Rats: are they vile plague spreaders or much-maligned innocents, falsely accused of spreading human suffering? J.B. MacKinnon weighs the evidence for you in this fun piece from Hakai Magazine, complete with terrific illustrations by Sarah M. Gilman.
If the rat was not the bête noire of the Black Death; if it poses a low risk of disease in many places, and, where it is poses a higher risk, is a better reflection of how poorly our societies care for the vulnerable than the real dangers of the animal itself; if the rat is not aggressive or filthy; if the rat is not a shadow of our worst qualities but instead can reflect our best; and if—perhaps most important of all—we cannot win our cruel war against them, then an obvious question remains. What are we to do about rats?
The surprising answer—one that recalls Barthélemy de Chasseneuz’s demand that the voice of rats be heard—may be this: communicate with them.
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A disturbing child psychiatric facility. The changing city of Cairo. An optimistic take on AI supremacy. The mystery of a cookie disappearance. And a joyful 51 years in the Smithsonian Zoo Panda House.
Margaret Talbot | The New Yorker | September 25, 2023 | 14,695 words
Margaret Talbot’s story about Evy Mages, a woman who was held as a child at a mysterious psychiatric facility in Innsbruck from 1973-74, was the first piece I dove into at the start of the week—and I’m still thinking about it. For the past few years, Talbot has helped Mages investigate her own family history and recall the memories from this cruel place, where children were observed, humiliated, abused, and even given shots of epiphysan—a veterinary drug derived from cattle—to try and suppress sexual urges. This “villa” was as horrific as it sounds, run by a Nazi-trained psychologist named Maria Nowak-Vogl whose sole purpose was to destroy children and extinguish their inner light. This is a devastating story and a hard one to read. But I’ve thought a lot about the long journey Mages has made since that awful experience, and how incredible it is that she’s come out the other side—now a loving mother to her own grown children, and helping other survivors report the abuse they experienced. Talbot deftly writes a moving story of one woman’s resilience and the harrowing child psychiatry of postwar Austria. —CLR
Wiam El-Tamami | Granta | July 20, 2023 | 5,860 words
Wiam El-Tamami was raised in the “the hushed, air-conditioned sterility” of Kuwait after her parents left Cairo, Egypt, for better job opportunities. Her beautiful Granta essay is a sensory study as she recalls the vibrancy of Cairo on her visits and compares it to the city she knows now, more than a decade after she and her mother protested Hosni Mubarak’s regime in the Egyptian Revolution. She recounts air tinged with smoke, car horns blaring, dogs snarling in the streets, and the shouts of protest: “Bread, freedom, social justice, human dignity! The people demand the downfall of the regime!” She juxtaposes this political unrest against memories of her father’s homemade flatbread, “dusted with bran, the top layer thin and speckled with dark spots, the bottom layer soft and moreish,” and the aubergines, tomatoes, and onions she “anoints with oil and spices” to make tagine with a friend. There are no scales of nostalgia covering El-Tamami’s eyes as she gazes at modern Cairo expanding outward in gated communities that delineate the ever-expanding gulf between rich and poor as inflation skyrockets and the value of the Egyptian pound plummets. In this lyrical essay, El-Tamami interrogates the pervasive undercurrent of her conflicting emotions. “There is such an inherent precarity woven into every day here, a sense of tenuousness, of the unknowability of even the most immediate future, of life always being lived on a knife-edge,” she writes. “I ate the things I had missed. I ate mahshi kromb, stuffed cabbage rolls. I ate my father’s fuul. I ate molokhiyya. I ate black-eyed peas with rice: Egyptian white rice, starchy and soft and buttery-sweet, cooked with little tendrils of vermicelli.” Even as she delights in memories of flavor, El-Tamami still hungers for a better Cairo, now a city in chaos that feels impossible to stomach. —KS
Virginia Heffernan | Wired | September 26, 2023 | 3,874 words
By now, most people have read Ted Chiang’s brilliant work about artificial intelligence in The New Yorker, and the metaphors he’s introduced have entered common parlance: it’s a JPEG of the web, it’s the new McKinsey. But Virginia Heffernan’s delightful feature about Cicero, an AI model that plays the strategy game Diplomacy, is the most surprising, most optimistic, and most enjoyable piece I’ve read about the technology since ChatGPT turned the tech world on its head last November. AI has already conquered Go, the strategy game once considered the last bastion of human ingenuity (at least after Deep Blue mopped Kasparov on the chessboard). Diplomacy is a very different beast, however; gameplay and negotiation are one and the same, and the world’s best human player, Andrew Goff, dominates by being kind rather than cutthroat. Yet, somehow, the bot quickly became more than competitive through similar tactics. Is it perfect? Not even close. It says “awesome!” too much for anyone’s liking, and it still struggles with hallucinations. Still, as Heffernan writes, its approach raises the prospect of a very different AI future than the brutal takeover doomsdayers imagine (or the utopia that tech bros evangelize). What truly recommends this piece, though, is how Heffernan suffuses an intrinsically inhuman story with a beating heart. Opening the piece at a Smiths cover band concert arms her with the perfect anti-Chiangian metaphor; relating her pre-teen son’s weekend-long Diplomacy parties grounds you in the game’s earnest DNA; interrogating her own kneejerk reactions on the page rather than in the editing makes you trust her even more. I don’t share her professed outlook on what this means for tomorrow—”[w]e really liked working with you, robots, and are happy you are winning”—but it’s also a vintage Heffernan provocation, the kind of thing that tells you you’re being challenged and indulged at the same time. Some people are great critics; others are deep thinkers; still others are memorable stylists. Heffernan is fortunate enough to be all three, and this story finds her at the height of her sneaky-smart prowess. —PR
Dave Denison | The Baffler | September 21, 2023 | 5,180 words
In the 1970s, baker Ted Odell created and sold the guerrilla cookie, “a dense, moist granola cookie,” through small stores and cooperatives in Madison, Wisconsin. The cookies were famous and beloved locally until they suddenly disappeared from store shelves around 1990. “I think they contained rolled wheat flakes, but others say cracked wheat,” writes Dave Denison for The Baffler. “I remember raisins, and shredded coconut, and a mixture of honey and molasses. They were sweet enough to be addictive, but not in the way commercial cookies are, where you eat one and then another and another.” Denison—who worked for Odell as a baker’s assistant one summer—became determined to solve the mystery. Why did the cookies disappear? Why did Odell refuse to share his recipe with the world? Denison’s piece is a chewy, satisfying blend of detective work and food nostalgia. As he learns more about Odell, Denison comes to understand the baker’s wholesome ambition: to educate children about good food and the honest work that goes into it, deftly revealing that guerrilla cookies were far more than sweet confections; they were but a small sample of one man’s deeply held convictions. —KS
Meilan Solly | Smithsonian Magazine | September 22, 2023 | 3,700 words
There’s something about pandas: these bumbling teddy bears entrance us humans, First Lady Pat Nixon included. Sitting at a dinner in Beijing with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, Nixon commented on a cute panda picture she saw on a cigarette tin. Zhou responded, “I’ll give you some.” “Cigarettes?” she asked. “No. Pandas.” And so our story begins, with the two promised pandas arriving at the Smithsonian National Zoo in 1972. The next 51 years at the Smithsonian Panda House are carefully documented by Meilan Solly in this enchanting piece. Our original pandas—Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing—struggled with fertility issues, which were, rather harshly, reported at the time as being “largely because of ineptness by the male.” (Hsing-Hsing chose some bizarre positions.) But despite their lack of progeny, this pair were adored until their passing. Next into the Big Brother Panda House were Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, with Tian Tian proving a bit more competent in the bedroom department. However, artificial insemination was still necessary for the appearance of cubs—three surviving—including Xiao Qi Ji, a miracle baby born to Mei Xiang at 22. A whopping 639,000 people tuned in live to watch this birth via live Panda Cam. (No pressure, Mei Xiang.) Panda Cam remained hugely popular, with baby Xiao Qi Ji providing some much-needed endorphins to people stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Solly includes some Panda Cam footage (don’t get me started on the pandas sliding in the snow), heartwarming photos, interesting facts, and fun anecdotes. You cannot help but smile. Under an agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association, the current pandas will return to China on December 7, 2023. Smithsonian Magazine has written about the Panda House for over half a century. This essay is a worthy addition as the pandas’ time in America draws to a close. —CW
Audience Award
Now for the big one. The piece our readers most enjoyed this week.
