Fady Joudah

He gulped, said he was French, asked me where I was from.

Did he say French or did I infer it from the few words he muttered in his deep state of rapid heartbeat and mediocre oxygen exchange?

He asked me first.

After I insisted, he'd take an extra gulp from my canteen for heart and lungs to turn serene.

I took his question to mean that he wanted to credit my kindness to a place when he gets to tell his story.

I gave the credit to Palestine.

His face, which had been a theater of struggle, went blank.

Suddenly, he was playing poker alone.

Did I have a face?

Could I have passed for several options, Algerian, Spanish, or could I have been an Afrikaner?

Maybe Palestine was the last thing he expected to hear, or his face had nothing to do with the word.

Maybe he anticipated American first and foremost, because I did say, water?

Water?

I think I bring it back again in the opening poem of the latest book.

And, you know, going back to the earlier comment about encountering yourself in a society quite committed to your distortion, which I still think is putting it kindly.

Yeah.

You know, you're stunned by the incapacity of all of us as people to

to assume that the basic feelings for empathy, kindness, neighborly, et cetera, whatever, that you have, others also have.

And so I insist on it.

I insist on simplicity of it.