This is dated now. It was written a year after "the storm". I will set the date to indicate that.I’m reading an examination of Josephus, a first century Jewish historian. In the introduction, the writer notes that now “history is most often produced by professionals”. This was not true in ancient times, she reports. History was written by those who participated in the events. As I continue reading, it’s obvious that the writer is doubtful about the results of such a history. Such a committed writer rarely achieves the detachment needed for a true history she notes. When I review my brief journal notations, I want to ask her: what constitutes detachment, what is a history, or another old question—what is truth?On August 27th at 12:47 pm, I write:Stuck in hurricane evacuation traffic. On Highway 61 The fact that I have time to write to write this should tell you something. The convoy left at 8:30 am. We’ve passed Clearview crossing. The news looks exceedingly bad. The storm is now a category 5. And can you believe that my neighbor is staying! Now, of course, N.O. is under a mandatory evac order and Jefferson Parish is practically there.I didn’t leave in total panic. I had time to pack the night before. I paid all my bills. I backed up current stories and poetry. I washed clothes and put them away. I swept and mopped. I was not going to leave the house a total disaster area. But I didn’t take my homeowners and flood insurance. I only packed enough for two or three days away. In fact, two of the convoy members tell me that should be the name of the movie that we expect—“Enough for Two or Three Days.” It’s the mantra that we hear repeated on every interview.On September 3rd, at 12:05 pm, I write:I’ve been in S’port a week and no word when we can go back. The city itself is 80% under water. Susan and Carolyn, her co-worker, have applied for jobs up here. I'm told that before we can go back we need to get cholera, tetanus, and diphtheria shots. Actually, it looks like it will be months before we can go back.I read and note now how scattered my thoughts were. I jump from hurricane news to family news. I had a chance to talk to my aunt and ask questions about my family history. I listen to her tales of my grandfather trying to convince my grandmother (who I never met) to move to Shreveport where he, although a farmer, had found a job building that era’s charity hospital. My aunt mentions that they had to leave Newellton at least twice because of a levee break. Considering her age, I wonder if one of those was the famous flood of 1927. Alas, she doesn’t recall the year. My sister calls to tell of volunteering at the Astrodome. I haven’t done anything. I’m safe and I haven’t done anything. Is this the Post traumatic shock that everyone talks about? I live on the West Bank and my home is probably ok.My friends and I plot the movie that we expect to see next year. A blond (of course) female tourist, her husband, and young child are frantic to escape New Orleans before the storm. On second thought, we decide that there have to be interlocking stories. There has to be a heroic tale of a doctor trying to save his diabetic patient. Being male, he’s allowed brown hair, but he’s also white. The dying patient is black. Somewhere in there, there must be a Mardi Gras parade, even though it’s September.For some reason, I have always sought biblical analogies. This time, I remember Jeremiah and find the reference in my godmother’s bible:Jeremiah 29I had you taken from Jerusalem to Babylonia. Now I tell you to settle there and build houses. Plant gardens and eat what you grow in them. Get married and have children, then help your sons find wives and help your daughters find husbands so that they may have children as well. I want your numbers to grow, not to get smaller.Pray for peace in Babylonia and work hard to make it prosperous. The more successful the nation is the better off you will be.There’s more than a little delightful frisson in this. Babylonia is of course present-day Iraq. Jeremiah’s letter to the Jews of that Diaspora tell them to make their homes in that country, just as my friends are now planning to remain in Shreveport. The politics of war have crossed the politics of disaster in a way that begs for poetry, but I can’t organize my thoughts. All I can do is watch the news and marvel, bite my nails and worry. The day ends with a reminder to hit the library to find my relatives in a Caddo Parish census. Too bad that 1927 wasn’t a census year. But then, neither is 2005.On September 4th, I note how many New Orlean musicians were rescued from their rooftops. They are the minor royalty of the city, I write. But unlike the mayor, there was no Hummer or special helicopter to whisk them away from danger. When I mention this to a friend, he laughs and agrees. He’s a musician himself and says his wife convinced him to leave. Remembering the traffic of the last evacuation, he might have stayed himself. He says that the musicians know the truth of their situation—some of them don’t own the property that they live in. Nevertheless, they also know that they are the royalty of N.O. I remember my anthropology teacher describing the human ability to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas in your head in one time. My house is flooded; my house is ok. I am the working poor; I am idolized by thousands.On the next few days, the news begins to switch from pictures to “analysis”; I begin to switch to NPR. Why did I switch? CNN et al are dependent on pictures, that’s what they do well. And if it requires showing the same ugly pictures over and over, so be it. NPR is dependent on words and stories. I wanted to hear personal stories, not CNN decrying the destruction of property as people died.Some of the criticism in both media were things we said ourselves as