and wonders if she will see her husband on the other side.

Then
there is another mother, who hasn’t seen or smelled or considered home in over a
year. Ever since she had to flee with
her child and her brother-in-law, when she had to barter and steal to make sure
her family could eat, when she worried about the anger forming in her nephew’s
eyes as he struggled to understand that asylum can also mean “trapped.” She has not bathed often and even when she
has, it has been in cold water. Her
digestive system is in ruins because she eats rarely, preferring instead to
give her portion away to the children. She
has been forced to undress in front of strangers and sleep on floors. Her university education and love of poetry
no longer matter. Another woman in the
temporary camp she lived in for 6 months told her that her husband’s cousin, a
law professor, was now a check-out clerk.
Despite the humiliation she has endured she says she will do the
same. Anything was better than worrying
if she was going to be alive by the day’s end.
She prays constantly. And
finally, the interviews are over and she is here, in the United States. But she is barred entry. Her accented flawless English, cultivated
from years of pouring over the Romantics, is mocked. She closes her eyes, and takes a seat. And waits.
In a clean airport, at least, she does not have to fear being
raped. But she has not stopped asking
God for deliverance. Her eyes seek
heaven.

When
everything on earth is gone. When
someone is vowing to kill you for stealing a birthright, you look towards
heaven with profound faith. Your clothes,
food and any other cultural marker has vanished. Your faith is all you have left. And that carries you all the way to a new
shore.

Jacob’s
ladder.

I will not be the one to break the rung of another's faith;

I will help her hold on to it.

I have hurt while watching voracious and blatant attacks on social media
with unverified links from both sides.
And since it seems that so many get their news from social media where
anyone can post anything with an email address and a pseudonym, truth and
justice is being pulled further away and fear is the sole resounding rallying
cry. A dangerous wail of frustration.

When fear
moves us, the ladder stretches even higher.
The rungs increase in spacing and number. We forget entirely about bringing the kingdom
of heaven here, and we forget what that means.
We forget kindness. We forget
love. We breed our own terror.

My son
wrote in his notes about the Boston Massacre, “In 1770, a snowball was thrown
at a British solider and he then fired his musket killing 5 colonists.” Can you imagine an environment of such
tension and fear that a simple snowball would result in the spark that began a
war? Because when I see the fear in the
eyes of protestors, the fear is mirrored in those detainees. And such fear will culminate in an extraordinary
way, if we do nothing.

Let me
explain by relaying a part of a particularly frustrating conversation I had
with someone recently:

“I’ve
seen the order—there is NO BAN.”

Me: “It
doesn’t matter.”

“What do
you mean it doesn’t matter?! These
people are protesting for nothing. There
isn’t a ban, it is the same document that has been instituted by
administrations over the last 16 years!”

Airport Demonstration

Me: “I don’t
care.”

“You have
to care. This is crazy. People are just willing to protest anything.”

Me: “They’re afraid—

”

“Afraid?
Of what!”

“It no
longer matters what the language says.
All that matters is the fear that it inspires. That should we start turning away those in
need of help—

”

“It’s
temporary.”

“Tell
that to the detainee. Tell her it’s only
temporary after she traveled a lifetime to get there. Tell him that his business, his family, the
life he created after leaving another behind is no longer his to claim. Tell him he must wait even though he’s paid
taxes, met with his daughter’s teachers, volunteered in his community, gone to
public meetings. Tell him.”

“Come on.”

“No. No come on.
I saw on Facebook, a woman I know posted, ‘I guess we’re all immigration
experts now,’ complete with an eyeroll.
But she doesn’t understand, that this is just now too much. That the democracyde Tocquevillecritiqued
is becoming realized while the ideals the Founders stood for seems to be
radically misunderstood.”

“No, wait
a minute.”

“No. These people?
They are afraid. And maybe for
too long we’ve all just passively accepted that those elected officials embody
the ideals they are sworn to uphold. We
haven’t kept an eye on them. Now their grandstanding seems divided on party lines, exacerbated by the tension in the air.”

“That’s
not the law. That is not what it
says. We have a responsibility to the
citizens of this country. And we have a
court system and Congress that were created to check and balance one
another. You know that.”

“It doesn’t
matter. It’s the state of the union. And unless this President addresses this
fear. A very real fear to the people he
represents, something will happen that will be bigger than a snowball fight.”

“A
snowball fight?”

“Never
mind. It’s just that they’re afraid. And while fear can be irrational, it needs to
be taken seriously. I would never send
my child back to bed to face the monsters he believes are there. I will go.
I will turn on the lights. I will
recheck the closet and under the bed. I
will stay and hold his hand until he feels safe. I will do it so he feels he doesn’t see
monsters everywhere when he is older and when it is the bright light of day. For some people the monsters never go away and the shadow they cast becomes real, because no one took the time to explain that they are NOT real.

