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Talking Story |
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From The Asian Reporter, V18, #10 (March 4, 2008), page 7.
What we do when walls fall (shop)
It was one of those Oregon January mornings. Dark until eight. Rain ‘til forever. Not a bird to be heard. It was a Thursday and I was sitting at South Salem’s Dunkin’ Donuts counter doing what I do about those Oregon winter blues — throwing down a honey-dipped chocolate twist.
I know I shouldn’t. I know all about Asians’ and Islanders’ sugar problems. (Di-a-be-tes). I know an even darker mood will overtake me, right after my donut high. But like I said: It was one of those dismal winter mornings.
Three fellas next to me were talking real loud about The Wall falling.
"Hmm, Wall falling —" I mumbled into my chocolate twist. I thought about Berlin’s Communist Wall going down, winter of 1989. I thought about America’s Mexican Wall going up this time last year. "A Wall is a funny thing," I said, ripping a couple of Dunkin’ sugars and dumping them into my coffee. My neighbor, a bulky guy in a caramel canvas Carhartt, heard me and turned toward me. I didn’t look at him. I wanted only to snoop on them, men a lot like me, eager to get to work. Proud of their paychecks, their ladies, their pretty babies.
"You should’ve seen ‘em," Mr. Carhartt went on with his buds, "like rats streeeaming through a hole."
Wow.
I’ve never seen rats streaming. Not once. Not anywhere. Though I’m pretty sure our family’s been poorer and known more rats than anyone on that Salem coffee counter.
And his rat comparison bugged me. Big time. Maybe it was that bluesy morning. Probably it was my honey-dipped twist breakfast. Certainly these suburban big boys had my antennae standing straight up and tingling. Then he got louder.
"I’m talkin’ about guys, kids on their shoulders, women, old women, everybody, shoving through that hole."
I scribbled quotes on my Dunkin’ napkin, quick as I could. I shoved it in my pocket. I hit I-5. Fifty-five fast miles north, I clicked our office Compaq onto their story. I watched what they watched. "A Witness is a funny thing," I said to CNN’s Anchor Tony Harris. He didn’t turn to look my way.
I saw their Wall. I saw it Fall. But me, I saw no rats. I saw men like our Uncles Max and Yusef. I saw teens like our nephews. I saw aunties, younger and elder, like any Saturday at Washington Square.
Walled apart
Here’s the story: Early morning January 23, someone blew down a short stretch of the 25-foot-tall pig iron wall sealing Gaza’s Palestinian families from neighboring Egypt. Gazanis, ask anyone, are walled away from Egypt on their west, are bordered by the Mediterranean Sea on their north, and are cut off from what remains of Palestine by Israel’s occupation army.
Gaza’s economic closure, those families’ isolation from the rest of our vigorous world, was tightened the morning after they elected Hamas Party politicos into local leadership. Hamas lobs rockets at Israel, so that’s not the kind of democracy the U.S. or Israel or Egypt want Palestinians to practice. That wall, their chokehold is supposed to change voters’ minds. Gaza is a poor-poor place.
So early that morning, my morning at Dunkin’ Donuts, their Wall went down and delighted dads, jobless mas, and good grandmas scrambled through. They went shopping. Happy, their arms heaped high with pita bread, bright squash, canned mandarins, jugged water, boxed laundry detergent, they walked back. Back through that broken Wall. Back inside their households. Inside kitchens like ours.
Rats don’t do that.
Walls are a funny thing, each always has been. Smart political leaders on each side of those high walls have also always been the same. Though not that funny. What may be changing soon, we have to hope so, is us. Us witnesses to those walls between us. Us east and west, north and south, of those awful Walls. Us — so dumb.
Us without walls
What’s a lot more fun, what’s also less likely to rouse bigotry, and what will never raise angry armies, is how little actually divides the guys at Dunkin’ Donuts from those Arab families rushing into Egypt. So little.
We work all the same, really hard. We worry just like every parent, about our children’s future. We perish without fail, sooner than we wish.
And wedged between our exhaustion and anxiety and wish, is fear. Fear that those folks we fence out with these walls will steal my job, hurt our kids, stand between you and your wish.
No one’s sure where or when we got this fear. Maybe it’s a good idea to listen carefully, to discern if it might be our leaders, Republican or Democrat, Arab or Israeli, Mexican or American, keeping our fears as high as those Walls. And while we’re looking for answers, it’s fun remembering how happy all sides were when that stupid Berlin Wall suddenly went away. Recall how North and South Koreans cry for joy every single time they trade sides. Watch carefully those Palestinians packing home groceries, light bulbs, paper towels.
Because I would celebrate just like those Germans.
Because you could cry just like those Koreans.
Because all us proud parents shop exactly like those Palestinians. All the same. Sure we do.