Slow Salam

This client was not to be rushed. He insisted on filling out the intake form himself, writing in neat block letters with the slow deliberation of a coffee-making ritual. I spaced out for a moment, gazing at a spot just over his sleek white head as he hunched over the paper. When I asked him for an estimate of his monthly income, he drew out a folder, thumbed through for his tax returns, and began doing calculations on the back of one sheet.

"I was an accountant for 40 years," he explained. "I want to be accurate."

Accuracy applied to more than numbers, apparently. He entered the clinic office, and in the course of exchanging familiar greetings with the staff, one of them asked him what country he was from. He paused.

"I am human being. I don't like it when people ask what country I am from. I was born in Egypt, without my permission. I live in America - I am American. Do people want me to say I am Egyptian?"

I lost the thread of conversation as I set up a computer for him, but he took it up again on rejoining me.

"Were you hearing what I said?"

"Some, yes."

"So you see we are all human beings. We do not give permission where we are born. Why do we fight each other? You fight something like the government, not human beings."

Would that we human beings took enough time to see each other as such.

The rusty knife of justice.*

Justice is not swift.

It is no duel that ends quickly with a clean bullet or a piercing thrust. No, justice is trench warfare: its wheels are grimy and caked with weary sweat and bloody frustration and the dust of endless dawns spent reporting to the battlefield. It grinds slowly on, and some combatants fall by the wayside, too exhausted and disheartened to continue. They have no more resources; they have other pressing needs; their time spent fighting has taken them away from livelihoods and families. Those who remain persevere through doggedness, fatalism, belief in the cause...they endure, and so, persevere.

Few people see beyond the first burst of publicity surrounding the filing of a lawsuit. There are months of investigations, research, appearances and re-appearances, motions and cross-motions, judgments and appeals. Clients, so filled with energy and purpose at commencing action at last, must be encouraged: must be told to buck up, to settle in and keep coming back to the courthouse, to keep asking for more leave from work, to wake early and pass through the metal detectors to wait still more in the crowded court hallways where tempers flare and children wail. After all this, sometimes their patience is rewarded. Sometimes not.

Slow, creaking, lumbering justice. The price of civilized society.

*First published July 2009.

From the hotline

Some quotes from calls to the hotlines I manage at work:

Stuck in the 40s
"A man, or any person, has more than one face. He's an ugly traitor and I think a German spy in addition."
- from a rather elderly lady with a rather strident yet trembly voice. She's a repeat caller, thinks her neighbors are spying on her.

PC? What's that?
A lady whose tones were slightly tinged with the South, once I'd given her my name, asked me, "Is that Oriental?" quickly followed by: "You sound exactly like an American."

Well thank you, ma'am, as a matter of fact, I am.

A Dish Best Served Cold
A rather vindictive caller said of her landlord: "I had visions of garroting the old bitch. Her husband dropped dead recently, which was one of the highlights of my summer."

Having detailed her fruitless efforts contacting various government and business agencies, she sighed with resignation.

"I guess the only thing left to do is to hire a hit man. The problem is, every time someone hires a hit man they get an undercover cop."

I wonder what kind of environment she grew up in.

New York: Sound

Tuesdays are the rattle of aluminum cans, the dull tink-clink of bottles knocking against each other. It's the night before recycling collection, and bags of metal, glass and plastic line the sidewalks in haphazard piles - a monstrous xylophone dismembered and scattered up and down the New York grid.

What other musicians to play the giant sidewalk instrument, but the homeless? Some rake through the piles con fuoco, producing a rapid cacophony of cans, while others search slowly enough for one to distinguish between the different pitches of empty or partially-filled bottles. Sometimes the tumbling glass crescendoes to a halting shriek as a particularly large bag is hauled a short distance.

Singly or in groups, with gloves or bare hands, loading backpacks or bulky shopping carts, they rifle through countless bags of recyclables, searching for the right containers to turn in. In colonial times you could cheat the natives into selling you huge tracts of land for glass and metal beads. Nowadays all you get is enough change for a burger.

Tuesdays ring with the sound of trash en route to becoming not treasure, but survival.

