Trauma and taxes

But for the massive brain trauma my father suffered due to land mine shrapnel removing a piece of his brain and paralyzing half of his body back in November 1951, he would have been ninety-seven this week. He was barely a statistic, a blip on the documentation of an already-forgotten war, but the injuries he received as a young twenty-four year old who had just graduated from college and was hoping to go to medical school reframed the structure and trajectory of his remaining fifty-four years when, after decades of anti-convulsant drugs and a row of pills he took daily, and a weakened body wracked by atrophy and compensation, he succumbed to sepsis, which quickly moved through his body and ended his remarkable and tragic life, in which he met and married my mom, had their first two boys – honeymoon babies – Francis and Howard, who died after a premature birth, went on to have eight more children, all of whom are alive and well, went to law school and became a lawyer for the marginalized and disenfranchised, all the while living with a debilitating war injury to which many others would have succumbed, either physically or mentally.

And I share this personal information because, as wars rage around the world and our tax dollars support various sides and causes, one of the first things we do is forget that every single person involved in a war, whether on your side or not, carries with them generational trauma that affects an enormous number of people. Here we are, seventy-five years after one land mine exploded and injured my father, and I and my siblings still live with his scarred legacy of volatile mood swings, erratic emotions, and very little mental capacity for reflection and contemplation. And remember, he was just one young officer on patrol in Yanggu Province. What happens to the people of this current war in Gaza whose whole world is destroyed in front of them? When we care about people, empathize as fellow humans who live and grow in a community of friends and family, we remember their smiles, their passions and dreams, the things that make them human. But, when foreign policy decisions and irreparable differences between governments and states turn these people, who probably celebrate their children’s birthdays just as we do, into enemies, none of those human attributes and frailties matter. Instead, filtered through language and images that dehumanize the side that is on the receiving end of America’s bombs and bullets and logistics and supplies, we call an entire people fundamentalists, extremists or terrorists, forgetting that until bombs dropped on them, they were boys and girls who played with imaginary friends and laughed and played together.

Every victim of Hamas’s attacks on Israel last year has been remembered for what they brought to this life – the joy and hope of a generation. They were school kids and grandparents, fathers and university students, young lovers and doctors, and all of them are dead. The loss of each person should be mourned and their lives remembered. But how is it that in these United States it is hard to find a story of a child in Gaza who was killed by a bomb or the weight of a concrete building collapsing on her, and learn of her humanity, her dreams, her hopes? And why is it that if I, as a US taxpayer, disagree with how my government is allocating its resources and which states it supports, I run the risk of being labeled antisemitic? Is it not possible to disagree with a state’s actions and policies and activities and not hate, demonize, or dehumanize the citizens and civilians of that state? Throughout my life I have protested and criticized my government, and still I call myself a deeply patriotic American who loves his country. I should be able to criticize what our government is doing in Israel in the same way – argue about what our tax dollars are supporting, and not be labeled a lover of terrorists, or an anti-Semite. And I am not passing myself off as a Middle East expert, but I have a right and obligation as a concerned US citizen to engage in discussion about what we support with our taxes. And it feels like the lobby that argues on behalf of US support for sending weapons to Israel is as focused as the NRA – it brooks no dissent and has an influence that goes well beyond what it should.

I support Israel’s right to defend itself, and if the US continues to support Israel’s Iron Dome defense network, I will gladly see my tax dollars flowing in that direction. But Israel is no longer merely defending itself, and its continuous bombardment and destruction of Gaza in the past year has now spread to Lebanon and beyond. In one year, Israel has killed nearly fifty thousand Palestinians – which is as many deaths as the US suffered during the entire Vietnam War, and if I raise my voice in opposition to this, someone may very well reduce it to a pat slogan and say that I hate Jews. No, I resist that label because I don’t hate Jews or want to see the destruction of Israel, but I also do not want my tax dollars paying for weapons that kill civilians, and the overwhelming majority of people killed in Palestine are civilians – the very moms and dads and kids and grandparents who are the hope of the next generation. I wrote about my father because I wanted to point out how much trauma one person suffers over the life of an injury. What happens to the Palestinian people, who are facing a relentless orchestrated effort to destroy them? What will happen to their trauma and how will it ever heal?

