Peace Amid the Rubble
While the war in Iraq smolders, the country huddles together in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the White House ducks from its mistakes, Darfurians hunger for peace, and the other many calamities play themselves out, Abed is dying.
Abed Jaouni is a slight, Palestinian immigrant living in Berkeley, Calif. He's dying slowly and painfully from Colitis. Really, he is wasting away, suffering the pain of a slow, petty disease - a disease that makes bowel functions public and undignified.
It's a sad way to die. His mind is as sharp as ever, discussing Libyan and Palestinian-Israeli politics even as he wastes away. We spent many an hour pouring over politics instead of working back when we were at the Berkeley Geochronology Center. I moved on last year and he got to sick to look through his microscope for hours on end at grains of million-year-old rocks. I told him he can't die: who would I talk politics with? Few people grasp the events and policies that swirl about us as spot-on as Abed. At 100-pounds and bedridden, Abed still nails the truth like a sniper.
But he wants to die, and his knowledge and acceptance that he is dying is an unexpectedly peaceful shelter amid the rubble that lies at our feet right now. Nothing makes more sense to me right now than the peace he has made with his death.
Katrina's victims didn't get to make peace with death. The Bush Administration, FEMA and other dazed officials robbed them of that. While Bush and Brown may have been surprised by the ripples of destruction that Katrina sent through New Orleans and the rest of the country, Katrina victims were surely surprised when they realized the beacon of democracy - the light of liberty - was asleep at the wheel, leaving them vulnerable to death and destruction. The world's richest and most powerful nation can't even clean up all their bodies as the flesh is slowly eaten away in a watery, toxic cauldron. There's no peace in that.
Soldiers who have died in Iraq were robbed of that peace, even though death accompanies warfare, is an inherent feature of it. Soldiers, I am told, accept death when they sign the dotted line that makes them responsible for protecting the country with their lives. But the war in Iraq started with lies and is being propped up by foundations made from twisted logic. How many soldiers would be alive today without the war? How many signed up, convinced that without war, radical Islamists would see to it that 9/11 was just the beginning of terror for Americans? They died for lies.
Abed is honest down to the core about his death. As if trying to shake off the pity oozing from his friends, he said, "What the fuck. I'm sick of this pain. Then there are the people who like you, because you were nice...But what can you do?"
Abed Jaouni is a slight, Palestinian immigrant living in Berkeley, Calif. He's dying slowly and painfully from Colitis. Really, he is wasting away, suffering the pain of a slow, petty disease - a disease that makes bowel functions public and undignified.
It's a sad way to die. His mind is as sharp as ever, discussing Libyan and Palestinian-Israeli politics even as he wastes away. We spent many an hour pouring over politics instead of working back when we were at the Berkeley Geochronology Center. I moved on last year and he got to sick to look through his microscope for hours on end at grains of million-year-old rocks. I told him he can't die: who would I talk politics with? Few people grasp the events and policies that swirl about us as spot-on as Abed. At 100-pounds and bedridden, Abed still nails the truth like a sniper.
But he wants to die, and his knowledge and acceptance that he is dying is an unexpectedly peaceful shelter amid the rubble that lies at our feet right now. Nothing makes more sense to me right now than the peace he has made with his death.
Katrina's victims didn't get to make peace with death. The Bush Administration, FEMA and other dazed officials robbed them of that. While Bush and Brown may have been surprised by the ripples of destruction that Katrina sent through New Orleans and the rest of the country, Katrina victims were surely surprised when they realized the beacon of democracy - the light of liberty - was asleep at the wheel, leaving them vulnerable to death and destruction. The world's richest and most powerful nation can't even clean up all their bodies as the flesh is slowly eaten away in a watery, toxic cauldron. There's no peace in that.
Soldiers who have died in Iraq were robbed of that peace, even though death accompanies warfare, is an inherent feature of it. Soldiers, I am told, accept death when they sign the dotted line that makes them responsible for protecting the country with their lives. But the war in Iraq started with lies and is being propped up by foundations made from twisted logic. How many soldiers would be alive today without the war? How many signed up, convinced that without war, radical Islamists would see to it that 9/11 was just the beginning of terror for Americans? They died for lies.
Abed is honest down to the core about his death. As if trying to shake off the pity oozing from his friends, he said, "What the fuck. I'm sick of this pain. Then there are the people who like you, because you were nice...But what can you do?"
posted by A.W. Woodall at 3:29 PM
1 Comments:
A very touching piece on a good friend of ours. Will follow your blog. Keep it up.
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