All She Lost

My life is pretty good. It’s pretty good objectively, and it’s also really good compared to the lives of many many many - most - people in the world. Five seconds’ exposure to news coverage or even social media is enough to confirm this. 

But I don’t take my good fortune for granted. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m very well aware that a natural disaster or a terrorist attack (real or engineered) or a financial collapse (real or engineered) could upend my whole life. We could go from relative security and comfort to abject poverty in the blink of an eye. We could end up refugees. Anyone could. Sometimes when I’m feeling cynical or pessimistic (even more so than usual, that is), I think about how little power most of us have, and how few of the people who do have real power actually care about the rest of us. 

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A few weeks ago, I heard an NPR (I forget which program) interview with Dalal Mawad, author of All She Lost, a book about women’s experiences following the 2020 explosion in the port of Beirut. I was ashamed to realize that I barely remembered this explosion, which killed hundreds and caused a ripple effect of political and economic consequences that devastated an already-falling-apart country. 2020 was a hard year for everyone, but this was a pretty major and memorable event that I should have recalled immediately. There's no excuse for that kind of solipsism. I’m the worst sometimes. 

Anyway, I bought the book that day. It’s a series of stories based on the author’s first-person interviews with women who lost children, husbands, parents, siblings, friends, homes - who lost everything in the explosion - and who are now four years later still trying to figure out how to go on. It’s a very simple and beautiful book, but not easy to read. The book is short and the individual women’s chapters are short, but it still took me over a week to get through. 

One of the central themes that Mawad returns to over and over is the consequences of a failed state, which Lebanon essentially is now. What happens, she asks (and answers) when there are no functioning institutions; no real government to enact new laws or to enforce existing ones. One of the main functions of a good government is to protect the weak from the rampages of the strong. What happens when the weak and the strong are left to fight it out among themselves? 

Mawad knows what happens. So do I. Given the opportunity, the strong will always crush the weak - always and everywhere, without exception, without fail, 100 percent of the time. 

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Last week, I celebrated the failure of Ted Leonsis, whom I once rather liked but whom I now consider to be nothing more than a greedy billionaire sports owner just like the rest of them, to move my beloved Capitals from Capital One Arena in Washington DC (hence the “Washington” in Washington Capitals, Ted) to a yet-to-be-constructed multi-billion dollar retail and entertainment complex in Alexandria, VA, a place that looks close enough to DC when you’re looking at a map but that is really  kind of a nightmare to get to from Silver Spring, even if you’re taking Metro (Note: I love Metro, but I hate changing trains. If it’s not on the Red Line, it’s dead to me.) There are of course lots of Capitals fans in Virginia but it seems that most of them, except for their stupid Trumpity Trumpster of a governor, also didn’t want the team to move. Northern Virginia is already insanely congested and it certainly isn’t in any need of economic development projects. Leonsis, who had explicitly promised never to move the Capitals or the Wizards out of Washington, just wanted a new arena and like most billionaires in this country, he wanted other people to pay for what he wanted. For weeks, local media shared Leonsis talking points about how public financing of a project that will yield massive private profit is really good for everyone. This is the standard argument every time some greedy billionaire sports owner (that phrase is redundant) wants a local or state government to pay for a new arena from which he and his team will reap all of the profits. I haven’t run across a single convincing variation of this utter nonsense, and there are many variations. 

Anyway, because he’s accustomed to getting what he wants, Leonsis was blithely confident and sure that everything would go according to his plan. But it didn’t, to my great satisfaction. Of course, he ended up getting lots of money from the District of Columbia, which has more than enough other places to spend tax dollars, to stay put, and I think that he was playing both sides against one another. But I also think that the absolute refusal of Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates to allow a vote on the bill to fund the Alexandria boondoggle was real and not a show, and I applaud those Delegates. 

The news about the Capitals’ decision to remain in DC was reported the day after the freighter Dali collided with the Baltimore Francis Scott Key Bridge, which seconds later collapsed into the Patapsco River. The ship had managed to signal mayday soon enough that MDOT was able to close the bridge to traffic, but six people - construction workers - still died. 

What does an explosion in Lebanon have to do with a bridge in Baltimore? What does a warehouse full of ammonium nitrate have to do with the future home of the Washington Capitals? I don’t know, except that the more I think about it, the more these things seem related. In a functioning state controlled by an of-the-people, by-the-people, and (most importantly) for-the-people government, a billionaire shouldn’t get to hold a state and a city hostage to his demands for money and tax breaks so that he can build a new arena or refurbish an existing one, both projects that he can well afford to pay for out of his own coffers. In that same functioning state, bridges shouldn’t tumble into the water. 

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My son had a few days off at Easter, which was lovely. I took a few days off as well, and I drove to his school on Thursday to pick him up. His college is in Arlington, VA, not far from home. But again, the map is deceptive when you live in the DMV. If you’re not from here, you’d think that our house to Marymount University would be a 20 minute trip. It’s not remotely like that in real life. The drive there always takes an hour, though it’s usually a pretty easy and pleasant hour. I don’t love the Beltway but I can handle it - I’ve been driving it for years. Then you take the Cabin John Parkway to the Clara Barton Parkway (I can never tell the difference between the two but they’re very picturesque) and then the Chain Bridge to Glebe Road in Arlington. 

The Chain Bridge is really not a scary bridge at all, but it’s old and it spans the Potomac near the rapids at Great Falls, which is not a place where you’d want your car to plunge into the water. I was holding my breath as I drove across that bridge. But it was fine. I got to Arlington in one piece, and then took an alternate route home because the George Washington Parkway is still under construction and it’s a road of terror. 

And that’s enough about the condition of roads and bridges in the DMV. This isn’t a traffic report. IYKYK. 

*****

As I mentioned last week, pretty much everyone in Maryland is still shaken following the Key Bridge collapse. Baltimoreans are especially shaken, particularly the ones who drove back and forth across that bridge (which was kind of a terrifying bridge to begin with) every day and know that but for the grace of God, their cars could have been on that bridge that night. I was definitely thinking about the Key Bridge as I white-knuckled my way across the Potomac last Thursday. But that’s not all I was thinking about. I was thinking about who’s in charge; who do we trust to make sure that bridges remain intact and above rather than in the bodies of water they span? What’s stored in all of those warehouses in nearby ports and industrial parks? Who’s making sure that they’re not filled with toxic chemicals or unexploded grenades or cages full of snakes that Samuel L. Jackson will eventually have to fight, one by one? What happens if a large employer decides that they’re going to pick up stakes and go to another state or another country where labor is cheap and regulations are few and far between? Who’s going to stop them? Who is looking after the proverbial little guy?

We are far from a failed state. I know this. But it’s no longer reasonable to think that we could never be one. 

*****

The sad thing about All She Lost, the thing I keep thinking about now that I’m finished with the book, is that four years later, most of these women seem to have nearly given up hope. The ones who do seem a tiny bit hopeful are the ones who have moved away from Lebanon. The author herself took her daughter and moved to Paris, leaving her husband behind to try to rebuild his family’s business. All of the women, whether they stayed or went abroad, seem to agree that a normal, reasonably happy, reasonably safe life is no longer possible in Lebanon. They’re not talking about rebuilding or transforming their country. They don’t have the energy to fight anymore. They haven’t moved on because how can you move on?