...

4) Have good one.

II

That the carnage, savagery, starvation, ignominy, pain, fury, hatred, and pity that rise from the news don't send us all to the loony bin speaks for the indifference developed by even the most sensitive and saintly of the world's privileged.

We write letters to the editor, send small check to a charity, moan to our lunch companions, or, like Proust's wonderful Mme. Verdurin reading about the loss of life on the Lusitania as she dips her croissant into her morning coffee, say "How awful," even as our lips curl with delight. Now and then, we analyze and comment on this or that.

So I, on July 21, 2003, reading the caption on two wonderful photographs taken by Tyler Hicks of the New York Times the day before in the holy city of Najaf, decide that it does not represent what I see in them. The first photograph shows us the backs of seven U.S. Marines in hard hats facing a crowd of mostly bearded and beturbaned men, some with arms raised in a sort of salute of appreciation to something unseen by us off to the right, one raising a picture of two white-bearded men. In the background is a group of mostly younger, beardless men, most of them seated on what seems to be a wall, although we can't see it. Six of these twenty or so men may be looking in the direction of the photographer or the marines. Two of them are raising their arms, one is standing with arms spread and seems to be shouting something in our direction. The second photograph is of eight men standing on a dais. Three of them wear turbans; one, the most prominent, is waving a sort of forked scimitar. One is taking video photographs of what is probably the crowd in the first photograph. The caption reads, "Iraqi protesters ... pushed toward American marines yesterday in Najaf. The protest erupted after clergymen claimed that soldiers had tried to surround a prominent Shiite leader. Clerics, speaking to protesters from atop a mosque, below, demanded an end to the American occupation." The excellent article, by Neil MacFarquhar, spells out the complexities behind the photograph, the ignorance of the crowd that the Marines and helicopters--which are not shown--were called out as special protection for visiting Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. It talks of the ambition of Moktada al-Sadr, "scion of a clan of beloved clerics" to assert himself by claiming that the Americans were bent on arresting him. "'Moktada Sadr and his supporters are trying to drag us into this kind of confrontation ...' said a spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic revolution in Iraq, the most established Shiite group...." It's clear that the crowd in front of the Marines is not pressing against them. Only two or three men there are even facing them, and it is not clear what they are thinking. Some in the background fringe of younger men may be expressing indignation, but that is not clear. It does seem clear that three or four of the clerics are worked up and working up the crowd. What is further clear is that much is going on to bring people into the street and lead others to inflammatory oratory. It is all part of the complex events that led to the fall of Saddam Hussein and the attempts by many, including, perhaps, Saddam, to vie for power in the post-war period.

I compare this to another photograph on the album of lovely Richard Rodgers songs to which I was listening while I read the paper. The photograph was taken at the final performance of the musical South Pacific in June 1951. It is the curtain call, and Mary Martin, the show's star, has her hands in front of her mouth and chin in what seems to be overwhelming surprise and pleasure as she sees what we do: the composer, Rodgers, in a sailor's jacket and round white hat, hands clasped in front of him, head bent, next to Oscar Ham-merstein, the lyricist and writer, both presented by the play's director, Joshua Logan. Behind them, members of the cast are in various stages of jubilation and tearful nostalgia. One could look at this photograph for a long time and find next to no space for misinterpretation, whereas in the first two photographs, there seems to be plenty of such space. The clarity comes from familiarity with the traditions of celebration, farewell, and public performance; the murk comes from ignorance of the political-social complexities in a very different culture.

III

The following occurred to me as I drove back from downtown Chicago along the Outer Drive immediately west of Lake Michigan on a mild, cloudy June day. I'd just bought cans of tennis balls at Sport Mart, where they can be bought cheaply. I paid with what's familiarly called plastic. Since I'm not using what I ignorantly regard as "actual money," the pleasure of getting a bargain is augmented by the self-pampering illusion that I'm not really paying. What occurred to me is that such postponement of payment, an example of artful separation from unpleasant actuality, is one of the fundamental components of human life. The pleasure comes from the illusion of escape, evasion, overcoming of a difficulty. What we call money, specie, whether metallic or paper, is itself an instance of such separation. Instead of the exchange of commodities or services, instead of a brutal takeover by theft or conquest of what's desired, there is this almost weightless exchange that marks the way human beings have learned to live with each other.

Almost sixty years ago, I read in God Without Thunder, an old, little-read book by the poet John Crowe Ransom, that the human separation from food, by cooking it, using utensils to cut and get it to our mouths,...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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