Headed out for a walk-jog. It has to be quick. I have to make it to Kanpai, a sushi restaurant, by 8:45. Don’t want to be rude and show up at 8:48. That’s too close to closing time, and I want to win my seat at the bar. I want everyone to like me.
My plan is to have a bowl of miso soup at the bar while ordering a sushi roll to-go. This is a new thing for me. I’ve decided to branch out in order to find my husband. They say finding “the one” happens when you’re not looking. Nope. Not true. I have been looking and not looking, since age 15. Neither of them works.
So, I’m gonna keep looking. It makes the most sense. I’ve done the math. And by keeping on looking, I mean, I gotta shake things up. Go to new places. Be around new people. My version of shaking things up tonight? This sushi bar.
But first, exercise. Burn those calories I’m gonna eat. .
I head out into my walk/jog. Two blocks into it, I approach a semi-busy street. It’s not super busy, but you know, it’s the kind where you look both ways.
This is exactly what the deer did not do.
There is a sudden screeching of cars in the middle of the street. Two cars coming from opposite directions have halted. A deer between them.
Silence for a beat. The streetlight projects onto the light-brownness of the deer’s perfect body.
Sudden movement.
It bounds off.
The cars resume.
My heart?
“My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it.” — A line from Infinite Jest.
I scoot across the street into the shadow from a house. Somewhat protected from the world, and after looking around to check, I double over and cry. I let it all out.
I cry out of relief. And shock. This is the first time I have felt anything true in 48 hours.
My days as a doctor at the clinic are back-to-back races. I race from one room to the next — from a screen to a printer to a person — trying to have meaningful moments, inbetween getting it all done. Any emotions I have are blips of attempted humanity overwhelmed by the hurricane of productivity I am caught up in.
Once off work, the mind keeps running. It runs until it bumps up against something true. Perhaps a tree or the new moon hanging low in the sky — a fingernail white against a glowing plate. Or a dear being saved.
The close call with the deer shook me, and now, I am crying for Palestine.
Palestine, it is always Palestine.
The Palestinian people come to mind constantly throughout the day. When I take a warm bath. When I go to sleep in a quiet room. When I choose food out of the fridge. My contained, safe, affluent reality — contrasted to theirs.
33 thousand Palestinians have died sine October 7. Many more suffer. They all suffer. Displaced from their homes. In harsh conditions. 80 percent of the buildings demolished.
For what purpose?
Palestinians in Gaza are living an apocalypse. Apocalypse is the phrase used by Dr. Mohammed Subeh, a Palestinian American doctor who returned from Gaza in March. Dr. Subeh is an ER doc who works in San Francisco. He has a wife and four children in SF. Here is the interview with him. Listen to his story, when she asks him, “Is there one patient in particular that stands out in your mind, when you reflect on your experience there?” Hannah.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2024/03/04/gaza-doctor-rafah-mohammad-subeh-intl-vpx.cnn
And here is Hind. She is living through the genocide. Her kids and her husband are in another country. She has stayed in Gaza to serve her people. She posted this at the six-month mark of the genocide:
She is a poet.
I will keep praying for Palestine. That is to say, I always carry Palestinians in my heart.
And someday, I will go to help. I have applied for positions to volunteer. I am learning Arabic.
What drives me is, Nobody’s life is more important than anybody else’s.
Just like the deer tonight — everyone stopped to save her life.
We must do the same thing for the Palestinians.