Rob Price | Business Insider | September 25, 2023 | 2,937 words
Blame the pandemic’s deprivations and our collective need for personal connection. Or maybe blame Gen Z as generational oversharers, but LinkedIn has evolved from a place where people not only post promotions and business and industry-focused content to a platform for revealing the overly personal, leading to—of course—public mockery, because some cannot resist the chance to be funny on the internet.—KS
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Can Taliban and non-Taliban work together as colleagues? Today, you can see this big experiment in action inside the Intercontinental in Kabul, the country’s first high-end hotel—and a legendary meeting place over the decades for foreign leaders, elites, and well-to-do Afghans. Even when Afghanistan has spiraled into violence and war, the posh hotel “remained in a world of its own,” writes Andreas Babst, a correspondent for German publication Neue Zürcher Zeitung. These days, however, the hotel is pretty quiet.
Babst reports on what it’s like to work at the Intercontinental, speaking to both Taliban and non-Taliban employees—the marketing manager, the human resources manager, the head chef, the hotel president—as well as an Afghan family from Canada staying at the hotel. It’s a fascinating account of the hotel’s role throughout the country’s history and a rare look inside the day-to-day operations of a Taliban-controlled business.
On the fifth floor, on the right, at the end of the long corridor, is the Khyber Suite, the Intercontinental’s penthouse. A balcony winds around the suite, allowing guests a view over all of Kabul. Right now, the U.N. is hosting a course: how to solve interpersonal conflicts. Here, Massoud is said to have planned his attacks with binoculars. Until 1996, when new, even more radical Islamists came from the south and conquered Kabul for the first time: the Taliban. They castrated and executed Najibullah, the ex-president with the Mercedes, dragged his body around the city and hanged him in public. The Taliban removed the chairs in the hotel bar and sat on carpets.
There are no windows in this long corridor on the fifth floor. Neon lights on the walls brace themselves against the darkness. They cast harsh shadows. Sounds and history sink into the stretch carpet. It smells like dust and something else, sour. The hotel’s employees don’t like to be on the fifth floor. It’s haunted up here, they say.
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Entrepreneur Bryan Johnson made hundreds of millions when he sold his company. His current venture is Blueprint, a life-extension system he’s developing that’s meant to reduce biological age. The idea of insanely rich people experimenting with peculiar longevity treatments is nothing new. But Johnson, who views himself as an explorer in an unprecedented era of humanity and AI rather than some kind of biohacker, believes he can achieve immortality with an algorithm. Charlotte Alter observes Johnson in his home—which feels like “an Apple Store in a jungle”—to see what an algorithmically ruled life looks like, and manages to make us both laugh and ponder our own mortality in the process.
Johnson, 46, is a centimillionaire tech entrepreneur who has spent most of the last three years in pursuit of a singular goal: don’t die. During that time, he’s spent more than $4 million developing a life-extension system called Blueprint, in which he outsources every decision involving his body to a team of doctors, who use data to develop a strict health regimen to reduce what Johnson calls his “biological age.” That system includes downing 111 pills every day, wearing a baseball cap that shoots red light into his scalp, collecting his own stool samples, and sleeping with a tiny jet pack attached to his penis to monitor his nighttime erections. Johnson thinks of any act that accelerates aging—like eating a cookie, or getting less than eight hours of sleep—as an “act of violence.”
He describes his intense diet and exercise regime as falling somewhere between the Italian Renaissance and the invention of calculus in the pantheon of human achievement. Michelangelo had the Sistine Chapel; Johnson has his special green juice.
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It’s easy to look at the rise of generative AI and imagine the singularity roaring toward us as an extinction-level event. It’s harder to look at it the way Virginia Heffernan does: with a canny sense of optimism. But that’s exactly what her feature on Cicero, an AI bot trained in the negotiation-focused strategy game Diplomacy, provides. What if ChatGPT isn’t heading toward HAL, but R2-D2?
If Cicero’s aura of “understanding” is, behind the scenes, just another algorithmic operation, sometimes an alignment in perception is all it takes to build a bond. I see, given the way your position often plays out, why you’d be nervous about those fleets. Or, outside of Diplomacy: I understand, since living alone diminishes your mood, why you’d want to have a roommate. When the stock customer service moves—“I can understand why you’re frustrated”—figured into Cicero’s dialog, they had a pleasing effect. No wonder moral philosophies of AI lean heavily on the buzzword alignment. When two minds’ perceptions of a third thing line up, we might call that congruity the cognitive equivalent of love.
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Susan Casey’s anger is palpable in this piece for Vanity Fair. She explores Stockton Rush’s reckless approach to building the Titan submersible, the implosion of which cost five lives, including his own. When the media and the public followed the search for the Titan back in June, they didn’t know what was common knowledge in the submersible community: the fear was always that the hull of the Titan would fail.
OceanGate’s recalcitrance was like smog hovering over the conference room. During a coffee break, I heard the Titan mentioned in the same breath as the UC3 Nautilus, a creepy Danish sub whose owner had killed and dismembered journalist Kim Wall on a dive. In a corner, two marine engineers were worked up, and I caught a snatch of their conversation: “When it’s compressing it can actually buckle,” one engineer said in an exasperated tone, referring to Rush’s carbon fiber hull. “Like if you stand on an empty soda can.” The other engineer snorted and said: “I wouldn’t get into that thing for any amount of money.”
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An instantly absorbing piece, with meticulous reporting from Tom Lamont, who has clearly put the time in with Nazi hunter Thomas Will to understand his complicated profession. It’s a disturbing and thought-provoking look at the last Nazis who will ever face trial, with particular focus on the fascinating case of Irmgard Furchner, put on trial at 96 for her role as a civilian secretary at Stutthof camp.
