The Deluge, page 70
* * *
I was told Seth had died of blunt force trauma to the head. The officer I dealt with, Lieutenant Srivastava, explained that the body had been cremated.
“Without an autopsy? That cannot be legal.”
The lieutenant had a black mustache shielding the contours of his mouth, making it appear as though his lips dripped with faux sympathy. Perhaps it was paranoia, but he was clearly of Hindu extraction, and I unfairly wondered if he had family back in India participating in the lynch mobs targeting Muslims.
“The city was dealing with two emergencies. Because of the heat wave deaths and then the—the shootings—we had to cremate most of the bodies.” He held out a tablet to me. “I know many of the families are pursuing civil litigation. All I can do for you right now, Mr. al-Hasan, is give you your husband’s remains.” I had trouble reading him, whether I was seeing indifference or exhaustion. He thrust the tablet at me again. “I just need your signature. We’re processing the bodies of a war zone right now, and I know it’s unfair how long it’s taken for us to notify next of kin. I’m sorry. If I could do anything else for you, I promise I would.”
“He was supposed to leave.” Because I so rarely raised my voice, it cracked. Several officers in that cubicled precinct popped their heads up. A burned-purple terror bubbled in my vision. In the precinct office, I heard every clicking pen, every shuffle of paper, every snotty clearing of a throat, and felt the chemical cool of the air-conditioning on my nerve endings. “How did he die if he was supposed to have left already?”
The lieutenant shook his head only once. “I’m sorry, sir. I just need your signature.”
He held out the tablet and now his cues indicated how desperate he was for me to accept this.
I stood. “Why people want conscious-less dust of former loved ones is as stupid as it is bewildering.”
I left, exiting the building into a chilly fall afternoon.
* * *
The last conversation I ever had with Seth in person took place the night before he left to prepare for the supposed concert. I had to explain to him: “The name itself is a misnomer. All ‘baby powder’ does is potentially get into the lungs or airways of an infant. We should not even keep an astringent powder in the house.”
“Dude, it’s for diaper rash!”
We were having the conversation across the crib, and I looked up to see that Seth was very amused by me, the wrinkles around his eyes pinched with laughter.
“Dude,” I said sardonically. “Diaper rash isn’t potentially dangerous. Inhaling an astringent powder is.”
Seth gave his eyes an enormous, dramatic roll, lolling his whole head with them. “Oh my God, Ash, he got like a spitful of it. He sneezed once. He doesn’t even notice.”
“I still think it would be prudent to consult with poison control.”
Seth laughed at this and said: “I had no idea you’d turn into your mother quite so quickly.”
Seth’s lopsided grin had spread even wider. He’d never met my mother, but his predictions at what would needle me always proved assiduously accurate. A tuft of his blond hair stuck up in the back where his cowlick was. He was wearing a pair of gym shorts and an old, hole-pocked T-shirt that read DOES THIS ASS MAKE MY COUNTRY LOOK SMALL? under a picture of Donald Trump. Perhaps it’s only the transpositions of time, creating a false nostalgic memory, but I couldn’t help but think how beautiful he was. I looked back at our son, lying supine in a Bert and Ernie onesie, happily smacking two plastic baubles together.
I said: “I do hope he grows up to be more like you.”
“Duh, me too!”
Forrest Azlan Young was born on July 29, 2033, to a woman who needed money to pay off her law school debts. I thought I’d have more time to change Seth’s mind, perhaps allow for a few failures of the artificial insemination method, but our surrogate became pregnant on the first attempt. A nuisance to hear how rare that is. Because Forrest’s mother is African American, people frequently confuse me for the biological father. We of course used Seth’s sperm for the insemination because fatherhood was his priority. I felt nothing when I held Forrest that first time except the ancient dread that he might squirm from my hands and crack his head on the floor.
Now, over a year later, Forrest is the child of a single parent, and selfishly, I wish Seth were alive simply so I could hurl the childish taunt Hani and I once exchanged as children: I told you so. Forrest was born into socioecological circumstances more dire than I could have imagined. He was born into 444 ppm carbon in the atmosphere, melting ice caps, oceans crawling up the world’s coasts and deltas, soil salinization, dwindling fresh water, spreading desertification, and stalling agricultural production. He was born in tandem with Seth’s unwise decision to join a dangerous political action. All that time he spent proclaiming his adoration of Forrest, his joy at fatherhood, when did he know that a year was all he would ever have? I try to imagine truncheons shattering his skull or more likely 5.56x45 rounds puncturing his body, and I ache to know when he realized that he would leave me alone with this boy.
Peter, Haniya, and their children, Noor and Gregory, stayed with me in D.C. for the memorial service. Seth’s parents and siblings, an irrefutably warm and kind family, arrived days later, and we spread Seth’s ashes in a crowded ceremony by the Potomac. Seth’s parents seemed to understand that this was not an artifice I was capable of navigating. They took the brunt of the condolences and allowed me to stay mute. I’d first met them four years earlier at Seth’s childhood home in Mill Valley, California. They were kind to me, and I was greatly disappointed that I couldn’t manufacture tears for them. They were all so devastated, and I felt my difference and deficiency acutely. Afterward, Seth’s siblings approached me to talk of their plans to not only pursue legal recourse but also form an advocacy group with the families of other victims. When I said this did not interest me, they made no secret of their displeasure.
