OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
July 4, 2016
Volume 26 Number 13
July 4, 2016
ISSN: 1094-9453
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What we know, after Orlando
oday is Tuesday. Tuesdays are still early in a
Portland workweek. After today, there’s a
lot more to do. So much more.
Today is only two days after a crazy man with an
assault rifle, killed and killed as much as he wanted
to. Then he reloaded to kill again. After that, he
reloaded and killed even more daughters and nieces
younger than mine, sons and nephews just as
precious as ours. At will. Oh ampun’illaah (Oh Lord
have Mercy).
It’s Tuesday evening and we’re gathered around
our Muslim elder’s kitchen table, listening intently
for more information about that ugly man — What
about his familia? — His faith? — His motive? We
don’t know. We cannot know, we are humble women
and men. We are a thick continent and three time
zones away from another instance of cruelty lit by
the excesses of another national election year.
Our swollen hearts are racing, our muddled
minds are too. What can we do — we elders and our
younger civic activists; we community-policing
commanders and our blue street cops; we Arabs and
Africans, Anglos and Asians. Fathers and mothers,
aunties and uncles. All of us, so startled. And stuck.
For us, Tuesday finally ends. We’re exhausted
after three days of alternating highs and lows, all
bad. There are so many mixed feelings around our
table, among our many Muslim communities.
Coherence eludes me. Our lives have not properly
prepared us. Not for this. Not for these 100 families
suffering from that single sick shooter. Not in a gay
club.
What’re we to do
I drive away. Slowly north on Highway 217. I
tentatively blinker right, to Oregon 26. I cannot
navigate well so far outside the emotional
geography of my small life. I am lost. GPS cannot
help. And I can’t locate our ancestors’ or elders’
radio signal. I strain to hear my Abrahamic
teachers’ and my university professors’ voices.
Very late Tuesday, after our city streets and our
household mice quiet down, I hear my patient
teachers’ and persistent ancestors’ distant whis-
pering. They say they’ve already spoken about un-
happy moments such as these. Many-many times.
Over your family’s seven decades of angry
invading armies, of brutally sudden expulsion, of
humiliating resettlement in resentful Europe then in
racialized America — they say — at every ugly
T
Phelan M. Ebenhack via AP
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Please send all correspondence to:
Mail: 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220
Phone: (503) 283-4440 ** Fax: (503) 283-4445
News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com
General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com
There are so many mixed feelings
around our table, among our many
Muslim communities. Coherence
eludes me. Our lives have not properly
prepared us. Not for this. Not for these
100 families suffering from that single
sick shooter. Not in a gay club.
intersection, our direction to you has been the same.
Always the same. By now, you already know how to
feel, what to do.
As midnight nears, as in every earlier existential
crisis — mine, our pop’s, our grandpa’s — I
re-examine what I know. What I can know.
I made a list, short and sure:
I know I love our son and his River City art. I
know I love our nephew and his Medellín commu-
nity building. I love our daughter, her rural Cam-
bodia and Kenya health clinics. I know how much I
love our daughter’s daughters’ chocolate eyes and
their sing-song voices. I know for sure that each of
these souls are living expressions of love.
I know that love is a smaller word for God. A tear
to our oceans. Love is God, as much as I can know
God. I know I must nourish and warm myself with
this littler love, their love, because all that hum-
bling mystery, all that grandness, that is God
remains really unknowable and practically undeliv-
erable, given the narrow bandwidth and slow bit-
rate service our side of town gets. Comcast, man.
Therefore, I know that every son and nephew,
Continued on page 8
Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.