He is one of the last in a long line of Nazi hunters, the chief of a German bureau created decades ago to investigate historic atrocities and to track down aiders and abettors of the Holocaust—those few that remain. All these years after the collapse of the Third Reich, many of the suspects that Will tries to bring to justice die on him.
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A cop with expensive taste and money troubles. A wealthy woman who loved and supported him. An old man with dementia with a large estate and no next of kin. And a secret girlfriend and a fake will. Mix these elements together and what do you get? Katherine Laidlaw’s latest story for Toronto Life about a romance and scam gone wrong.
It was easy to keep the women apart. They occupied different worlds within Toronto. Dixon attended high-society balls and charity galas. She travelled broadly and often. Balgobin—whom he always contacted using a burner phone or through Snapchat—had modest means and ambitions. She lived in a studio apartment near the Rogers Centre and worked with society’s elderly and most vulnerable. She brought snacks to Konashewych’s office down the street on her breaks. She was dutiful, eager to please. Over time, her position at the OPGT, where she oversaw the ongoing care of clients and their financial decisions, would prove surprisingly lucrative.
That Sommerfeld didn’t have a will or documented next of kin wasn’t unusual—many OPGT clients don’t. But it is rare for someone with substantial assets, and he had an $834,000 estate. A 2018 audit of the agency found that just six per cent of its clients had assets of more than $100,000. That made Sommerfeld a member of a very small group. His medical care and financial decisions would be entrusted to the most senior client representatives at the agency, each overseeing anywhere from 80 to 100 cases at a time. In January of 2017, a new public servant took over the caseload that included Sommerfeld’s estate: Adellene Balgobin.
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Reporting from China—at least the sort that appears in Western publications—tends to ignore the nation’s residents in favor of invisible-hand macro forces. Economy. Technology. Geopolitics. But Rest of the World presents a much-needed alternative to that approach, and Wanqing Zhang’s feature about feminism’s deepening foothold is a perfect distillation of why it’s necessary. If you want to understand what’s going on somewhere, you talk to the people who live there; it’s as simple as that.
Weibo, which has more monthly active users than X (formerly Twitter), remains the most popular platform for general discussion in China. But in part because of the platform’s harsh policing and relentless trolls, women have increasingly congregated on Xiaohongshu, where they outnumber male users more than two to one. Women have found ways to trick the app’s recommendation algorithm so their posts are shown mostly to other women. Douban, where many interactions happen within semi-secluded groups, is another feminist refuge.
Lü, the activist, describes the retreat from Weibo to Douban and Xiaohongshu as a shift from “a public plaza” to “a friend’s living room.” In the latter spaces, female empowerment is less about trying to create structural change and focuses more on less sensitive everyday topics: conflicts with boyfriends or discussions about whether to marry, have children, or use makeup.
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In this beautiful braided essay for Granta, Wiam El-Tamami mines conflicted emotions about modern Cairo, Egypt, as she remembers the city before and after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.
My father would tell stories of his daily stroll as a student from his home to Cairo University among peaceful, tree-lined avenues. Of his adventures with his siblings: sneaking into the cinema, the sandwiches they would buy at a street stall afterwards, all for a few piasters. The family had eight children and humble means, but still managed to live well and eat well and share much of what they had with others: my grandparents’ small home was always open, the table always laid, the rooms always filled with innumerable guests.
When my parents finally returned – my mother in 2000, my father in 2010 – they returned to a different place than the one they had left behind: a country disfigured, a city almost unlivable, choked with traffic, ear-splitting noise, unbreathable air and 20 million people jostling for space. A country mired in corruption and repression and simmering with discontent – on the cusp of boiling over. Just months after my father’s return, the country erupted into revolution.
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Zinida Moore works multiple jobs. The mother of three typically goes from an overnight shift at one job to another one in the morning. She was one of 5,000 Chicago residents who were given monthly $500 payments for one year, no strings attached, as part of a pilot guaranteed income program. A more limited approach to UBI—or universal basic income—the program focused on assisting a randomly selected group of people. It’s a simple yet bold idea, writes Elly Fishman, giving a boost and “breathing room” to low-income residents. Within the group, 72 percent were women; among those, 70 percent identified as Black and nearly 60 percent had children.
But how effective is such a program? The extra cash won’t pull a family out of poverty, nor would it allow Moore to buy a house, for example. But “that breathing room can turn into substantial, sustained change,” reports Fishman, and over the course of the year, Moore was able to pay off two of her largest bills and pay for three months’ rent up front. She was also able to improve her credit score and find relief in other, less-quantifiable ways—moments of calm and joy because she was able to provide a bit more for her family.
City officials around the U.S. are exploring similar programs. Whether it’s the right kind of government aid remains uncertain, but Fishman’s portrait of one resident shows that a little bit of money can go a long way.
Working multiple jobs is how Moore has long managed to cobble together enough income to supply her kids with basic necessities at home and for school. And then there’s the not-strictly-necessary stuff — trendy clothes, trips to the movies, money for the mall — that she wants them to have. It all adds up. Her financial stability has always been precarious, and she worries that one emergency could quickly spiral her into even deeper debt.
Moore’s phone dings. It’s Ziniya. She needs a new uniform for her cheer squad. Her text breaks down the cost of each piece: $45 for an oversize hair bow, $25 for a collar, $110 for shoes, $125 for the backpack. Then there’s the rest of the uniform. All told, it will run $630.
In previous years, Moore might have sent out a text to family and friends seeking donations for the uniform. She might have asked the school if she could pay in installments. But this year, for the first time, she can cover it all herself. That’s because she has an extra $500 a month coming in — not from a third job or a side hustle but from the City of Chicago, which gives her the money to spend or save as she chooses.
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A lovely piece put together to bid farewell to Tian Tian, Mei Xiang, and Xiao Qi Ji, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo pandas who are due to return to China in December. Illustrated by five decades of media coverage, it’s a touching—and fun—essay on the Zoo’s panda history.
Named Xiao Qi Ji, which translates to “little miracle,” after a public vote, the cub “brought a lot of renewed attention and sparked a lot of joy,” Monfort said in December 2020. Panda lovers stuck at home during the Covid-19 pandemic followed the cub’s every move, and keepers posted near-daily updates on his development. “The chief arbiter of joy in 2020,” declared Washingtonian, was Xiao Qi Ji.
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An excellent insight into the relationship between the three people behind the Tooth and Claw podcast. Paul Kvinta sets us up with an extensive background to the podcast, before enjoying a trip to the zoo with the gang. The recipe for a successful podcast is here, although this chemistry might not be easy to recreate.
Twenty-six minutes into the episode, Mike and Jeff were hanging on every turn of Bye’s dire situation, as described to them by Wes Larson, a wildlife biologist who is also Jeff’s older brother. Each week for the past three years, Wes has shared a harrowing tale of human-wildlife conflict, peppered with scientific insights, conservation intel, and tips on surviving dustups with nature’s scariest predators—or, in this case, predators the color of a Barbie Dreamhouse.
