Land of the Free?

I would not have guessed her name was Fatima. No hijab, her skin lighter than mine. The only hint of coming from somewhere else is a slight accent. I had guessed Eastern Europe, but a long time ago. She and her husband look like any American couple. They have a dog. 

As we sat watching our dogs play, we suddenly ran out of small talk. The weather. Work. How we like living in the city after migrating from suburbia. She misses the quiet. I do not. 

I asked her where she was from, before she moved to where she moved before she moved here. Have you heard of Bosnia? She was serious, which I guess is fair. She's lived here for almost 30 years, and she's no doubt become accustomed to our self-important ignorance, our dogged grip on the notion that bad shit happens elsewhere. 

She told me the story of how she and her young daughter escaped from war torn Bosnia to Austria, while her husband remained. How it was, without cell phones, unsure for long stretches whether he was alive or dead. Had she and her daughter stayed she would have been raped, they would have been killed. I tried to imagine this woman, about my age, on the run with a small child. Tried to imagine what it was like, listening to the sounds of war closing in. They had all lived together peacefully for years, she told me, all ethic groups. Until, somehow, everything changed. 

America in 2019. More than two and a half years into a nightmare presidency, more than two and a half years of watching one man dismantle our democracy in small increments while an entire party sits by in silence, complicit, as guilty as the man himself. It no longer surprises me that it happened; it surprises me now that people are still surprised. I hold my breath when nothing happens, when the latent hatred that has been given voice takes a day off from some kind of atrocity. I wonder, constantly, how many more people will die before we do something. 

Fatima's daughter, Yale educated, well-traveled, out of danger since she was four, is terrified. She wants her mother to change her name. At 32, she may not be hearing bombs, but she feels the unsettling rumble of rocks turning over and long-buried truths seeping out; she feels the deafening threat of silence. 

I walked into a sparkling shopping center in the heart of Chicago's Loop the other day. The stores are upscale, the shoppers well-heeled, but in a rainbow of colors. For the first time, I felt vulnerable, knowing that anyone is welcome here. I felt strangely afraid, not of an invading caravan of imaginary murderers from far away, but of something far more insidious, something homegrown. 

Fatima is Muslim, and I don't know if she ever did wear a hijab. But I get why she's not wearing one now.