Saturday, August 21, 2021

The Heart of a Hunter


As you read these words, there are hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan who need the U.S. government to step up and guarantee them safe passage out of the country and away from the clutches of the Taliban.

This is a moral imperative and time is of the essence.

If it does not happen, many lives may be lost, so those who realize what is at stake should create pressure on the Biden administration and Congress to act swiftly and decisively.

Prof. Amanda C. Demmer has brilliantly outlined the nature of this crisis in a Washington Post piece. As she notes, somewhere around 300,000 Afghan citizens helped the U.S. during its 20-year war in various roles, including interpreters, drivers, construction workers, scouts and many others. 

Now the U.S. has lost the war and abandoned the country, almost all of them have been left behind, where they face the mortal danger of being identified as enemies of the new regime, traitors for whom there will be little mercy.

The historical precedent that comes to mind is the migration of roughly 1.5 million Southeast Asians, mostly Vietnamese, who came to the U.S. after the loss of the Vietnam War in the '70s.

Without those who stood by and fought alongside the U.S. in both wars, many more American soldiers would have died and foreign policy objectives, like eliminating the Al-Qaeda leadership, would have been difficult if not impossible to achieve. 

Now those Afghan collaborators are at risk for helping America. That is the urgency of this moment.

***

It was in 1940 that Carson McCullers published her first book, an elegiac novel called "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." She was 23 and her book captured the spiritual loneliness and isolation felt by misfits and outcasts in a small Southern town.

I've read so many novels in my lifetime that many of the plots and characters and dilemmas merge in my memory to the point where it is only the rhythm of certain titles that endure. Hers is one such title. 

I never met her. She passed away much too soon at the age of 50. But I've always loved the wisdom inherent in the name of that novel. The human heart truly is a lonely hunter when love is the prey.

McCullers' novel came to mind during the pandemic, because Covid enforced a new isolation on almost all of us in a manner unprecedented in most of our lifetimes. Even those of us with large family groups to sustain us through the pandemic suffered some of the effects of not being able to go out in public and greet one another, to renew acquaintances with old friends and continue the process of making new friends.

In this way we all sort of became misfits and outcasts in a manner of speaking.

Virtual media provided an alternative outlet for us to pursue the essential human need for socialization -- from Zoom calls to Facebook to Instagram and TikTok and so many more.

But this is where the meaning of the word "virtual" becomes essential to understand the effect that turning to that option may have had on many of us. I'll use the computer science meaning because computers are the devices we use to pursue relating each other in the virtual realm:

[vir·tu·al = not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so.]

Until recently, I was an extreme example of a person who had turned to virtual reality as the prime alternative to explore the thoughts and feelings and  experiences of my life as a substitute for the real thing.

And sometimes, as a writer I experienced strong reactions from people I had never met physically when they responded to my words emotionally.

I deeply appreciated those interactions and I still do. They helped sustain me through the pandemic, and I hope my writing helped them in return.

But occasionally the reactions of some readers overwhelmed me because I sensed that I had unleashed feelings toward me that I cannot do anything about and that was not an entirely comfortable experience.

Normally, any of us can show our appreciation for a writer we like by buying his or her book or even attending a reading or finding some way to interact in the physical world. The transactional relationships are satisfying mutually. 

But the actual interactions, in my experience, are not always as satisfying because after all the real world is a messy place, our lives are messy and people we only know through their writing may or may not be as we supposed them to be in our imagination.

I have met enough well-known authors in my life, and spent enough time getting to know them to generalize a bit here: Writers are rarely the same in person as their voice is on the page.

Most writers turn out to be quite different than their writings would lead you to believe. They are smaller or quieter or older or more awkward than you expected when their writing was so elegant and sophisticated.

But the real person is often quite another matter. Many of the writers I've known are quite shy and not necessarily comfortable in a crowd. Many do better one-on-one than in groups.

A large number, frankly, drink to excess or otherwise lead semi-self-destructive lives. I will probably offend some people here, but I am simply reflecting my experiences in the literary and journalism worlds when it comes to the most creative members of those communities.

Social skills are often in short supply.

But to return to the present tense, as the isolation from Covid has lifted around here, I have been venturing out again to live my actual life in the real world apart from my work as a writer. And it is fabulous!

In my best relationships there is absolutely nothing virtual involved.

One day recently I was sitting at a table outside a cafe across from a friend. She was talking when suddenly in a moment I noticed how her hair was lifted by the breeze and that it was the color of the sunlight peeking through the clouds and her eyes were the color of a deep blue pool at the end of a long hike on a summer's day.

I snapped back to attention to her words and tried to concentrate on the rest of what she was saying.

So now it is no longer only imaginary moments but also real ones that grace my life. And if that means I am a little less of a writer in the virtual world but a little more of the man I want to be in the real world, that is just fine with me.

***

Thanks to Jay Hirschman for an early tip on the Afghan refugee piece. 

And a big thank you to editor Susan Zakin for reprinting "Memories of a Visit -- خاطره یک دیدار" in the Journal of the Plague Year. Check out the Journal's terrific coverage of the unfolding disaster in Kabul.


THE HEADLINES:

With Afghanistan’s fall, the U.S. confronts a moral necessity it faced before -- Will we work to resettle our Afghan allies as we did after Vietnam? (WP)

*Biden Defends Afghanistan Evacuation as Thousands Besiege Kabul Airport -- The president cited “significant progress’’ in getting Americans out of Afghanistan. But Afghans linked to U.S. troops and other Western groups fear being left behind. (NYT)


* As Kabul turmoil mounts, Taliban's PR offensive falters (Reuters)


VIDEO: ‘My Dreams Died’: On Kabul’s Streets With a Woman Protest Leader -- In Afghanistan, raising the national flag has become an act of resistance. We filmed a woman risking her safety to protest the Taliban. (NYT)


In Afghanistan, China Is Ready to Step Into the Void -- The U.S. is gone, the Taliban are back, and China is ready at the door. (NYT)








* Louisiana Governor sees 'astronomical' number of new Covid-19 cases (CNN)






San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott and District Attorney Chesa Boudin presented a united front in addressing perceptions of high crime and lowered public safety in San Francisco. (Mission Local)


Owl Can’t Remember Which Direction To Rotate Head Back (The Onion)

***

"Free Bird"
Song by Lynyrd Skynyrd
Songwriters: Allen Collins / Ronnie Van Zant

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on now
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see
But if I stay here with you, girl
Things just couldn't be the same
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now
And this bird you cannot change
Oh, oh, oh, oh
And the bird you cannot change
And this bird, you cannot change
Lord knows, I can't change
Bye-bye, baby, it's been sweet love, yeah, yeah
Though this feelin' I can't change
Please don't take it so badly
'Cause Lord knows, I'm to blame
If I stay here with you, girl
Things just couldn't be the same
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now
And this bird you cannot change
Oh, oh, oh, oh
And the bird you cannot change
And this bird, you cannot change
Lord knows, I can't change
Lord help me, I can't change
Lord, I can't change
Won't you fly high, free bird, yeah
-30-

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