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post-Corona world

150 150 MAHA KIMBERLY AKHTAR

Is 2020 the new Unlucky 13? Or, the uncanny value of improvisation and the ability to adapt

Does luck really exist?

And if it does, is it necessarily good or bad?

Isn’t life more about what you make of it? Improvising, adapting to circumstances, knowing how to dance around misfortune, rising to the occasion or sitting still? After all, isn’t good or bad luck something viewed through a personal prism?

The number 13 has always been considered an unlucky number: some people say it began with the Code of Hammurabi, the world’s oldest legal document that omitted a 13th rule; others say the Sumerians believed that 12 was such a perfect number that 13 could be nothing other than completely imperfect.

In western lore, superstition around the number started in biblical times with Judas who was the 13th apostle to sit down at the Last Supper.

And then of course, there’s Friday, which, for hundreds of years has been considered an unlucky day, at least according to Chaucer, who, in his ‘Canterbury Tales,’ says “and on a Friday fell all this mischance.”

So, when you put Friday and the 13th together…well that’s a serious bout of bad luck, such as befell the Knights Templar who were burned at the stake on Friday the 13th in the year 1307.

Needless to say, even today, 13 is looked upon with narrowed eye. Some buildings don’t have a 13th floor; airlines don’t have a 13th row…etc etc.

Then of course, there’s 666…the number associated with the Beast of Revelation in Chapter 13, Verse 18 of the Book of Revelation, commonly known as the number of the Devil.

This whole preamble brings us to another number.

2020.

Frankly, I would like to propose that 2020 will always be remembered as one of the strangest years in living memory. But is it unlucky? It depends on how you view it.

The optimist in me says it marks the beginning of a new decade that will make ultimately prove to be the greatest in the 21st century and that what we are going through are teething pains before the emergence of a brand new world and a brand new order.

But after the recent, massive explosions in Beirut, I cannot help but think that it really is just an unlucky year…for everyone, all 6 billion of us.

The year began with the onset of a pandemic that no one could figure out, despite all the scientific advances and technologies we have at our fingertips; and whilst for us here in New York, the pandemic seems to have receded, it rages madly, roaring through other parts of the United States and the world.

But the pandemic is more than just a health crisis: the fallout from it in political, social and economic terms is incomprehensible.

It has brought America, the most powerful country in the world, to its knees in more ways than one: at the beginning of this crisis, we all watched as the Italians started burying people in unfathomable numbers…that would never happen in the US, we all said, very cockily. And then it came to New York and people dropped like flies. And all the world watched our response, hoping for some sense of leadership that never came.

Now…months later, America lies stripped of its prominence, harshly criticized worldwide for its’ laughable response, and Americans have been banned…yes, banned from Europe.

So, what does this all teach us?

Everyone will of course have their own take away…but here is mine:

As a wine director / sommelier in a prominent New York City restaurant, I suddenly found myself out of work from one day to the next when the city shut down on March 15th. Actually, the decision to do so was made on Friday the 13th. Hmmm.

Well, that was just great. Now what? I had no savings to speak of. Whilst on paper, I have a list of impressive accomplishments: Journalist, flamenco dancer, entrepreneur, a writer with six books under my belt, and an intimate knowledge of Burgundy, it doesn’t necessarily translate into dollars in the bank.

First things first, was to get myself on the unemployment line so as to at least pay some bills, and at least put food on the table. Well, that wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Overnight, as millions lost their jobs, the system crashed.

It was weeks of investigating how to get on, calling incessantly…until finally one day, I got up at the crack of down and was at my laptop at 7:30, when the site opened and I slipped into the system.

Next, of course, what to do? I’ve always been a worker, a doer, not a sit-arounder waiting for things to happen.

What could I possibly do with my writing and / or my wine knowledge?

The best I could have done was to literally “go with the flow.”

And when I stopped trying to control the uncontrollable, things started to change.

A book of mine, a caper/whodunnit that I had let lie because I’d been too busy to pay it much thought, was published. And my wine knowledge could be put to use at a wine shop,  considered an essential business and therefore allowed to stay open.

My life is no longer what it was, but there is a new one . Who knows where the new one will take me, but I can use the tools I have to try and make it work.

All this to say that life ebbs and flows and takes us down all kinds of meandering paths. Often, if you’re stuck, you’ve got to improvise instead of just standing there looking around you. But always keep going, moving, forward, sometimes backward to go forward again.

It really is like the waves on a beach. The water rolls in and rolls back and comes back renewed, refreshed.

Improvisation and the ability to adapt are probably the two best qualities one can have to navigate life’s crises, no matter how big or small.

As a final example: I was in Madrid, promoting a book and a friend of mine really wanted to eat Lebanese food, myLebanese food! It was a Sunday and most gourmet shops were closed and none of the ingredients were available. Well, never mind, I thought…I’ll replace this with this and that with that and we ended up with one of the most memorable meals we have ever had together…and that is what it’s all about.

 

 

 

 

768 1024 MAHA KIMBERLY AKHTAR

This is NOT America…

Not unlike many others, all I do these days is eat, drink, read, write, sleep, repeat. Oh…and worry, I do a lot of that, the existential angst of what I will do when the world reopens and what sort of a world it will be?