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I’ve experienced the power of fungi in my own life: I think of the magical mycorrhizae mix that helped my first-ever vegetable garden grow into a lush paradise, and I suppose all of those shrooms I ingested in my twenties. I dove into this piece, then, with interest and wonder. Fungi can “fortify soil and lower the use of pesticides, provide a model of connection for our increasingly fragmented and lonely society, heal psychological trauma and chronic illness, remediate the toxins of industrial society and much more,” writes Joanna Steinhardt. For Noema, Steinhardt dives into the fascinating world of DIY mycology, and specifically mycoremediation, the promising process of using fungi to break down pollutants and clean our waste. But mycoremediation is a tough, messy process to sell; it works in small-size projects (think petri dishes and gardens), but to replicate that success on a larger scale—to clean up an oil spill, for example—would be more challenging. Steinhardt writes a thoughtful essay on a complicated organism, and an interesting field that is inspiring optimistic environmentalists to take action in new ways.
In short order, Thomas found an article that showed that fungi can’t degrade bunker fuel on their own; the molecules in the heavy fuel are too complex. He proposed something simpler: composting. Take the hair mat lasagna, blend in plant waste, aerate regularly. And it worked. The pile began to naturally decompose. After a few months, they brought in earthworms to finish the job. Lab tests showed that the most toxic chemicals had broken down. “It took 18 months and a lot of manual labor, and it was really a mess,” Lisa told me. But in the end, they had usable (“freeway grade”) compost. Matter of Trust even got a grant from Patagonia to sell the final product at Costco.
Fungi was at the intersection of their political, environmental and personal concerns: It could fortify soil and lower the use of pesticides, provide a model of connection for our increasingly fragmented and lonely society, heal psychological trauma and chronic illness, remediate the toxins of industrial society and much more.
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Blame the pandemic’s deprivations and our collective need for personal connection. Or maybe blame Gen Z as generational oversharers, but LinkedIn has evolved from a place where people not only post promotions and business and industry-focused content to a platform for revealing the overly personal, leading to—of course—public mockery, because some cannot resist the chance to be funny on the internet.
In 2018, John Hickey was working in tech sales and sick of the culture of endless self-promotion. He wanted to be a writer, but his days were filled with self-aggrandizing emails. So he decided to have some fun.
The millennial in San Francisco started posting the worst-offending “LinkedInfluencers” he found to his personal Twitter page — the shameless humblebrags, the personal anecdotes of dubious veracity, the #HustleCulture koans promoting a questionable approach to work-life balance. They were an instant hit, and the retweets rolled in. So he decided to spin up a dedicated meme page poking fun at the excesses of online professional culture and the Ted Talkification of LinkedIn. He called it @BestOfLinkedIn.
In one post, he skewered a CEO who talked about being “vulnerable” and shared a crying selfie after laying off employees. In another, he criticized a user who wrote about taking time off after her father died but made sure to keep checking LinkedIn. (He also leaked Peter Rota’s bashful urinary tract.) A larger rival account emerged, State Of LinkedIn, and a Reddit community thrived — “LinkedIn Lunatics.”
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This essay deals with suicide and suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is suicidal, please, contact your physician, go to your local ER, or call the suicide prevention hotline in your country. In the United States, call 988 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
In September 2019, I lost my close friend, Arthur, to suicide. In summer 2020, I began writing a book that centered our friendship. In May 2021, every folder and document vanished from my computer.
This mass disappearance included the unfinished book about my friend: all 39,548 words. The only evidence of it is a notebook where I tracked its growth.
I searched every nook and cyber cranny, and then spoke with Apple technicians for several hours, watching them take remote control of my cursor to dig into my hard drive, finder, cloud, trash bin, and something called the Wayback Machine. Like an amateur, I had not saved a backup of the book or even emailed it to myself. I hadn’t shared it with anyone.
Until the document’s disappearance, the words had been flowing and I was excited about how much I was getting onto the page. Not just about Arthur and the times leading up to his death, but also about my own depression and my mother’s Alzheimer’s. I was also using the book to explore bisexuality, polyamory, aging, and a 1991 book about assisted suicide called Final Exit by Derek Humphry.
I’d put it all in there—uncomfortable truths that I called autofiction in case I needed to hide from my own reality. Writing “fiction” often gave me that out. If someone said they felt seen by a novel or short story I’d written, I would confess to its real-life truth, but if someone was bothered by a detail in my “fiction,” I could just say it was invented, whether it was or not.
Other documents disappeared too. A Word doc of essays. Two hundred pages of short stories. Another novel I’d finished recently after eight years of work. But those were things I could piece together from other files and sent emails. It was the loss of the suicide-Alzheimer’s-bisexuality novel-in-progress that felt insurmountable. Something I couldn’t recreate.
The experience made writing feel futile. You could call it writer’s block, but writer’s depression is probably more accurate. In sports, they might call it “the yips,” which is when an athlete cannot perform a simple task they’ve performed thousands of times. I couldn’t open a blank document without the fear it would disappear when I closed it.
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The advice I’ve sometimes given to people about getting out of a writing rut is to write an I Remember list. It’s easy to do and sometimes helps you locate a lifeline into something bigger than one simple memory. Poet Joe Brainard famously published a beautiful book full of them in 1975.
I remember meeting Arthur in New Orleans at an art festival in 2018 and discovering that we both lived in Portland.
I remember Arthur dancing in the streets of the French Quarter and saying he found his people.
I remember a woman grinding on Arthur and how much he enjoyed the attention even though he was into men.
I remember flying back to Portland with Arthur and waiting at the baggage claim for the suitcase full of clothes he bought in New Orleans and were probably too flashy for everyday wear in Portland.
I remember seeing Arthur’s band, Milk Bandits, play a bunch of times, and his sexy voice and stage presence.
I remember spending days collaging together and taking turns playing records and music videos for each other.
I remember watching Alex Cameron videos with Arthur and how he was so into it we bought tickets to Cameron’s show at the Doug Fir in Portland on Valentine’s Day in 2019.
I remember walking to dinner with Arthur one night and he asked to borrow my coat because he was always cold. He called it my old man coat and it was too small for him, but he wore it anyway. He was four inches taller than me. I looked at him as we waited for a crosswalk light and chuckled at how scrunched over and comically awkward he looked, but he didn’t care, as long as he was warm.
I remember when we watched The Fits and how we tried to figure out the meaning of the movie. I remember my mother’s quilt over us, his head on my shoulder.
I remember telling Arthur once that I wanted a boyfriend to do manly things with and he laughed and held my hand.
I remember how he rarely called me by my first name and I wondered if it was a way for him to distance himself or a funny endearment. His messages always started, “Hey, Sampsell.”
I remember how excited he was by the way I described his band’s music. He wanted me to write it down so they could use it in their press packet. But then the band broke up.