My cousin
is Muslim. Another came into this
country seeking asylum. I am a first-generation
immigrant. I took the oath of
citizenship just shy of my 18th birthday, the original oath
promising to defend America and bear arms against any enemies foreign or
domestic. I am proud to have grown up
here, for the intense sacrifices and scrutiny my parents have borne to raise me
here. My father said that there is
nowhere else on earth where dreams can be realized. Where if someone worked hard enough success
would come despite family name or the circumstances of birth. This, for me, is deeply personal.

Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images

There has
not been a single year in my memory when I haven’t been witness to a parent (or
I myself) being told to “get out
of the country and never come back.”
Through the years of both party administrations, the racism and sexism
has kept coming:

My mother
was given threatening letters at work during theIran hostage crisisand told
to “watch [her] back, that [someone] would be coming for [her].” When my mother showed her supervisor, she
looked the other way and shrugged.

I was jovially, loudly (and repeatedly) warned by Mr. Adams, my high school Biology teacher, not to be found riding the elephant in the rotunda at the Natural History Museum before getting off the bus for our field trip.

I was
asked for my contact information because the little boy in my grocery cart
looked so well cared for, was I available then to nanny for [her] family? “He’s my son,” I said quietly and placed the
packages woodenly on the belt. “He’s my
son and I teach in the English Department at ----- College.”

My father
had full cans of soda thrown at him during his lunch walks in Georgetown and
screamed at and called everything but a child of God.

At the park when Joe was a toddler, I went to grab something from the stroller, and saw Joe reaching over to say hi to another little boy. They spun wheels on the playground together. When I walked over to see him, his mother, a lovely blonde just like her little boy, abruptly picked him and said in a carrying whisper, “We don't play with those people.”

My father
was punched and his cheekbone crushed by a drunken African American orderly
when my father told him he couldn’t touch one of his patients in that condition.

We have had bricks thrown through our window.

Years
ago, I was told I was taking away good American jobs, I remember looking up from the vegetable bins at the market and said, “I wasn’t aware you were
looking for an Assistant Professorship in Literature?”

So none
of this language, as bad as it has gotten, is surprising for me. In fact, as a minority woman, in an
interracial marriage, I can tell you I’ve experienced much worse.

If any
good can come out of this intense unrest and pain—such excruciating pain—we are
witnessing, it is this: that people are understanding the process of
Democracy. They are looking to
understand how government works. They
are learning the names of their representatives and calling them. Accountability is becoming important,
passivity can no longer be the order of the day, no matter who is in
charge.

--Jamal Joseph

“There is
no expiration date on dreams and there is no
start date on activism.” But there has
to be a purpose and a common one, of a better and kinder and more decent world.
To be even more personal, I’ll share with you an insight a therapist once told my
husband and myself, “You know I think you both needed this. Your marriage needed this. You needed to hit a bottom in order to
rebuild and begin again to talk to one another.
To learn to talk to one another.”
A hard reset. Maybe this is a
truth for us all now as well. We need a
call-back to the gravity and courage of the founding of this country that
sought liberty from any kind of oppression.

I hold those truths very dearly indeed and have explained to
my children that despite our personal disagreements we have to look at the
manner in which the country works, and allow that process to continue. And yet, this order? The rationale is not sound and the agents
involved to carry it out, do not seem to be equipped to undertake it.

With one
brief exception, I have not found any TSA agent to be especially kind or
helpful. I have found them to be
uniformly brusque, rude and having serious misconception of their
authority. One team in Tampa took aside
my then 4-year-old son, and removed him from my presence as he looked at me in
panic. They tested his small palms for
gunpowder residue: twice. And yelled at
him when he, so scared and shocked, as I could see through the partition, was
too nervous to place his hands palm up.
He had tears in his eyes as he was delivered back to me. Through clenched teeth, I said, “you are not
allowed to take a minor away from his parents to search him.” The man grinned, winked and said, “have a
nice day Paki.”

So these
are the people who have to enforce these restrictions. These men and women are in full charge of
people who have been traumatized once, twice, many many times over?

“We have
to let this play out in the court system.”

“No we
cannot. We cannot. How much longer does a permanent resident have
to wait before moving beyond those double doors? The court system? And if one such detainee can by some miracle
find a lawyer just beyond the door to file an injunction, what form needs to be
used? No. There is no more time.”

“There is
neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female,
for you are alone in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Step-by-step, rung by rung we have to climb
this ladder. We cannot do it alone. And we must help each other reach further. Fear
cannot divide us. We have to confront
it; we have to ask the hard questions of why we are scared. We have to recall Japanese-American internment, Chinese labor camps, and the lingering shock and acrid residue of
war; we must face our fear.

Your
humanity and decency calls upon you to act in kind to another. To believe in both of those ideals despite
any evidence to the contrary and to see them in another. We must try.

