An Arab Poet and the Blizzard of ’03

July 19, 2013 seemed a good time to cool off remembering a blizzard and reflecting on lessons from the past—like, say, the futility of war. I wrote what follows ten years and four months ago. We didn’t know, in 2003, that the war would cost a couple trillion in borrowed money, last nine years, kill 4,488 U.S. soldiers, and—using Brown University estimates—134,000 Iraqi civilians. We’ve been gone two years and bombings in Iraq have killed over 500 this month. About the Arab poet quoted below, more in the postscript.

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Snow Day, March 19, 2003. Monday my students were restless with rumors of snow, thrilled that school might close. They were especially excited that this could happen on days scheduled for standardized testing, events they dread more than final exams or flu shots. So when phones rang Tuesday at five a.m., there was general rejoicing. Teachers and students all over town went back to bed.

Hours later, we woke to feel cast adrift. The day yawned dizzily, its planned course erased by snow. Blizzards remind us we are not in control. We’re used to relentless activity: do this, do that, go there. Pausing to think is not a typical American occupation.

Worthy of its name, The Blizzard of ‘03 settled into abundant downfall for two days. Snow coated the northern sides of tree trunks and fences, encased power lines and street signs. Boundaries between lawn and sidewalk, sidewalk and road, grew vague, disappeared. The blanketed branches of my plum leaned nearer and nearer the ground. I’d seen this before, sometimes go out to shake them, but have learned to respect the shrub’s suppleness. It will spring back, after the storm. Occasional gusts slapped rattles of snow against the windows. The city was otherwise abnormally quiet, the background drone of traffic hushed. Cars on the street sat buried under smooth mounds.

Because I’m not proctoring tests, I’ve been online, looking at photos of yesterday’s candlelight vigils for peace, including one in Denver, which my friend Amy McGrath attended, and one in Mexico City, attended by mi amiga Gabriela Ramos. My yard sign trembles in the wind, its “No Iraq War” message slowly obliterated by indifferent white drifts.

The president gave Saddam 48 hours to get out of town. “Dubya” planted his boots in high noon dirt, hands poised over the pearly handles of his six-shooters. Hundreds of thousands held peace vigils all over this country, all over the world. Those in power heed protests as much as weather heeds us. These snow days, gifts of storm, are luminous pauses in everyday life I’ll remember years from now as the threshold to yet another war I did not support and could not prevent. Maybe, when I remember it, I’ll still be engaged in the promotion of peace. Maybe, when I remember it, I’ll also recall the blind Baghdad poet Abul Ala Al-Ma’arri (973-1052) who wrote:

Don’t let your life be governed by what disturbs you.

Maybe when I remember it, I’ll also remember the plum tree, able to bend and bend without breaking.

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July 20, 2013. I don’t recall where I found the Abul Ala Al-Ma’arri quote ten years ago, but I’ve kept it near me since, like a mantra. It helps my attitude adjustments. Today I researched this medieval Arab philosopher poet, and was surprised to find a writer who died 955 years ago had recently been in the news. That made it easier to find information. Correction: Abul Ala Al-Ma’arri sought to further his literary career in Baghdad, the cultural center of his time, but he was born in Syria and lived most of his long life near Aleppo. He was a rationalist, vegetarian and freethinker in a time when Islamic culture was fine with all that. No one threatened his life, it seems, although his verses offer harsh critiques:

  …So, too, the creeds of man: the one prevails

            Until the other comes; and this one fails


            When that one triumphs; ay, the lonesome world


            Will always want the latest fairytales


            And religious rites are a means of enslaving the masses…

Sadly, the translator is not credited, as is too often the case.

Although some now consider the one who wrote them a heretic, not much has changed in the millennium since those verses were penned. The lonesome world still loves its latest fairytales. On February 11, 2013, a bronze bust of al-Ma’arri that had long stood in Aleppo was beheaded, the act attributed to jihadists, who love their fairytales as much as we love ours.