The Deathly Stench of trump’s Refugee Ban

Scent is seriously evocative, isn’t it? It intertwines with all the other senses and with memory and emotion. As if the brain chemicals released by odors have a scent of their own that fills your brain and touches every neurotransmitter.

Take this picture of Omran from Syria, for example.

Omran

The visual image brings on a strong sense of smell when you think about it. The primary odor for me is the acrid smell of burning sulfur, like spent sparklers on the Fourth of July. Then there’s that dreadful smell of burning hair that we all know from some mishap or another — perhaps also related to fireworks, or to the unexpected whoosh of a gas stove when you are making pizza from Italy or potatoes from Ireland or sauerkraut from Germany or hummus from the Middle East or coffee from Yemen or black eyed peas from Africa.

I am blessed never to have smelled burning human flesh. As a vegetarian, just the smell of meat cooking can make me gag. I imagine Omran smelled burning flesh the day the bomb went off. He, too, may gag his whole life when he smells meat cooking, but he probably won’t know why. He clearly has top-rung PTSD.

He’s smelling blood, obviously. And smoke. He has just been pulled out of the rubble of his home, so he’s covered with not just ashes, but fine concrete dust, adding that cold earthy smell to his experience.

I don’t know what Omran was doing before the bomb hit. Probably not playing with Play Dough or Legos or crayons like an American child.

Maybe he was hugging his dog and had a musty doggie smell on his shirt. I hope he did not witness his dog getting blown to bits.

Maybe he was helping his mother cook, and now the warm smell of baking flat bread will forever make him gag, too.

That dreadful orange color surrounding Omran smells to me like hot plastic, a Howard Johnson’s booth sticky with maple syrup and hot fudge sauce, baking in harsh sunshine streaming through a streaky window. I don’t know whether Omran will ever taste maple syrup or hot fudge sauce. I know his ten year-old brother Ali won’t. He died of his injuries a few days after this picture was taken.

The smell of coffee gets us up and out of bed in the morning. The smell of microwave popcorn gets us up and out of our cubicle at work. The smell of dinner gets us up, off the couch and into the kitchen.

Will the smells of Omran get us up off our butts and into our Senator’s offices and into the streets and into the airports? Will we remember who we are as Americans before we’ve lost our souls?

At the White House this weekend #MuslimBanProtest

The trump™ supporters who respond to my Tweets on the #MuslimBan call me Snowflake and moron and loser. They say the ban is only for three months and we need to protect ourselves and besides it’s not meant as a Muslim ban, not really.

But I say that the children of Syria are choking on the smell of hate and violence and death. They do not have three months.

 

 

 

 

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He May Have the Nuclear Codes, But He Can’t Have My Brain

Last night I finally did something I’ve been needing to do for weeks: I turned off my computer. I looked the angry orange tweeter who lives in the big white house right in his puffy eyes and I said, “No. You may not come in to my head anymore.”

As the child of an alcoholic, I learned to be hypervigilant. The only way to feel safe when there is a wild man in the house is to always know where he is, what he’s doing, and what kind of mood he’s in. You become ultra-aware: Are his eyes read? Does his breath smell like Clorets mints? Even from upstairs, you can hear the freezer door open and the ice clink in the glass.

It’s about survival. You need to know when it’s safe to ask for lunch money or a school permission slip, and when to lock your bedroom door, crank up the Grateful Dead, and hunker down.

Survival

So of course when an impulsive wild man moved into the Oval Office last week, I automatically took it upon myself to keep an eye on him. And this time it’s quite literally about survival. Right? Planetary survival. If I’m not keeping an eye on him, who will stop him from dropping a nuclear weapon on North Korea? Or Germany, if Angela Merkel says something uncomplimentary.

It feels almost suicidal to detach and ignore him for any length of time. I wonder how Mike Pence feels? He must know how batty his boss is by now. Can he sleep?

