scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

4.9.06

everything, the iraqi woman doctor and me.

There is a new researcher in our department, from Iraq. and his wife made lunch for a lot of us. and in talking to her (iraqi food is interesting: it is, just like its geography might suggest, exactly halfway between India and Greece, it is really rather yummy whatever the provinicial Americans might say about it being different from the food in Iowa and if she's serious about teaching me i am going to figure out how to make it and it really can't be hard, because it's just like a little iraqi taco: rice is rice is rice) everything - it is very different. To hear on cnn that everything is very bad, that it is much worse than it was, that you cannot go across the street to buy a loaf of bread, to hear it on cnn it is not real: it is far away, some other place. Not a part of this world, because so many things happen on cnn that don't happen here. and then to hear it from her, that her son was almost abducted, that everyone of even the smallest means is leaving however they can, that you really can't cross the street or go to the corner store because even if you made it that far the baker is bombed out and the butcher has been kidnapped and the greengrocer is a refugee in Jordan or something, and when it's on cnn you can ignore it. when it's on cnn and you know there is nothing you can do that will change any of it anyway, i voted against all those armchair shitheads, i sent weekly e-mails to my congresspeople, i have an Amnesty International calendar, and i know that in the long run i am powerless to stop a giant war machine and so i can pretend, when i am lucky, that it isn't there. i can ignore it. BECAUSE I HAVE TO DEAL. But then you meet someone and their son was almost kidnapped. and they tell you, it is very very bad, it is worse than it was, you can't go outside, and you can't stay inside, and you have no electricity in your clinic, but you have no people in your clinic, because noone can cross the street, so does it matter if you don't have electricity, if you can't get medicines? what do you say? we agree on everything, the iraqi woman doctor and me. and i think she wants to talk. but how do you talk to somebody that agrees with you? and i think her english is better than she lets on - but then, i think that about everyone. tags:iraq

scrawled @ 16:05