emergencies

FROM July 23, 2006

Lebanese student Nouhad Moawad, interning in America, relays reports from her friend back home: Lebanese people are suffering from hunger, from thirst, from terror . . . In seven days 220 persons have been killed, only three of them are known to be from Hezbollah, according to the news reports; 850 are injured and a half million of Lebanese are now forced to leave their homes. Many places don't exist anymore. A real humanitarian crisis is happening there. Does the international community pay attention to these innocent people there? What did the Lebanese people do to be punished like that? Isn't it Hezbollah's act? These questions come to every Lebanese person believing in peace not only in Lebanon but also in the Middle East.

Here, NY brews. The power shorted out briefly in Brooklyn and all the bodegas, up and down the main ave by our apartment, were shuttered and barred four two days. Electric surges killed our refrigerator: if you come over for dinner, hope you like canned goods. And Queens is aflame. My flight for WY leaves, I hope, in 12 hours and I could not be happier, though I have to take the little commuter plane from Denver to Cheyenne and I always think of Aaliyah, rest in peace. I remember vividly that day, in '96, when the seven-year-old junior pilot and her father, attempting to set a record, took off in the rain, then nose-dove into a wing of my dad's office. But the landscape is flat and the weather is decent, my mom says, so I don't have to sweat going out like that.

My mother has, sweetly, cooked green chile without pork in my honor, having finally grasped the concept of vegetarianism after 10 years.

I will bring you all back a lasso.