I remember his text messages to me, explaining why he seemed gloomy one night: “I just realized, my melancholy was the mourning of my old life, before I infused joy into my passion of creating and performing and songs.” “I was sad getting used to being happy.”
This list of memories is an attempt to figure out something about my friendship with Arthur, and why it still has the lingering mystery of a failed romance. I’m also searching for clues to his depression.
This list of memories is an attempt to figure out something about my friendship with Arthur, and why it still has the lingering mystery of a failed romance. I’m also searching for clues to his depression.
I found out about his death several days after his suicide. I was at the bookstore where I work, in the breakroom, when I glanced at the newspaper and saw Arthur’s face. He was smiling, exuding the warm and eager kindness he regularly wore like a halo. My first thought was, “Oh, hey, Arthur.” But instead of a headline about his band or something else he might have done, there was just his name and under it, “1983-2019.”
I missed my bus after the bookstore closed that night and walked home, in the dark, in a daze. I looked at our last exchanges. I had asked him to go out a couple of times that month, but he said he had other plans. I realized that I didn’t know Arthur’s other friends very well. I had met some of them at his shows but didn’t have any way to get in touch with them. The last sentence of the obituary implied suicide: “Arthur struggled throughout his life with depression, which lead to his early death.” I called Arthur’s phone number to hear his voice. I left him a message. Something like, I wish you would have talked to me. How come you didn’t tell me?
The next day I looked for more about Arthur. I thought about what could have been weighing on him. He’d had a couple of boyfriends while I knew him and though he seemed disappointed after a breakup, he never seemed crushed. He’d be on dating apps shortly after, messaging new guys. Even when I first met him in New Orleans, he was excited about all the men he could meet in a new city and would show me some of the messages. He didn’t seem to lack attention. He was not only tall, fit, and perfectly cheekboned, he was also kind, smart, and open.
I called Arthur’s phone number to hear his voice.
I wondered if being black and gay in a predominantly white city like Portland made him feel isolated. There were times when he told me stories about feeling othered in his circle of gay friends. One time, maybe four months before his death, he told me that he had been drugged and possibly assaulted by a man he knew. The man was in a circle of his friends that sometimes partied together. It seemed like the man had a lot of money, a nice house, and a lot of power in this friend group. Arthur talked to other people in this group, but they were dismissive and didn’t want to believe him. I could hear the pain in his voice, and I wasn’t sure what to say except the usual rote responses: I’m sorry that happened to you. Thanks for telling me. Do you feel the need to tell others, or maybe even go after the guy somehow? You can talk to me about this any time.
He quickly stopped talking about it, wary of feeling like a victim, though it sounded like he was deeply hurt, in many ways, by the experience. There was a sting of sadness in our silence for a few minutes, and then I sensed that he was angry—not at me, but at the fact that he had this pain inside his body, maybe stuck there for life.
The only other time I saw him angry was after his band broke up. He felt like the only one with real ambition. He was constantly setting up shows, looking to meet other musicians, and hoping to record an album. When one of his bandmates wanted to do fewer shows because of back problems, Arthur felt betrayed. I can’t remember what he said exactly, but there were a few F-bombs.
Arthur would sometimes post videos of himself on the Milk Bandits’ Instagram page. He called them the “PINK ROBE” videos. In them, he’s sitting in a room in front of a blank white wall, wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe and holding an acoustic guitar. As if recording a demo tape, he strums and slaps the guitar while singing in his memorable falsetto. His register blended the vulnerable quaver of Thom Yorke, the sexy confidence of Prince, and the growling despair of Robert Johnson. I always wondered if he recorded these at night in his bedroom, perhaps working out some ideas just before bed, maybe restraining himself a little, so he didn’t wake up his roommates.
In one of the videos, he sings “I ain’t never known my daddy, I ain’t never known that man.” The words Happy Belated Father’s Day floating over his left shoulder. In another video, a month later, the words An ode to my family’s unrequited love are on the screen, and then: It’s a daily struggle.
One thing I learned after Arthur’s death was that he grew up using the name Bobby. That was the name his mother and sister called him until they became estranged. All his friends in Portland knew him as Arthur, which was his father’s name.
Arthur had not spoken with his father in years, but he mentioned him once to me, that summer before he died. He had just lost his job as a security guard and was telling me that he might go work for his dad in California and then “disappear to France and write poetry.” I wasn’t sure what to make of these ideas. I wasn’t sure what kind of work he’d be doing with his dad. Arthur did not seem like the kind of person who came from money (or had a secret stash somewhere), but maybe his dad would help him. The France thing sounded more like a fantasy than anything else. I knew he spoke French, so maybe it was a real plan. I probably should have encouraged him more. Instead, I remember feeling puzzled and I probably asked him questions about the logistics of it. My demeanor probably discouraged him.
But now I like to imagine him in Paris, sitting at a café, drinking an espresso, his notebook open, full of notes and poetry. It’s easy to picture in my mind. He’d look perfect there.
Maybe France was just his code word for the afterlife.
Maybe France was just his code word for the afterlife.
In Donald Antrim’s 2021 memoir, One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival, he attempts to show a difference between depression and suicide, describing depression as “a concavity, a sloping down and a return.” He believes suicide is “a natural history, a disease process . . . an illness with origins in trauma and isolation, in deprivation of touch, in violence and neglect, in the loss of home and belonging.”
The way Antrim disconnects depression and suicide felt confusing to me at first. He even states, “I will refer to suicide, not depression.” But the more I read into Antrim’s story, the easier it seemed to comprehend. Depression is an emotional state. Suicide is in the blood.
Though I had battled depression for nearly two decades, I did not feel it was serious enough to acknowledge or talk about with others. In my worst emotional states, I’d feel uninspired and think fleetingly about suicide. But instead of suicidal ideation, it was more like intrusive suicidal daydreaming. This kind of depression might last a few days, but it always went away before I asked for help or reached a breaking point. I never felt like I was depressed enough. Besides that, I felt a foolish pride in that I was one of the few people I knew who did not take any kind of daily medication.
After getting divorced in 2016, my depression became compounded by anxiety attacks and crying jags. By summer 2019, I knew I needed help. I spoke to one of my friends, who recommended that I talk to my doctor honestly about my emotional state. I was wary of the effects an antidepressant would have on my body but decided that Wellbutrin sounded like the best option.
A few days later, on August 7, 2019, one of my favorite songwriters, David Berman, ended his life. He was the same age as me. The new band he’d started, Purple Mountains, had just put out their first album and I had tickets to their Portland concert the following month. Of course, the show did not happen.
If you listen to the Purple Mountains album, it’s painfully apparent, in hindsight, that Berman was suffering. The lyrics, though sometimes spiked with sardonic wit, are like suicide notes: The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind. Berman sings later, Nights that won’t happen / Time we won’t spend / Time we won’t spend / With each other again / With each other again.
Wellbutrin proved to be extremely effective for me. Instead of lying in bed for as long as possible, putting off projects, and not feeling excited for anything, I would wake up and start my day quickly, surprisingly focused on chores. I moved through my days with quicker, happier intentions. My energy felt so amped that I would sometimes start to freestyle rap or belt out made-up songs while driving in my car.
