Stranded at the Border of Compassion—Singing Immigrant Blues in the USA

I have no doubt that we're being tested, always, to see who we are and who we wish to become. That when we close our doors and hearts to Others, we also diminish our own possibilities (‘cutting off our nose to spite our face’). And, ultimately, that our morality is the level of immorality we can afford to live with...

The other day, while doing my very best to avoid watching The State ot the Union, I was discussing matters of immigration with a Turkish woman I’d met for the first time, at a small get together. My guest had made the USA her home for over three decades but, even though she is a green card holder, felt a real existential insecurity every time she entered and exited the US. She worried the Muslim ban would, soon, extend to include Turkey and that like friends of hers, and stories she’d heard, she’d find herself stranded in the airport and unable to return to visit her children (who lived stateside).

Heartbreaking and sad, to see the US battling for its soul in this way, and all of us immigrants drawn by the American Dream, now finding ourselves unable to awaken from this American nightmare. Yet, having forged our new lives, here, we have no choice but to wait for our adopted home, (and the world, really) to sort itself out and remember its Ideals.

Yes, there is always beauty to perceive, the goodness of those who stand up for strangers and act out of the better angels of their nature, helping the defenseless, stranded at the border of compassion... But the ugliness of bigotry, also, bleeds through: the story of an infant that needs heart surgery, the ill woman that was turned away and died, the Syrians that waited 13 years to get here and then were denied entry, plus countless pitiful stories.

I see Trump's disease of hatred infecting people I once thought of as friends, even family. I try to get them to soften their hearts, see past fear, but it can be exhausting, at times. Yet, I also know that outside of this sickness is love, always love, and though it is now resting, it will rise again, strengthened. Meantime, here is a fine poem by Sherman Alexie that sings the immigrant’s blues:

Autopsy

Last night, I dreamed that my passport bled.
I dreamed that my passport was a tombstone
For our United States, recently dead.
I dreamed that my passport was made of bone—
That it was a canoe carved out of stone.

“But I can’t swim,” I said. “I will drown
If I can’t make the shore. I’ll die alone
In the salt. No, my body will be found
With millions of bodies, all of them brown.”

I dreamed that my passport was a book of prayers,
Unanswered by the gods, but written down
By fact checkers in suits. “There are some errors
In your papers,” they said. Then took me downstairs

To a room with fingernails on the floor.
I dreamed that my passport was my keyware,
But soldiers had set fire to the doors,
To all doors—a conflagration of doors.

I dreamed that my passport was my priest:
“Sherman, will you battle the carnivores
Or will you turn and abandon the weak?
Will you be shelter? Or will you concede?”

Last night, I dreamed that my passport was alive
When it entered the ICU. It breathed, it breathed,
Then it sighed and closed its eyes. It did not survive.

(All images: Pixabay)

If you appreciated this post, perhaps, you will enjoy the intimate conversation I had, below, with @authorofthings for @IsleofWrite, where I elaborate on some of these themes:

https://steemit.com/isleofwrite/@isleofwrite/conversations-with-authors-yahia-lababidi