I read an article in the Washington Post this morning about a video that had ‘gone viral,’ and I admit, the phrase made me squirm…

In everything I do, shopping for groceries or just walking the dog, I cannot stop imagining those invisible globs covered with thorn-like tubes lurking at every corner like some post-apocalyptic zombies, waiting to attach themselves to our lungs.

Paranoid? Yes.

But then, how can one not be?

To date, over half a million people in the United States are infected and over 22,000 people have died. New York alone has over 100,000 infected and we are closing in on 10,000 dead.

New York City has completely shut down, stores, restaurants boarded up.

People talk about the return to normalcy, but what does that really mean?

Will normalcy in the post-Corona world be the same? Will we be able to shake hands with people, hug or kiss friends, jump on the subway without feeling a twinge of fear about infection?

People are finding solace in all kinds of quack theories: the virus disintegrates in warm weather; heavy rainfall washes it away… then perhaps we should all move to India, hot summers and the monsoon.

These days, just taking the dog for a walk is a blinking palaver: not only do I have to remember jacket, scarf and hat, but now there’s gloves and a mask to add.

Often the poor dog, who is standing at the door, desperate for his morning constitutional, has to cross his legs to hold it.

And of course, when we come back, it’s a complicated feat of coordination between taking off my shoes at the door, getting into the apartment, washing my hands for the requisite 20 seconds, wiping down the dogs’ paws with dog-wipes, and my own shoes with anti-bacterial wipes…you get the picture.

It is frightening how this virus proliferated. As we began to catch wind of it back in late February, it was clear that it was coming. It was no longer a question of “if it was coming,” but “when it would be here.”

And when it arrived in New York City, it was a tsunami.

And yes, we were woefully unprepared…

Had this been a war, literally, who would have been better prepared than America?

Soldiers on the frontline would have had every state-of-the-art weapon imaginable at their disposal to show off the might of this, the most powerful nation in the world.

Except, in this case, the soldiers on the frontline didn’t need guns or bombs, they needed masks, gloves and we couldn’t even give them that.

As the virus devoured New York, turning it almost overnight into ground zero, the world watched Governor Andrew Cuomo’s desperation as he bid against other governors for ventilators, hounding the White House for help; we saw the news reports of hospitals being overwhelmed with the sick and dying, saw pictures of nurses making their own masks, using garbage bags to help protect them from the enemy, read accounts of doctors who had to choose which patient was going to live and which one was going to die.

Wait…wait just one floofing moment!

THIS is AMERICA?

“This sort of stuff doesn’t happen here.”

But it does.

“How can it be that in 2020, in the richest country in the world, people are dropping like flies? How did we not see this coming?”

The healthcare system in this country was a runaway train heading at breakneck speed to edge of a cliff and this pandemic pushed it over the edge.

Health insurance was the first thing you were asked when you walked into the emergency room of a hospital. How many people died because they didn’t have a card to show the admissions desk?

No one cared.

Until now.

Because this virus has affected the health of this wealthy society, a true equalizer if there ever was one in the recent past.

Our ill-preparedness has its roots in the astounding stupidity and thoroughly incompetent behaviour of Mr. Trump who has in effect turned the Oval Office into a family office.

According to the New York Times, in January, top White House aides, experts in his cabinet and top muckety-mucks in the intelligence apparatus identified the threat of this epidemic, sounded the alarm and repeatedly told Trump to aggressively get out in front of it. American lives were at stake.

But, there was no personal gain involved for Mr. Trump. There was no money involved to line his coffers…so a few people would die…so what?

Where are you taking all this money, Mr. Trump? It’s not going to be of any help to you when you’re six-feet under and rotting.

Had it not been for the governors taking matters into their own hands on a state level, this pandemic would have been much, much worse.

This is not America….so sang David Bowie in 1985. The song was recorded with Pat Metheny for a movie called “The Falcon & the Snowman,” a spy drama starring Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn about two young, privileged American men who sold CIA secrets to the Soviets, destroying their lives and ruining their families.

The song got its’ title from a scene in the movie in which Sean Penn’s character is arrested and beaten by the police in Mexico City. “I am an American citizen,” Penn shouts, implying his entitled rights, to which the policeman replies, “but this is not America.”

At no other time in all the years I have lived in New York, has this phrase had a such a shocking ring of truth.

I came here as a young woman to go to college and never left, bewitched by what this country promised, giving me the opportunity to something of myself without the shackles of class, society or name.

Why has this happened to us is a question so many are asking themselves?

It’s a virus. It does not come with a moral playbook. It’s not part of a bigger Chinese plan to rule the world, nor is it God punishing us in the biblical sense.

All we know is that it has brought the mighty to their knees and shut down the world, creating a discombobulating chasm between our past and our future. As human beings, we want to cross the chasm, close that gap, heal the wound and keep going. But no matter what, the scar will remain.

The global shut down, hunkering-down of whole populaces has gone a long way in helping close that gap. But is it personal fear or a real sense of a shared purpose and destiny?

As we navigate these un-chartered waters, and cross over, perhaps we need to take stock of what doesn’t work, let go of our baggage and move lithely into a bright new world?