But the more I read into Antrim’s story, the easier it seemed to comprehend. Depression is an emotional state. Suicide is in the blood.
I remember telling Arthur that I had started taking it, but I never had the chance to really talk about the positive influence it had on me. I know he had been on other antidepressants, but I don’t think he was taking anything when he died.
The day after I found out about Arthur’s death, I called his mother. Her phone number was listed in his obituary. I knew that Arthur had not talked to her in a long time, so I didn’t know what she’d be like. When she answered the phone, her voice warmed with gratitude. “Thank you for calling and thank you for being a friend to him,” she said.
She lived a couple of hours north, in Olympia, Washington. I asked her if I could come visit. She said I could, and I might be able to visit Arthur at the funeral home before he was cremated if I came right away. I took the next day off work and drove up.
I went to the funeral home first, where a soft-speaking man in a suit was expecting me. They had Arthur’s body on a gurney waiting for me in a private room.
I stood over my friend silently after the man left, admiring his quiet beauty, even in death. He was dressed in a sweater and dark slacks. He had penny loafers on his feet and the newsboy-style cap that he sometimes wore. I watched his chest for movement, for breath. My silence felt like a dumb dare. Who would make the first sound, the first move?
I touched Arthur’s leg. It was cold. I touched Arthur’s chest. It was cold. I stayed with him for 20 minutes and then walked out. I did not see anyone in the lobby when I left. I wondered if the man in the suit was watching me on camera. I sat in my car, in the empty parking lot, and imagined the man going back into the room with Arthur. I pictured him pushing Arthur on some wheeled contraption into an elevator and down to another room, into a refrigerated slot in a wall.
I went to Arthur’s mom’s house after that. I brought grocery store flowers and a condolence card. She welcomed me into her small house and started showing me old photos and things that Arthur had made when he was a teenager. We sat down in the living room and talked, with flowers, cards, and gifts looming all around us. I found out it had been about 10 years since Arthur and his mom had seen each other or spoken. She had met a few of Arthur’s friends in the days before my visit, so she was caught up on what was happening with his life, but she obviously wasn’t able to fill in the gaps of their disconnected years.
Photos of Arthur courtesy of the author.
Arthur’s sister came over soon after I arrived and said that she too had been estranged from Arthur. She told me she used to visit him in Portland and they would spend a day or two together, going to movies, museums, or restaurants. Then, in fall 2011, as she was driving back to Olympia, Arthur texted her and said he didn’t want her to visit anymore, and not to text him. Baffled by the message, his sister pulled off the freeway and tried to call him to see what was wrong. Her calls went unanswered, and she never heard from him again. With no memory of any kind of argument or tension that weekend, she is still confused by this sudden end to their sibling relationship.
Her calls went unanswered, and she never heard from him again. With no memory of any kind of argument or tension that weekend, she is still confused by this sudden end to their sibling relationship.
Arthur’s mom listened sadly to her daughter’s story and then blamed herself, suggesting that she was “probably abusive” to both of her children. She said her military career may have influenced her parenting style. Arthur’s sister shut down that line of thinking though, saying to her mom, “You were tough, but not that bad.”
I asked Arthur’s mom if he left any kind of note, and she said his phone was nearby, as well as a backpack with some clothes and his computer. She said there was one other thing and pointed to a book sitting under a magazine on the table between us.
It was a copy of Derek Humphry’s Final Exit, which became the first New York Times bestseller about suicide. At the time of its release, it stirred controversy and was considered, by detractors, as merely a manual on how to end your life. Despite (or because of) this, it has sold two million copies worldwide. It felt more familiar to me in that moment than at any time before.
Subtitled The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying, Final Exit has been controversial in the Right-to-Die movement for a long time. Many saw Humphry’s early organization, The National Hemlock Society, as being cult-like, while others point out the painful methods of dying specifically described in the chapter, “Bizarre Ways to Die,” which include freezing, rattlesnake bites, and ingesting household chemicals. To be fair, the author prefaces these methods as “unnecessary for the serious reader” and “truly weird.”
But reading and considering the entirety of Final Exit and watching films like 2011’s How to Die in Oregon have made me better understand why someone in an incurable predicament would want to end their life on their own terms. There is a sense of beauty, dignity, and closure to it, not to mention control.
A newer book about assisted suicide is Anita Hannig’s The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America, published in 2022. It’s a much more empathetic and humane glimpse into the personal stories of suffering people who have led otherwise satisfying lives. Hannig’s book demonstrates the evolving language around its subject matter. The word suicide is rarely used and the “assisted” aspect is sometimes referred to as “hastened,” as in to hasten someone to an ending sooner and more peacefully, than one that would be prolonged and painful.
I’m not sure what to think of depression as a reason for ending your life. Though this was Arthur’s decision, the Right-to-Die community has mixed views. It’s much harder to gain assistance for those people unless a doctor can prove that their depression or mental illness cannot be cured and is causing suffering. One Amazon customer comment about Final Exit, which could be extended to legalized assisted dying, says, “I disagree with (the) premise that only people with incurable physical diseases are allowed to end their lives. Perpetuates the notion that psychiatric disorders and mood disorders are easily treatable.”
I’m not sure if I believe in ghosts but I sometimes wonder if Arthur didn’t want me to write that book about him. I wonder if he haunted my computer so I wouldn’t publish it. Was he a ghost in the machine? Can I blame him if he took his own story back?
I think everyone who has ever walked across a high bridge has thought about what it would be like to jump from there. Even if you don’t want to think about it, you will. Look over the rail and see how far down it is, to the water, or the ground, or the traffic. The thoughts just come. The frank reality of the moment is you could end your life in seconds.
One friend of mine, an author, told me, at their lowest low, they edited their own Wikipedia page to say they were dead. They put a date in there. They didn’t engage with the world for a couple of days after that. No one noticed their Wikipedia death. They wanted to see what it felt like to be dead to the world. The following week they took the death date off their Wikipedia page and came back alive.
There is a place in Seoul, South Korea, that holds mock funerals for people suffering or close to death. Participants are led into a dim room where they sit beside a casket and write their final testaments. Then they put on burial shrouds and lie down in the coffins. The coffins are nailed shut, and the person stays for ten minutes in darkness. Then, finally, they are let out of their casket. Many of the participants say they feel a renewed appreciation for life after this.
I admit that I have ghoulish tendencies. When I hear a celebrity has died, I almost can’t wait to tell someone. But first, I need to find out how they died.
Once, when a cat that an ex and I owned died a horrible death, my ex told me that she didn’t want anyone to know how the cat died. I said, “What do we say when people ask?” She said, “People won’t ask.” I didn’t believe her at first, but she was right. No one asked. But I could tell that the question was there, whispered among friends. How did the cat die?
Now, when I talk to someone whose pet has died, I remember not to ask how, but a part of me is anxious to know. There are so many things that can kill a human or animal. I want to know what to fear.
There are so many things that can kill a human or animal. I want to know what to fear.