Then it was just Peter, Hani, myself, and the children in my condominium. Noor and Greg, riled by the excitement and not yet able to comprehend the gravity of the situation, finally went to bed after a brief temper tantrum from Noor. Forrest, who’d become strangely sedate since Seth’s disappearance, had gone down at eight without complaint. Peter had helped himself to Seth’s bourbon. Haniya eventually asked an obnoxious platitude of a question: “Can you meet me halfway on this, Ashir? Tell me how you’re doing.”
A book Seth had been reading still rested on the end table, a bookmark stuck thirty pages in. Believers, it was called. Seth was incorrigible about starting multiple books and never finishing them. I dreaded pulling all those bookmarks out and placing the tomes back on the shelves. “I’m exhausted from the performative aspect of a memorial service. And annoyed that you two think I’m too fragile to handle the requisite period of grief.”
Peter exchanged a look with my sister. He said: “Bro, I know this is a fucking nightmare. I wish I could make it not be true. But that’s why you need us. Even if you think you don’t, Ash. We’re your family. As much as Seth was or that little boy is now, and I don’t even care if you’re a prick about it.”
Who was I even the most furious with? President Love? Kate Morris? Seth himself? Admittedly, due to my great sadness, I made a decision to be cruel. I found myself lashing out because it felt satisfying:
“Perhaps the only thing more boring or predictable than death is the way people behave in its aftermath. And your notion of family, Peter, is a fairly prosaic lie. Forrest couldn’t be less connected to me genetically. He’s my ward by decision of the state, I suppose, but that’s about all.”
Haniya snapped, her tongue almost flicking from her mouth: “Ashir.”
“What.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What would you have me do?”
Her cues flitted between fury and despair. She took care to control herself when she said: “We’re here because we love you, and we love Forrest.”
“Have either of you ever thought about hunger?” They assessed me with vacant gazes. I told them about the trip I was being asked to accompany you on, Congresswoman, but my point did not appear to land. “Hunger reveals how transitory our loyalties are to each other. Miss seven straight meals and suddenly a person’s morality, family, community, and commitment all fall into flux. How boring it all is too, predicted by systems models as early as the 1990s, and yet—”
“Ash, c’mon,” Peter interrupted, but I could see I was upsetting my sister, and this felt very positive.
I continued: “Yet here we are, on the precipice of the first truly global famine, well-fed and armed with a reserve of invisible capital. I know I often marvel at the indifference I feel to the pain of someone who is hungry. I’ve passed plenty of them over the years on every street in every city. When we visited India as children, they mobbed us. Do you recall that, Hani? We tell ourselves we care, but it’s a vacant sentiment.”
Haniya drained her glass of wine and set it on the coffee table. “What profundity, Ash.” She smoothed her pants and licked purple teeth. “Pete? Do you mind if my brother and I have a minute?”
Peter pumped his eyebrows at me. He crossed the room to my sister. They each said “Love you” and brought their boozy lips together. In that moment, I felt a flare of such jealousy, fury, hate, and total, despairing loneliness. I had not felt such a confluence since it overcame me one night as a young man in a Cambridge dorm room, and I took a walk down to the Charles River. Hani waited for Peter’s footsteps to reach the second floor.
She said: “I don’t suppose you’d pray with me.” Despite her work, which relies on empiricism and rational assessments of data, Hani persists in her piety. “People need comfort, Ash. They need grace.”
I said: “That sounds remarkably similar to the vacuous assertions of The Pastor. Perhaps you could serve his candidacy as an advisor.”
“Oh, fuck you, Ashir.”
We sat for a moment in silence. I’ve been told my timing is rarely precise, but I had a favor to ask, and this seemed as good a moment as any.
“While I’m on the fact-finding tour—I’m uncomfortable leaving Forrest alone with the au pair for two weeks. I wonder if he might stay with you and Peter.”
At first I thought the tightening of her face meant she would say no, but this cue was misleading. After a lifetime of being her sibling, I could still misconstrue her. Suddenly she was wiping tears.
“Ashir, you’ve been through a devastating life event. Why do you have to go do this? It can’t be good for you. Or Forrest. He knows one of his daddies is gone. Even if he can’t express it yet, he knows.”
I thought of Forrest eating a bowl of sweet peas that evening, mashing the majority into the surface of his high chair and babbling at his older cousins, who cheered him on. I doubted Haniya was correct but did not feel like getting into an argument about object permanence.
