Leave the World Behind

by Rumaan Alam

everyone had ceded to things just falling apart.

Relatable

They had asked themselves questions when they decided to have children—do we have the money, do we have the space, do we have what it takes—but they didn’t ask what the world would be when their children grew.

It was a hell of a thing to not be able to keep your kid safe. Was this how everyone felt? Was this, finally, what it was to be a human?

You told yourself there was an end to the worry. You told yourself it was sleeping through the night, then weaning from the breast, then walking then shoelaces then reading then algebra then sex then college admissions then you would be liberated, but this was a lie. Worry was infinite. A parent’s only task was to protect his child.

He was her baby. He was their baby. She couldn’t imagine a world indifferent to that.

the information had always been there waiting for them, in the gradual death of Lebanon’s cedars, in the disappearance of the river dolphin, in the renaissance of cold-war hatred, in the discovery of fission, in the capsizing vessels crowded with Africans. No one could plead ignorance that was not willful. You didn’t have to scrutinize the curve to know; you didn’t even have to read the papers, because our phones reminded us many times daily precisely how bad things had got.

Terrible things happened constantly and never prevented you from going out for ice cream or celebrating birthdays or going to the movies or paying your taxes

All that meant anything was this—people, in the same place, together.