4/1/20

By Josh Rubin

As Guatemala once again ponders over its craven acceptance of deportation flights, which inevitably spread Coronavirus to their already ravaged country, and Honduras and Salvador take their human cargo, mindless of the contagion, we watch, I from an apartment in New York City, others from Texas and Ohio, eyes glued to flight manifests every early morning.

My glasses correct for nearsightedness, but they cannot make up for the distance to those places, and to the border, where Customs and Border Protection is turning back refugees, even children, now unhindered by any judicial process. Here is their summary verdict: you are foreign, you may be carriers of the plague, go back. The process is now measured in minutes by masked and uniformed judge and jury.

Though the virus respects no borders or class distinctions, the churning hatred that easily rises to the surface in times of fear etches fault lines among us. A virus has no face, even under the strongest microscope, and we look for faces, we humans. We look for faces to love, and we look for faces to hate. For some of us, too many of us, feelings like love remind of us of our helplessness.

And so we turn, some of us, to hate. The other, the stranger. It is a hate that blinds us even to self-interest, and it is contagious.

The sirens never stop here in Brooklyn, sounding almost human, plaintive, getting closer. Picture me, with my binoculars, watching.