At least a half dozen Facebook friends have posted pleas for help with detachment this week. How do I tune him out? How will I stay sane? How do I cope with the grief and fear? How will I not burn out, trying to protect Muslims and Native Americans and gay people and African American kids and the whole frickin’ planet??

I always offer helpful advice about going for walks, and laughing with friends, and meditating. And turning off the computer. But I don’t take the advice myself.

Until last night.

Just Say No

I had gone out with dear friends the night before and although we talked about the nation’s perils and our resulting emotional states, we also laughed and listened to open mic offerings and drank wine.

I confessed to staying up later and later each night, 2 a.m., then 3, then 4, monitoring @RealDonaldTrump and retweeting and posting on Facebook and looking for pictures that capture the moment.

I can’t focus during the day, I get nothing done. Can’t write. My friends expressed concern, hugged me, sympathized.

Somehow getting away from Crazyland for an evening broke the spell. It was good to hear myself say out loud, “I stayed up until 4 a.m. tweeting to Donald Trump.” Talk about crazy! It gave me the strength to push that “off” button on my computer last night.

I pulled up the drawbridge to my psyche, slapped a big ol’ “Keep Out” sign on it, and read my novel. And today I am saying no again. No Twitter, no Facebook, no trump™.

Pray Without Ceasing

Maybe trump™ will start a nuclear war while I’m reading my novel. I saw before I exited Twitter last night that he had signed something called the Military Preparedness Order. This after signing the Muslim ban.

But there is nothing I can do about it. All I can do is take care of myself so that I have the energy to take action when I can make a difference. To march, to write, to call Senators. To care for those who are hurting and afraid.

And to pray without ceasing for the Syrian children who may die because of what our nation has done.

Omran

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

“About Those Refugees,” Says Jesus

A favorite character from film, theater, or literature with whom I’d like to have a heart-to-heart, and what would I talk about — kudos to the creator of this daily blogging prompt!

It’s hardly an original answer, given that the Bible is the most read book in history, with four billion copies having been sold since I arrived on this planet, but my answer is Jesus. 

I’d have a lot to ask and would struggle to shut up and listen to his answers, before posing another question. I’d set aside all the God-sized questions, because the relationship between God and Jesus is no doubt complicated and might monopolize the conversation — that whole Trinity thing and all. So I wouldn’t get into suffering and eternal life and whether there is a hell, etc.

No, I’d start with, “Couldn’t you have been a little more clear, Jesus? Parables are great in their place, but we’ve got a mess on our hands and could use some clear direction. Terrorists, climate change, social injustice, sick people with weapons, corrupt political leaders . . .”

He might answer that except for climate change, they had all that back in his day. Now we just see it on a grander scale because of technology and the media. The problem, he would say, is and always has been the human heart.

“What can we do?” I’d wail.

“I think I suggested that you try loving God with everything you’ve got and then loving your neighbor as yourself. If you start with getting to know God, you will realize how crazy-much God loves you, and then you would learn to love yourself, and it would overflow to your neighbor. Isn’t that clear?”

“Well, it sounds clear,” I would answer. “Kind of. But it’s not practical. I mean loving your neighbor could get out of hand. Look at all these Syrian refugees wandering the globe! There might be terrorists in those masses. We’ve got to think of the safety of our kids. Surely, those people aren’t our neighbors.”

At this point, I would probably have to hand Jesus a tissue, because the Bible tells us that Jesus weeps.

“How many times did I tell folks back in the day, ‘do not be afraid?’ Like, constantly! Love, don’t fear, I said. Remain in my love, and your joy will be complete, I said. I don’t see enough joy around here lately. All this hate and division? It’s just fear.”

He’s not looking particularly joyful, and grabs another tissue. “I thought I was pretty clear on this, but just in case — I said that if you want to be aligned with God, here’s the deal: I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited me in; naked, and you clothed me. When you do it for anyone, you do it for me. Those Syrians? They’re me. We’re all one.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“Go do that, and then get back to me.”

Syrian refugee camp

Photo courtesy: Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief