Contributing
Editor, Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, Essayist, Author, and a Songwriter.
Her bio and bibliography.
Written March 13, 2003
ON THE BRINK OF WAR
It seems appropriate that an Arab in the United States would have
a heart attack right about now. My Palestinian father lands in the
intensive care ward in Dallas in early March.
The skillful Dr. Weaver, perfect name for the job, inserts three
stainless steel filagreed stents into the blocked passages. We picture
the heart as a city with highways and little roads coming in and out.
There is so much traffic these days.
My father endears himself to the nurses right away. They are lingering
around his bed, teasing tenderly. The friendly female nurse has a
pierced tongue, at first we imagine a yellow pill in her mouth.
We do not turn on the television set for 2 days.
After my father is moved to a regular room on the tenth floor, his
Arab friends begin visiting, wearing leather jackets and dark shirts,
smiling hopefully, kissing him on both cheeks and on the forehead
too. They stand with me in the hallway outside a few moments before
leaving. "He's such a good man," they say. "It's a
really bad time." In the world, they mean. "I'm a little
surprised we're not all having heart attacks."
My father's regular cardiologist is an Arab too. He sits gently on
my father's bed, taking his time, making extensive notes on a clipboard.
He calls my father his "brother."
My father has the bed by the window so he can look out on the big
sky and its mellowing cloud-tones. We hear voices from the television
on the other side of the room. The United States is "losing its
patience." We are giving Saddam "one more chance."
"The game is almost over."
Fifteen years ago, when my father had bypass surgery, his Lebanese
surgeon who has now retired kissed him on both cheeks as he was waking
up in Recovery. I always thought this contributed to the long success
of the operation.
No, my father does not wish to eat the bland slab of turkey on his
plate.
An Arab professor delivers a bouquet of yellow tulips. The Greek
wife of a Lebanese friend brings a steaming vat of lentil soup.
One night, after the Lutheran friends hold hands to pray around
his bed, a group of Arabs appears direct from the mosque. A man who
looks like an angel awakens my father with light kisses on the cheeks,
startling him out of sleep. "We are here to pray for you."
Eight men stand around the bed softly chanting verses from the Koran
about healing of the chest. I am not sure if they improvise the chest
part or if it really appears in the text. My secular father accepts
their prayers gratefully. There are eight more friends waiting in
the hallway. My dad says, "I think we have enough in here, thanks."
In the morning he swears he feels stronger. A Nigerian nurse asks
my dad if all these guys are married.
What does his very Anglo roommate in the first bed think about the
stream of men with accents? He smiles curiously when we pass. The
roommate has various complaints, including gout. But he is able to
stomach full Showdown:Iraq reports in the evenings whereas we flit
restlessly among channels, switching the reporters off after a single
sentence or two.
We see my fathers heart pumping and thumping on the Echo monitor.
He goes home on the day the Americans test the bomb in Florida.
People miles away say their houses were shaken by the explosion. But
they do not seem upset. They act like it is a normal thing, bomb-testing
in their own backyard.
I go outside and stare into the gray oncoming night.
Our language needs a doctor. Words like "awe" have gone
into shock. Bombs do not have mothers. Bombs cannot BE mothers.
My father has a hard time sleeping, his first night home. He dreams
his chest is full of jangling bells. He knocks on the wall to awaken
us and scares himself. Who is knocking at such a late hour? I jump
out of the guest bed on the wrong side and hit my head on the wall.
The next day the front page of THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS gives me
a personal birthday gift. An Iraqi boy with his face beautifully lit
sets his candle adrift on a small white raft on the Tigris River.
It joins a flock of other candles reflecting in the water. Artists
and citizens held a vigil for peace in downtown Baghdad.
I am so glad the front page did not give us the bomb.
Those who have never been to Baghdad, but who know what Jerusalem,
Amman, Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo and Dubai smell like, can imagine Baghdad.
A smoky mingling of coffee and cardamom, cinammon and damp stones.
A city full of regular people. People who have no more control over
what their government does than we do. Much less, in fact. And how
deeply in jeopardy are they at this moment?
My father wants me to trim his fig tree. Wearing a plaid bathrobe,
he points out the branches to cut and recalls being a boy in Palestine,
his relatives carrying hot flat bread wrapped in towels. They hiked
into the orchards to eat green figs straight off the trees.
By afternoon, my father is sitting in his old Archie Bunker chair
reading STUPID WHITE MEN by Michael Moore ("this book scares
me," he says maybe not the best present to bring someone recently
hospitalized), when the TV news explodes with the first good story
in months. Elizabeth Smart is not dead. It is my second birthday present.
I run to the telephone and call my teenage son at home. I call my
friends. "And what about Elizabeth Smart?" we have been
repeating for months. "Anybody heard anything about HER recently?"
The whole country is cheering.
Is it possible that one or two people feel about the Iraqi boy the
way we all feel about Elizabeth? That she deserves to live with her
parents like a normal girl? That she deserves to feel safe, waking
up in the morning?
We are giving Iraq a few more days.
The only person with enough decency to cry on TV is Ed Smart.