In Miriam Toews’ 2014 novel, All My Puny Sorrows, the narrator’s sister dies by suicide. The mother later states that “the pain of letting go of grief is just as painful or even more painful than the grief itself. It means goodbye.” Toews, who is one of my very favorite writers, has said the book is autobiographical, a way to better understand the real-life grief of her sister’s suicide. Another one of Toews’s most moving books is her 2000 memoir Swing Low: A Life, which she wrote in the voice of her father, who died by suicide in 1998. It’s a remarkable feat, with Toews fully embodying her father’s depression.
As much as I hate to say it, I was the one who sold Arthur his copy of Final Exit, about three months before his death. I was working at the bookstore when I spotted him near the health section. It felt odd to see him unannounced since he usually texted me when he was coming in. I snuck up and tried to surprise him. He seemed a little annoyed, like he was in a hurry, so I offered to help him find what he was looking for. We didn’t have it in stock, and it was unusually expensive online. I saw in the description that it was something about the ethics of suicide. Arthur said it was something he wanted to read for a class, so I didn’t question its subject matter. I thought of Final Exit and asked him if he knew about it. He did not. I found a used copy of it for him on the shelf. He went to the cashier and paid less than $10 for it. I think I gave him a discount coupon. It was, at the time, probably the most forgettable 10 minutes of our friendship. His hug was quick before he went into the night.
It was, at the time, probably the most forgettable 10 minutes of our friendship. His hug was quick before he went into the night.
Earlier, I mentioned the friend who edited their Wikipedia page to say they died. But I lied about that. It was me who did that.
My Wikipedia page, my death, my resurrection.
I keep in touch with Arthur’s mom. We haven’t seen each other in person the last three years, partly because of COVID, but we text each other every couple of months. I send her photos of my cat and ask how she’s doing. She routinely responds in a positive fashion, with an abundance of exclamation points and emojis, usually flowers, cats, hearts, rainbows, stars, and black praying hands and a thumbs up. She adores my cat and loves all things cute and joyful.
I tell her that I’m writing about Arthur. In my head though, I’m worried about what she might think.
I also wonder what Arthur would think of me being friends with his mom. I would like to think that if he were still alive, they would have ended their estrangement and patched things up. I like to imagine all of us having dinner together. I wish that his mom and I could sit in theater seats somewhere and watch Arthur on a stage, singing with his band. Arthur would do some kind of ridiculously slinky dance move, and his mom and I would look at each other and laugh.
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Two of my favorite albums since Arthur died have been Sarah Mary Chadwick’s Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby and Sharon Van Etten’s Remind Me Tomorrow. On the title track of Chadwick’s album, she sings about suicidal thoughts. She even gives the exact date of her last attempt: August 11, 2019. Midway through the song, singing with pain in her voice, over a stark piano refrain, she sings, And maybe I should chill / Out on blaming my parents / Forgivable at 25, it’s not cute at 37.
Van Etten’s album opens with the song “I Told You Everything.” The first lyrics:
Sitting at the bar, I told you everything / You said, “Holy shit, / You almost died.”
One of the first times I heard about suicide was the 1980 Queen song, “Don’t Try Suicide,” which is highlighted by a casual bassline and a catchy vocal style that almost sounds like doo-wop. Freddie Mercury sings the lines:
Don’t try suicide nobody’s worth it / Don’t try suicide / Nobody cares Don’t try suicide / You’re just gonna hate it / Don’t try suicide / Nobody gives a damn.
Arthur’s mom once told me that she’d been listening to 528 Hz. It’s a frequency in the range of a high C note that induces testosterone production in the brain. Frequency of 528 Hz, according to various videos and claims, also has the power to transform your entire DNA, heal sore body parts, help you sleep, and treat cancer. I found a YouTube video called “528 Hz | DREAMSCAPE for POSITIVE TRANSFORMATION.” It’s over nine hours long. I’ve listened to it while working on parts of this essay.
The computer and phone Arthur left behind do not reveal his state of mind. His sister told me they found poems, songs, and other writings on the computer, but nothing like a suicide note, or journal. They never figured out a way to get into the phone. His sister says it’s locked by a pattern password. She has ten attempts to unlock it and has tried to do so seven times. She tells me she’s afraid to attempt those last chances because the phone might lock up permanently if she gets it wrong. But she still has the phone in case she ever figures out the way into it. Or as she says, “In case of a miracle.”
I try to imagine Arthur’s thoughts on his last day. Though he had obviously been planning his death for at least six months, I wonder if he fluctuated with his decision. Don’t try suicide. Nobody’s worth it . . .
He started the day riding a bus from Portland to the coast.
I envision him looking out the bus window, the roads on Highway 26 to the coast lined with forests, then hills and cliffs, and more forests. It’s a movie only I can imagine. His face in the window, reflecting like a mirror. Was he looking for something out there? Maybe he wasn’t looking out the window at all. Maybe he was watching someone else across the aisle and wondering what their life was like. I wonder if he already felt like a ghost, like someone passing through, knowing he would wake up the next day and get in a warm shower and wash his body with the magic of soap, dry his skin, put on clean clothes, and walk somewhere to spend $10 on a coffee and pastry. Maybe he thought he was escaping, no longer in need of warm water on his body, suds in his hair and on his chest, clothes to button up around him, and the comfort of food and drink.
Maybe there is something unburdening about knowing these things are the last in your life. The last walk on the beach, the last rock you throw in the water, the last splash, the last sunset, the last stranger you see, the last song you hear, the last words you say to someone.
Arthur had checked himself into a room at the Sunset Surf Motel in Manzanita, Oregon. He said something to the front desk person about meeting friends later, but he was probably just trying to distract them, in case he was acting nervous or peculiar.
At some point that night, he took the nitrous tank that he had brought with him and sat in the bed with it. This method, using inert gases, is described in Final Exit. I would like to believe the book when it says that it’s one of the most “effective” and “painless” methods for “self-deliverance.” I would like to think that it was as simple as falling asleep. I would like to think that he was so at peace that he could possibly even dream as he was dying. Maybe dreaming of France.
Maybe dreaming of France.
I always wondered how hard it would be to make yourself disappear. You would have to shed your traceable belongings. Throw your phone away or smash it. Burn your credit cards. Ditch your car. Never commit a crime. Pray that nobody has your fingerprints.
I can’t imagine how damaged a person must become to want to disappear. Not just without a trace, but without a mark on anything or anyone.
No past for anyone to remember.
No ego.
There are around 600,000 people who go missing in the United States every year. According to National Missing and Unidentified Persons statistics, 4,400 unidentified bodies are found each year. Those numbers mean that only 0.7333% of people who go missing are found and unable to be identified.
Outside of his motel room, Arthur taped a note to the door. It said: if you don’t want to see a dead body, don’t go in.
I spoke with Arthur’s mother and sister on separate phone calls as I was finishing this essay. They still have very few clues as to why he did what he did. They both expressed lingering pain and sadness.