“Hani, our country is in the midst not only of an unfolding trauma but a contestation for its conscience. The narrative being propagated in conservative media is that we owe nothing to anyone, that we should let the world starve and hoard all we can for ourselves. If no one in the government pushes back, and we fail to focus a public relations effort on what is happening, we cede the megaphone to those forces. The congresswoman wants the broadest range of voices to stand against this, regardless of party affiliation. Tracy is a kind and brave woman, Hani. She has asked this of me, and I will not disappoint her.”
“That’s not why I don’t want you to go.”
“Then why?”
A sob bloomed from her throat, wrenching her face, and she was shouting: “Because I’m sick with worry about you, you fucking asshole! Because I want you to want to be with your son right now. Because I miss Seth, and I know how much you loved him. Because this has broken my heart, and I know it’s broken yours. Because I love you, and I hate that you’re hurting and you won’t cop to it. All of it, Ashir. All of it.”
Her face flush, she licked at the tears running into her mouth. Because I needed her to take care of Forrest, I made the calculation that I should soften my approach.
“My duty to my fellow human beings is paramount right now, and this is how I can help: by accompanying the congresswoman and bringing light to what’s going on. That duty outweighs any sorrow at Seth’s death. And as for Forrest, Hani, obviously this is about Forrest. And Noor and Greg. You of all people should understand that.”
She said nothing, which I took to mean she did.
* * *
The massacre, the mass arrests, the impeachment proceedings Democrats refuse to initiate, the numerous political and legal scandals of this administration, it all must take secondary priority to the growing catastrophe of the elevated prices of grain staples, which are producing widespread food insecurity domestically and outright famine elsewhere.
Integers are inhuman, yet I feel as though I must accord them space here. Globally, the number of malnourished people has leaped to nearly 2 billion, with 360 million in acute need. It is impossible to get reliable metrics on caloric deficiency and famine stages from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) because so many governments wish to conceal the starvations they are either encouraging or incapable of stopping. The United Nations World Food Programme is requesting seven million tons of emergency food aid, which will have to mostly be sourced from the United States, but with food prices as high as they’ve been in the postwar era, certain news-entertainment conglomerates are currying ratings by spreading misinformation about the situation. A deadly mixture of plutocratic panic and xenophobic populism has fomented a narrative that every sack of grain belongs to “our children.” Many Republicans made this a point of pride in the midterm elections, exemplified by the odious and ever-present “Ham Sammy Brigade” VR meme.
As the jockeying over who would join this US government fact-finding mission grew heated during the bitterly contested midterms, I was faced with pressure (as were you) to drop out. As you described it to me, the government was supposed to show a united front of compassion for the millions affected by famine and food scarcity the world over, and yet most of the ink, energy, and vitriol was spent debating who would or would not be on board the plane. A scientist like Jane Tufariello seemed noncontroversial, except that her presence made it impossible for Republicans to join, lest their caucus earn the wrath of Renaissance Media for conspiring with the former NOAA chief. Republican leader Ryan Doup was able to compensate, at my request, by dispatching his chief of staff, Joe Otero, who had a cordial relationship with Jane. Similarly, your invitation to climate security czar Admiral Michael Dahms proved hugely problematic since he obviously represents the Love administration, responsible for slaughter and mass detention. Among the murdered were my husband, among the imprisoned, my friend Dr. Anthony Pietrus.
Those who attended our tour—the congressional representatives, members of the Department of Agriculture, scientists, economists, policy advisors, and an army of Secret Service and security contractors—deserve credit for their bravery even as death threats accumulated back home. While the American government spared no expense, in the two weeks of our journey, through the gruesome sights of feeding centers and children with the reddish-brown hair and distended bellies of kwashiorkor, the adults with spindly limbs, hollow cheeks, and pitted eyes of the starving, I struggled to understand what our purpose was. The haste of travel across time zones, nation-states, and continents turned to sleep deprivation. Soon, every drab government office and chintzy ceremonial reception took on the feel of unreality, as if we’d wandered onto the set of a movie about high-stakes governance. Certainly, I felt as if we were all acting a role.
A concatenation of diverse environmental factors has played into the deepening crisis. The farmer sees his crops dry and brittle, and this represents an astonishing loss of surplus grain from heat, drought, and flooding in the world’s breadbaskets. Russia has lost a third of its wheat crop to drought, Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin has seen record temperatures and plummeting yields, and in the Midwestern US the corn crop was devastated first by the Great Eastern Flood and then by the so-called heat storm this past summer.
In my ancestral homeland, we witnessed the devastation wrought by Cyclone Malwan in Mumbai, and while the tragedy of two-hundred mph winds and a twenty-foot storm surge cannot be overstated, the greater legacy will be on the surrounding rice-growing deltas suffering a marked increase in salinity.
We saw peoples of the Indian subcontinent, the Himalayas, and Southeast Asia trudging across perilous mountain regions. The floodwaters of melting glaciers have destroyed key farming areas in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan. The world’s “third ice cap” in the Himalayas lost 15 percent of its mass in just the last five years, with dire consequences for those who rely on that water. The global freshwater situation is a crisis for which there is no precedent in human history.