For the past year, the US has paid for and provided an endless supply of bombs and bullets being used by Israel to annihilate the Palestinians living in Gaza, and one small thing Americans can do is allow for a space where we can discuss this, and be able to criticize our government – or Israel’s – and not be accused of hating Israelis or Jews. We have a right and obligation to argue about our taxes and foreign policy – it’s about as American as buying a bagel in New York or dipping a warm piece of torn bread into an olive oil-and-garlic-laden hummus. Peace.

A bigger table holds more people

Bowl, with Arabic inscription reading, "Generosity is a quality of the people of Paradise and good health is a blessing." 4th century AH/10th century CE, East Iranian World, Samarkand, or Nishapur.
The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait City, Kuwait

An internal remembory of a meal last year led me back to this place in the heart of Kuwait where, after the blistering daytime sun has worn through mountains of pale concrete skyscrapers and an endless stretch of low buildings that reflect that sunlight back into the sky and people quickly pass from one shaded or air conditioned space to another, a welcoming reprieve lets people emerge into this souk as old as the city and as the evening deepens the pulse of families and friends quickens and amid mounds of dates and deeply scented cardamom pods, I am drawn to the rows of tables with fans blowing misted water where huge grilled fish and long skewers of meat are served alongside warm billowy stacks of bread and heaps of arugula brightened with lemon wedges, the fresh flaky seabass and sbeiti rubbed and bathed in spices tomatoes and herbs and laid out on platters, pulled from the still rich Persian Gulf, and it is impossible not to think back on these historic waters, the beginnings of human culture and trade and only just a hundred years ago this place had barely changed from what it had been a thousand years previous, when for generations famed pearl divers brought gems of the sea to light and they adorned necks and clothes and jewelry and woven nets cast from wooden boats pulled fish aboard and fed the merchants and traders and families that visited or lived along these remote waters on the edge of deserts and this meal is like the one I ate last year, simple rich and fresh and studded with scents and tastes and the sounds of civilization on the cusp of tomorrow, which in one long generation has pumped an underground ocean of oil into ships and across the sea, transforming this etched land of sea sky and desert sand into a concentrated new world empire whose power and influence is not measured or bound by its borders but whose impact shakes the foundation of our Earth and all of its systems and which, because of that power has been at the center of geopolitics and war and political and climate change, and when I flake a piece of that moist white fish whose flesh is bathed in the flavors and tastes aggregated over centuries of trade and shared influences, and I see kids with their parents doing the same, looking at them to see how they laugh and talk and hold themselves, no different than my own children were at that age, I think about how we communicate and share these similarities and differences, and continue to think the way to connect people is here at the table, where we all belong, because we only have to look to see that a bigger table holds more people, and on my long walk home through parks and along streets still radiating the stored heat of today, through souks crammed with electric tea kettles and everything else modernity has to offer, I'm pulled back home where all these needs remain the same, and as the sun tilts lower and darkness comes too soon, I think I know what I'll serve next.

Echoes

Hi friends. A move to Maine, a job change, long spells in Asia and undiminished curiosity about food and how we get it and where we get it and prepare it and how we share it and whether we find ways and time to think about systems and processes and the politics that make things possible or point us toward some kind of social political culinary catastrophe, and as we ease into September and the long glory of warm days and a sun that doesn't rise as high, I continue to make stories, cook food, eat it, and think about it. A pasta machine and an outdoor wheelbarrow stove are two pieces of equipment I use with more regularity than I did in Vermont, or Minnesota before that, and my bread baking has all but disappeared. Pork, duck, rabbits and lamb have mostly given way to clams, crabs, mussels, fish, oysters and lobster, most of which are found at the end of our dock or just down the road, and the corresponding stocks and broths have been supplanted in equal proportion.  And, despite a long silence, it's still this life, and we change and grow and our tastes and opinions evolve and some of them we settle into and others we leave behind, and if there's a thread woven through this, it's my continued belief that with hospitality and generosity and a welcoming table we can address most of the important issues of life.