His mom tells me that when she attended the memorial for Arthur in Portland in November 2019, hearing his friends speak about him felt comforting. She was happy and relieved to hear that his friends loved him so much. I can imagine that talking to his friends and listening to their stories that day was bittersweet and nourishing. I was there as well, in the living room of the house of one of Arthur’s closest friends, and I remember how hard it was to speak when it was my turn. How I could barely make it through the sobbing.
Although my sadness has started to abate the past almost-four years, writing this has triggered an odd sense of frustration and even a sort of anger. There are times, sifting through the memories of our friendship, that I have wanted to throw something or scream. If you know me, you know that I am not prone to anger. I am quicker to break down in sadness than to lose my temper. The only time I ever scream is when I’m having a nightmare. Maybe I’m falling through the air, without a parachute, and I start to scream. Because the sound is coming from a dream dimension, it is usually shrill and hoarse, like a Chewbacca cry. It usually wakes me up and then I can’t help but laugh about the sound. And then I laugh at the quiet dark because I’m still alive.
Arthur’s mom and sister both go to suicide support groups. Arthur’s mom tells me that she suffers from depression and anxiety and that her own mother was schizophrenic. She tells me, more recently, that reading Mark Wolynn’s It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle has been helpful to her.
While genes and behaviors sometimes pass down in families, suicide is, in fact, not hereditary. People can, and should, and do seek help every day.
A depressed person often finds comfort in being down. I felt that in my depression. I would feel it weighing me down to a point where I basked in the gloom. I’d become a stubborn grump. It could almost become a dark perversion if I let it.
But I also knew what it felt like to be happy and satisfied and to strive for those kinds of feelings. I could seek out the dopamine like a freaking dopamine hunter! If I could simply trick myself into thinking positively and to see the pleasures in living, maybe I could find (and hold) happiness. Maybe my happiness would make others happy. Can happiness spread? Will it catch on?
At the performance that never happened, Arthur’s mom and I are seated there in the crowd, close to the front. It’s an outdoor show somewhere, with a river breeze cutting through the warm summer air. We’re watching the show, smiling, bopping our heads to the beat. Arthur’s band is not breaking up. They are writing more songs and getting ready to record an album. Arthur and I have even made a collage for the front cover.
The band are on their fourth song now, and as always happens at their shows, those in the audience that are not familiar with them are starting to pay close attention. It’s a raw, infectious funk. There’s a snarl to it, like the songs are somehow primitive. People are nudging each other and nodding to the stage, at Arthur, like, Holy shit, he’s good.
Arthur commands the stage, on the front lip of it like a balance beam. His long arms swim upward like he’s about to fly away, and when he sings, his face defines every word of his emotional lyrics. I turn my camera on and try to capture the moment. He quickly turns his head and sort of blocks his face dramatically, as if he’s suddenly shy. I can tell he knows it’s me trying to take the photos though, and I can see him trying not to laugh. It feels like both a flirt and a challenge and I take a few more photos. His impish behavior catches up with him by the end of the song and he’s cracking himself up. The band has to wait for him to stop laughing, but the crowd loves it. The audience already loves Arthur.
They start their next song and I look at the photos on my camera, expecting the blurry worst. And that’s what I get—smudges of fabric, skin, and glaring stage lights. But there is one stunning one. It looks crystal clear and perfect. I can see his sharp cheekbones and dark eyes angled upward as if watching his lean, muscular arm and outstretched hand trying to snatch a star out of the sky.
Editor: Krista Stevens
Copyeditor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
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In 2005, Huda Dahbour watched helplessly as Israeli soldiers arrived in the middle of the night to arrest her son Hadi, age 15, for writing graffiti and throwing stones. What’s more, Huda’s husband Ismail—Hadi’s father—refused to pay for a lawyer, blaming Huda and Hadi for the arrest. In this excerpt of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story, Nathan Thrall follows Huda as she advocates for her son during the 19 months he spent in prison.
Hadi’s arrest brought the marriage to breaking point. If Ismail refused to pay for a lawyer, Huda felt, he was no longer willing to act as a father, and she no longer wanted him in her life. Quoting a passage from the Qur’an in which Khader, a servant of God, parts with Moses, she asked for a divorce. If you refuse to grant it, she said, I will tell everyone that you’re not a nationalist and you won’t support your son. Huda saw that she had frightened him and Ismail agreed to give her the divorce.
After two weeks, the lawyer called to say that Hadi was being held at a detention centre in Gush Etzion, south of Bethlehem, and would soon have a hearing at the military court at the Ofer prison, between Jerusalem and Ramallah. He was lucky to get a hearing so early, she was told. Other parents waited for three, four and five months before their children were brought to trial and they could see them.
Huda was instructed to come early for a thorough security check. After waiting for several hours, she entered a cramped courtroom. Only the military judge, the prosecutor, Hadi, his lawyer, a translator and a few soldiers and security officers were present. The chances of Hadi being released were nonexistent; the military court’s conviction rate was 99.7%. For children charged with throwing stones, the rate was even higher: of the 835 children accused in the six years following Hadi’s arrest, 834 were convicted, nearly all of whom served time in jail. Hundreds of them were between 12 and 15 years old.
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In postwar Austria, a psychologist named Maria Nowak-Vogl ran a mysterious psychiatric facility where “difficult” children were sent. With help from a friend and journalist, Margaret Talbot, Evy Mages mines memories of her time at this child-observation station in the mid-seventies, remembering all the abuse that happened there. Nowak-Vogl was a well-respected academic; she was also trained by Nazis and believed in repressive practices and cruel punishments to make children compliant and “socially desirable,” including administering epiphysan, a shot meant to suppress sexual urges. Talbot accompanies Mages to Austria to learn more about Nowak-Vogl and the villa—which operated from the mid-fifties until the late-eighties—as well as her own family history. This story is as horrific and dark as it sounds. Amazingly, though, Mages has come out the other side, now helping other victims connect with each other and making it easier for them to report the abuse they experienced as children.
A news article about the commission’s findings described the villa as a combination of “home, prison, and testing clinic.” The commission had reviewed medical records and reported something shocking: children had been injected with epiphysan, an extract derived from the pineal glands of cattle which veterinarians used to suppress estrus in mares and cows. Nowak-Vogl, a conservative Catholic, had wanted to see if epiphysan would suppress sexual feelings in children, as well as discourage masturbation, thus rendering her charges more “manageable.” Masturbation—among both adolescents and young children, who use it to self-soothe—was a preoccupation of Nowak-Vogl’s. So was bed-wetting. Her staff was instructed to keep charts documenting urination and bowel movements, and to check children’s underwear “with the eyes or the nose.” Schreiber described her as being “on a crusade against masturbation and sexual excitedness.”
The more that Evy read, the angrier she became. Nearly four thousand children? Until 1987? Eight or so similar facilities had operated in Austria after the Second World War. How many thousands of children had spent time in repressive psychiatric institutions like hers? At all the facilities, confused children were brusquely evaluated for “misbehavior.” But only the Sonnenstrasse villa was so consumed with stamping out sexuality.
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