Remember
that woman, that mother trying to calm the racing of her heart and seeking with
eyes to find recognition of her humanity in another's? That woman could have easily been my mother
in 1973. That child—me. That
man seeking asylum and rest? Jesus. There can be no greater evidence of God than
our love for one another in the face of our differences.

I have to
thank you for reading this, when you are most likely tired and weary of reading
so much on the same. When you have seen
and witnessed and borne pain yourself, watching friendships end and
relationships crumble. The first person
I know I must reach is the person whose views are in absolute contradiction to
my own. So I foresee many formidable
arguments in my future. But it’s worth
it. Change cannot come without
discomfort, and challenge will sharpen our own ideas. Combined is a path toward cooperation and a
willing hand to continue the climb. In its undertaking, I wish you peace, strength, and above all else, courage.

What the story said...my reviews on goodreads

“You must understand, this is one of those moments.” “What moments?” “One of the moments you keep to yourself,” he said. “What do you mean?” I said. “why?” “We’re in a war,” he said. “The story of this war—dates, names, who started it, why—that belongs to everyone. [….] But something like this—this is yours. It belongs only to you. And me. Only to us” (56). This moment, in Téa Obreht’s lyrical first novel, The Tiger’s Wife, tells you the entirety of the story of love and loss, of memory, maps and war, of science, fables and imagined histories. The tale, set in a fictional Balkan province, is about the relationship between the narrator, Natalia and her grandfather who is a doctor. And the story involves the wars that have ravaged that area for years.

If you think back to the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, you may remember the horror and shock of those years of unending war. The bombing of a 400 year old bridge, the massacres, the deadening of Sarajevo. While none of these events are overtly, or even covertly, covered in the novel, their echo remains. This is a novel whose strength lies in the ability to translate myth and fable, to make the moments that seem almost unknowable known. The excerpt offered in the beginning of this review is an example of that, the Grandfather takes the young Natalia past curfew to witness the surreal site of a starving elephant being led on the city streets to the closed city zoo, the place of their weekly pilgrimages. During mercurial times, there was this moment of placidity and fantasy. The war which raged and continued and was irrational as wars are, there is the fantastical presence of an elephant sloping up the quiet neighborhood street. While Natalia frets that no one will believe her, her grandfather corrects her idea by telling her that history can be something personalized and intimate. Not meant to be shared by the world, but by those who you love and trust to see your vision. It makes sense, because when histories are challenged and threatened, documents concerning your birth, the death of your families are challenged or lost, history becomes something far more ephemeral. Far more illusory unless it is placed in the permanence of your own heart.

She begins Chapter 2 by saying, “Everything necessary to understand my Grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man” (32). So it is between these poles of myth and story that we can locate the history of this narrator and her grandfather, both physicians, both straddling the line between science and home remedy. I could tell you at length about both, but that truly would be spoiling the journey of the story for you. But I will say that the language Obreht uses is so languid and lush, masterful and mindful that you begin to be seduced by it all. So reason, the questions of markings of slippery occurrences of war that do belong to the world that could ground the reader in the world Obreht is translating is lost because that is the moment she is NOT choosing to share. But here is the thing. I needed it. Even in a footnote or an afterward. I needed a timeline of the events that brought the destruction of these people to such impossibilities of existence. Because even though it is a public history, it is one I do not know well. It would be wrong to assume the knowledge on the part of a Western audience I think, it’s unfortunate that this is not a familiar landscape or language. I know, in the recesses of my mind I know the wars in the Balkans. The horrors, the rape camps of Bosnia, the destruction, the evacuation of Serbians…but I don’t know enough, not nearly enough to be lulled into this lush tale. A part of me refused to be completely seduced by it. Because I didn’t understand enough about it.

There is a way in which myth sustains us when horrors are too much. When person and home and identity fall away, and where you cannot locate your birthplace on a map, because it has been eliminated, what do you hold onto except your stories? As the author writes, “We had used a the map on every road trip we had ever taken, and it showed in the marker scribbling all over it: the crossed-out areas we were supposed to avoid…. I couldn’t find Zdrevkov, the place where my grandfather died, on that map. I couldn’t find Brejevina either, but I had known in advance that it was missing, so we had drawn it in” (16). Map lines, map dots, erased and redrawn because of war. How do you locate who you are, if you cannot really know where you are from? The erasing of history, of place, of belonging, of self is such a legitimate tragic legacy of war. So it is understandable that the novel moves between these two myths to bookend it, asking the reader to locate the grandfather and the narrator in its midst. I just think that the novel, which is a remarkable achievement for such a young writer, would have been that much more strong, viscerally, had it had the historical reference points it alluded to. That being said, though, it is a novel of quiet questions and loud answers and makes you wonder long after you’ve set it aside. Questions like, “What is the moment you have? The one you find that belongs to you? Who will you share it with and what familiar myth might you create?”