we left town. We passed boat dealers. Why wasn’t someone commandeering their boats? Well, in a country that idolizes private property, what does it take to take another’s private property? I listened as Nagin and Broussard said that private vehicles would be taken to save lives, but the boat dealerships were dark. The dealers had saved themselves. Later, on Google web sites, I saw school buses parked in flooded lots. Why weren’t they used to take people out of town? Was it because the big plan protected the supervisors but left the actual workers to fend for themselves? Well, they fended for themselves. They left town. Most corporations make arrangements for both the bosses and the people who actually do the work. It’s odd to consider that the same corporations that play musical chairs with their employee’s jobs do make plans that protect the life of the corporation by protecting the lives of its workers. I don’t even work for Entergy anymore, but I wished that the city of New Orleans organized bus drivers as well as Entergy did linemen.Later, I thought again. 400 buses. 50 people per bus. That is 20,000 people. It took my convoy thirteen hours to get to Baton Rouge. The buses would have been sitting in the same traffic, so that’s time for only one trip before the storm. Who stays in the Dome and the Convention Center and who gets on the bus? Some would have been saved. But that just makes the questions of the following day different questions. Mayor: How did you decide who got on the bus?Nagin is interviewed on Nightline and mentions that Jefferson Parish met people on the CCC with attack dogs. He complains that the officials there were more concerned about property than people’s lives. My godmother asks if that was a good thing to say and we all correct her. No, New Orleans will love this. Blacks in New Orleans will say, ‘he finally gets it!’On the 7th, I express the fear that New Orleans will be made an ‘American’ city. I’ve been saying that this is a chance to do things right. To bury power lines where trees can’t fall on them. To plant more sensible trees than those horrible palms. But I realize that other people will use the same expression to mean—to get those poor people out of our neighborhoods. The U.S. paid for people to leave New Orleans. Who will pay for them to move back? Won’t FEMA or the Red Cross simply echo Jeremiah’s statements? Make a home where you are? What will New Orleans do without her working class? Will the rich import people from Honduras and say ‘oh, by the way, you have to live over there? Not by me?’ In the old days, I’m told, the rich wanted their servants close by, 2 streets away. Now with mass transit, they can be isolated in their own neighborhood. The Irish Channel is only a few blocks from the Garden District. Where will the Honduras Channel be? And who will be there to complain? Not the working middle class who have secret dreams of living in the Garden District themselves. They are now moving to gated communities while they await the lottery ticket that will buy their own Uptown home. A week later, I read the same sentiment in the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps those nasty poor people won’t move back.There is one observation that I haven’t seen repeated in the media. Entire families were plucked off 9th ward homes. Mothers, children, fathers. Fathers? According to the U.S. media, poor Black fathers don’t exist. Yet, there they were. Clutching their children, searching for their wives, rejoicing to find their families. While the country worried about the price of the black gold of oil, the black gold of Black family life was left unremarked upon.I haven’t mentioned Shreveport. The confederate flag is still in front of the courthouse. But now there is an U.S. flag and a Louisiana flag that flies higher than it. There’s a plaque that identifies it as the last confederate flag. (Shreveport is where the Confederate army gave up in Louisiana.) As a historical artifact, it’s not quite as offensive. The librarians who see me twice a day on their Internet computers ask me what I think of their city. After I explain that I am from Shreveport, I tell them it is a surprise to find that Black people aren’t as invisible as they were when I left. They laugh. One suggests that I may come back to find a Black mayor one day while another laughs and reminds the first librarian that the last time that a Black man ran for mayor, a white man in a wheelchair beat him. We are talking in a new library dedicated to a Black educator. The back of the library looks over the rolling hills of Lakeside golf course that was always the ‘Black’ golf course. The library is beautifully equipped with both computers and African artifacts. It is both confusing and comforting to be in this city where everyone greets you. I keep waiting for old insults to reappear. This is not the city that I grew up in.On the night of the 9th of September, I wonder about the first Jewish Diaspora. The elite were taken to Babylonia. Jeremiah was forced to leave for Egypt. The poor remained in Judea. 70 years later Persia (now Iran) conquered Babylonia and they published a writ allowing the Jews to return. Few of the Babylonia Jews returned. In fact, Iraq still had a large Jewish population until Israel was formed. Like the Babylonian Jews, some New Orleanians will take Jeremiah’s advice and make new homes. How will they affect their neighbors? How will their neighbors affect them? Today, I slip one of the few CDs that I bought with me into the car stereo and drive to Kroger’s—a store unknown in New Orleans. The singer sings, Chazak, Chazak. Be Brave, Be Strong. It is the line that the congregation repeats to the Torah reader when one book is finished and another is begun. Luckily, there is no one around to see dissolve into tears.
Comments