Then it was just Peter, Hani, myself, and the children in my condominium. Noor and Greg, riled by the excitement and not yet able to comprehend the gravity of the situation, finally went to bed after a brief temper tantrum from Noor. Forrest, who’d become strangely sedate since Seth’s disappearance, had gone down at eight without complaint. Peter had helped himself to Seth’s bourbon. Haniya eventually asked an obnoxious platitude of a question: “Can you meet me halfway on this, Ashir? Tell me how you’re doing.”
A book Seth had been reading still rested on the end table, a bookmark stuck thirty pages in. Believers, it was called. Seth was incorrigible about starting multiple books and never finishing them. I dreaded pulling all those bookmarks out and placing the tomes back on the shelves. “I’m exhausted from the performative aspect of a memorial service. And annoyed that you two think I’m too fragile to handle the requisite period of grief.”
Peter exchanged a look with my sister. He said: “Bro, I know this is a fucking nightmare. I wish I could make it not be true. But that’s why you need us. Even if you think you don’t, Ash. We’re your family. As much as Seth was or that little boy is now, and I don’t even care if you’re a prick about it.”
Who was I even the most furious with? President Love? Kate Morris? Seth himself? Admittedly, due to my great sadness, I made a decision to be cruel. I found myself lashing out because it felt satisfying:
“Perhaps the only thing more boring or predictable than death is the way people behave in its aftermath. And your notion of family, Peter, is a fairly prosaic lie. Forrest couldn’t be less connected to me genetically. He’s my ward by decision of the state, I suppose, but that’s about all.”
Haniya snapped, her tongue almost flicking from her mouth: “Ashir.”
“What.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What would you have me do?”
Her cues flitted between fury and despair. She took care to control herself when she said: “We’re here because we love you, and we love Forrest.”
“Have either of you ever thought about hunger?” They assessed me with vacant gazes. I told them about the trip I was being asked to accompany you on, Congresswoman, but my point did not appear to land. “Hunger reveals how transitory our loyalties are to each other. Miss seven straight meals and suddenly a person’s morality, family, community, and commitment all fall into flux. How boring it all is too, predicted by systems models as early as the 1990s, and yet—”
“Ash, c’mon,” Peter interrupted, but I could see I was upsetting my sister, and this felt very positive.
I continued: “Yet here we are, on the precipice of the first truly global famine, well-fed and armed with a reserve of invisible capital. I know I often marvel at the indifference I feel to the pain of someone who is hungry. I’ve passed plenty of them over the years on every street in every city. When we visited India as children, they mobbed us. Do you recall that, Hani? We tell ourselves we care, but it’s a vacant sentiment.”
Haniya drained her glass of wine and set it on the coffee table. “What profundity, Ash.” She smoothed her pants and licked purple teeth. “Pete? Do you mind if my brother and I have a minute?”
Peter pumped his eyebrows at me. He crossed the room to my sister. They each said “Love you” and brought their boozy lips together. In that moment, I felt a flare of such jealousy, fury, hate, and total, despairing loneliness. I had not felt such a confluence since it overcame me one night as a young man in a Cambridge dorm room, and I took a walk down to the Charles River. Hani waited for Peter’s footsteps to reach the second floor.
She said: “I don’t suppose you’d pray with me.” Despite her work, which relies on empiricism and rational assessments of data, Hani persists in her piety. “People need comfort, Ash. They need grace.”
I said: “That sounds remarkably similar to the vacuous assertions of The Pastor. Perhaps you could serve his candidacy as an advisor.”
“Oh, fuck you, Ashir.”
We sat for a moment in silence. I’ve been told my timing is rarely precise, but I had a favor to ask, and this seemed as good a moment as any.
“While I’m on the fact-finding tour—I’m uncomfortable leaving Forrest alone with the au pair for two weeks. I wonder if he might stay with you and Peter.”
At first I thought the tightening of her face meant she would say no, but this cue was misleading. After a lifetime of being her sibling, I could still misconstrue her. Suddenly she was wiping tears.
“Ashir, you’ve been through a devastating life event. Why do you have to go do this? It can’t be good for you. Or Forrest. He knows one of his daddies is gone. Even if he can’t express it yet, he knows.”
I thought of Forrest eating a bowl of sweet peas that evening, mashing the majority into the surface of his high chair and babbling at his older cousins, who cheered him on. I doubted Haniya was correct but did not feel like getting into an argument about object permanence.
“Hani, our country is in the midst not only of an unfolding trauma but a contestation for its conscience. The narrative being propagated in conservative media is that we owe nothing to anyone, that we should let the world starve and hoard all we can for ourselves. If no one in the government pushes back, and we fail to focus a public relations effort on what is happening, we cede the megaphone to those forces. The congresswoman wants the broadest range of voices to stand against this, regardless of party affiliation. Tracy is a kind and brave woman, Hani. She has asked this of me, and I will not disappoint her.”
“That’s not why I don’t want you to go.”
“Then why?”
A sob bloomed from her throat, wrenching her face, and she was shouting: “Because I’m sick with worry about you, you fucking asshole! Because I want you to want to be with your son right now. Because I miss Seth, and I know how much you loved him. Because this has broken my heart, and I know it’s broken yours. Because I love you, and I hate that you’re hurting and you won’t cop to it. All of it, Ashir. All of it.”
Her face flush, she licked at the tears running into her mouth. Because I needed her to take care of Forrest, I made the calculation that I should soften my approach.
“My duty to my fellow human beings is paramount right now, and this is how I can help: by accompanying the congresswoman and bringing light to what’s going on. That duty outweighs any sorrow at Seth’s death. And as for Forrest, Hani, obviously this is about Forrest. And Noor and Greg. You of all people should understand that.”
She said nothing, which I took to mean she did.
The massacre, the mass arrests, the impeachment proceedings Democrats refuse to initiate, the numerous political and legal scandals of this administration, it all must take secondary priority to the growing catastrophe of the elevated prices of grain staples, which are producing widespread food insecurity domestically and outright famine elsewhere.
Integers are inhuman, yet I feel as though I must accord them space here. Globally, the number of malnourished people has leaped to nearly 2 billion, with 360 million in acute need. It is impossible to get reliable metrics on caloric deficiency and famine stages from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) because so many governments wish to conceal the starvations they are either encouraging or incapable of stopping. The United Nations World Food Programme is requesting seven million tons of emergency food aid, which will have to mostly be sourced from the United States, but with food prices as high as they’ve been in the postwar era, certain news-entertainment conglomerates are currying ratings by spreading misinformation about the situation. A deadly mixture of plutocratic panic and xenophobic populism has fomented a narrative that every sack of grain belongs to “our children.” Many Republicans made this a point of pride in the midterm elections, exemplified by the odious and ever-present “Ham Sammy Brigade” VR meme.