Take one example -- the HIV/AIDS pandemic that felled 32 million people worldwide not so long ago. Here in San Francisco and many other places, we felt its excruciating toll day by day. Ambulances and medical examiner trucks would pull up to the houses of neighbors (I was living in the Castro District at the time), while friends and family stood outside, sobbing, waving their loved one a final goodbye.
The emergency lights didn't flash and the sirens didn't wail.
When a disease such as COVID-19 strikes, everyone is reminded, at least temporarily, that our bodies are both fragile and tough. Fragile enough that a tiny creature can render us powerless to continue our normal activities; tough enough that most of us will overcome this plague and persist.
And what shall we persist in doing with our lives?
A friend of mine who grew up overseas once ever so gently suggested to me, "Every single American, no matter what his or her situation, is rich relative to the rest of the world's people."
Perhaps true, but what does our relative wealth mean in practical terms?
***
Why shelter in place, some ask. Because the virus that is our present enemy lingers just there, at our doorstep, waiting to come in. It may be an unwanted guest but it is there nonetheless.
We can stay home, wear masks and gloves, wash our hands repeatedly, sanitize the boxes delivered to our doorsteps, and let those boxes rest as the virus particles on their surfaces wither and die. Many of us are doing just that, cautiously progressing into our new lifestyle of shopping online, relying on (very low-paid) delivery people, sanitizing their deliveries, and sustaining life as we know it under new circumstances.
If we follow these precautions, the virus reveals itself to be a weak enemy, unable to defeat our defenses. It floats harmlessly away like the words of a very bad poem. Well, bad poems are not entirely harmless; every one leaves a bit of collateral damage in its wake, as does every dead virus.
Then again, some (perhaps most) people cannot tolerate being confined to their home, or at least they think they cannot. So they venture out to stores, for example. Some walk their dogs or jog by. Some meet up, maintaining a safe distance, sharing life's little details as we always have done.
Others feel angry and frustrated, so they wave flags and protest. But who, exactly, is there to protest against?
***
When I was a boy, growing up in Michigan, I was a writer and a story-teller. I had an audience of one and that guy was a rather harsh critic. As I stare at him now, old and grizzled in the mirror, all I can do is wonder why.
As a girlfriend told me once during a trying period in our relationship, "You always want me to tell you a story but I don't do that. That is *your* thing, not mine."
Every journalist learns on the job that there are as many ways to see the world as there are people. In the Afghanistan I knew in the late 1960s, there was almost no literacy. Perhaps 10 percent of the population could read or write. But every village had a scribe -- if you wanted to send a message to someone in another town, you dictated it to the scribe and he took care of it for you.
On the other end, a scribe in the village receiving the message took it to the intended recipient and read it to him. (Women were largely excluded from this type of interaction.)
Though most could not read or write, everyone could tell stories, and man, did they have a lot of stories. Many of them sounded like scriptures to me, tales repeated down through the centuries as received wisdom. In fact, they sounded a lot like the chapters in the Old Testament.
Many of these stories and myths involved Muhammad (spoken with the accent on the last syllable). As it turns out, scholars can't even agree whether he existed.
If he did not actually live, he certainly led a more influential non-life that virtually anyone who did. He's right up there with Moses, Jesus and the Buddha.
Since I am not a religious scholar, I'll not endorse or reject any academic theory about Muhammad; I just know him through the oral traditions of rural Afghanistan, where he is not only a living prophet but the central character in many a story.
I've written a little bit here and there about my time in Afghanistan; I was young and it forged deep impressions on my developing identity. One enduring lesson: Never underestimate the power of faith.
***
The boy, the young man, the career journalist, the old man. Every step of the way, bad poems have cropped up in my consciousness. I try to discard the worst of these and preserve what is left.
In cooking this is called reduction. Journalists call it editing. I'll call it what will be left after the virus is gone.
-30-
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