Memory I: Taste

Raspberries will always taste of Paris. The burst of that intense tartness on my tongue, undercut with a hint of something floral, brings me back to the summer of 2004, when I spent five weeks exploring the city and studying French at the Institut Catholique de Paris.

I shared a small room with another student at the Maison des Mines, the dormitory for the engineering, technical and social science school Ecole des Mines. There were two beds, a long desk against the windows, and a small kitchenette comprised of a sink, mini-fridge and cupboard. Carrie and I mostly bought our own food, but each week we split a large carton of yogurt mixed with fruit. Strawberry yogurt I'd had before, and peaches and bananas, but it was my first encounter with raspberries. I would later enjoy them in jams or coated lightly with powdered sugar atop desserts, but there was something more vivid about the taste of that yogurt in my humble dorm room in the Latin Quarter, a slice of la vie boheme. (Or as close as to the bohemian artist's garret as I was going to get.)

That summer was filled other flavors, too: of juicy doner kebab pitas and dark chocolate tinged with orange, of dark-red wines and late-night runs for crepes and Orangina juice. I ate cheese of all types, chocolate-studded pain Viennois, the offerings of the local student cafeteria Resto U. But none of these evokes Paris so much as the nubbly texture and tart sweetness of raspberries.

Eight Years Later

Here we are again
mundanity overlaid with memorial
just a Friday workday
mere blocks from where it happened
my jeans are soaked
where the sky let fall its tears

Routine maintains its endless pace
though we pause today to look back.

I headed to work in miserably wet and cold weather, and the strangeness of living out my everyday in a place so central on the world stage was intensified for me as I emerged from the subway in New York's Financial District. Grey skies, grey buildings, dark cars, punctuated by a cop in neon orange poncho directing traffic. I walked east, where once others ran. I took the elevator up, where once others dashed down the stairs. And as I sat at my desk, listening to the live broadcast from the memorial service a few blocks away, I heard a tolling bell - where once the snapping, rumbling roar of a collapsing tower razed the air. September 11 in New York City. I wasn't there, and now I am.

A Robot and an Opera Ghost

The link between the frames through which we view the world and the experiences that shape and are shaped by those frames is fascinating. How else to explain the fact that I immediately seized upon parallels between the film I was watching, Pixar's Wall-E, and various incarnations of the Phantom of the Opera? (Yes, let me acknowledge here and now, fully and freely, that I am a devotee of the Opera Ghost's tale - the original novel more so than the Lloyd Webber musical, as well as other versions. So sue me.)

Consider:
- Wall-E lives a lonely existence with naught but a cockroach for company. Erik (aka the Phantom aka O.G. for Opera Ghost) also lives a lonely existence, but he has to accompany himself (on the piano).
- The somewhat rusty, beat-up trash robot falls for the sleek, white EVE. Erik, who wears a mask to hide his deformity, also goes for a younger woman, the soprano Christine (often dressed in white to emphasize her innocence).
- Both characters have a retreat where they keep their personal treasures and long for companionship, one watching his "Hello Dolly" VHS, and the other working out his frustrations by (depending on the version) composing, hanging with the Christine look-alike automaton, or consulting with the rats.
- After a tour of the gents' pads, their respective ladyloves each go into sleep mode: EVE to protect the plant life she's been sent to search for, Christine because she's lulled to sleep by Erik's heavenly voice. (Or because aforementioned automaton creeped her out into a faint. Take your pick).
- Plenty of other small parallels, but here's the kicker: Wall-E clearly identifies with "Hello Dolly" character Cornelius Hackl, whose voice is heard singing throughout the film. Cornelius is played by none other than Michael Crawford, who originated the role of the Phantom in the Lloyd Webber musical.

It was amusing to me to realize what I was reflecting upon after the film, and to know that other people with other expertise, life experiences, hobbies and degrees of introspection, would have had completely different musings than mine. Moral environmentalism, animation techniques, soundscapes, health crises, all these - connected to disparate topics and frames of religion, politics, regional and national cultures. In a sense, these others were watching a different movie.

Truth, objective? Don't think so. Not everyone connects an anthropomorphized trash compactor robot with a mad, masked musical genius.