The Other Americans

by Laila Lalami

But above all, I was surprised by the talk shows, the way Americans loved to confess on television. Men talked about their affairs or addictions or gambling problems, women talked about their weight or plastic surgeries or the children they had outside marriage; even teenagers had something to say, mostly about how terrible their parents were—and all of it like it was a normal thing.

How hard the believers make it to get into heaven, I thought, when they have all this right here.

I had noticed this before about Americans—they always want to take action, they have a hard time staying still, or allowing themselves to feel uncomfortable emotions—so when I shook my head no, the man seemed disappointed in me, and after a moment he left, the door jingling as it closed behind him.

Talking about the fallen came more easily to those who hadn’t witnessed the falling.

Perhaps memory is not merely the preservation of a moment in the mind, but the process of repeatedly returning to it, carefully breaking it up in parts and assembling them again until we can make sense of what we remember.

Salma

This entire chapter could be a book in and of itself. It was so, so beautiful to read. So heartbreaking and so beautiful.

Meanwhile, the civilians who died in American wars would receive only silence. National memory was built from such erasures.