Viewpoint

by Karen “Tana” Walsh, Hamilton

For a moment, step inside these shoes: You have never committed a crime, and yet you’re locked in a cage inside a windowless warehouse. You’re counting the fruit flies on the ceiling while lying on a metal cot, because there are no books, televisions, or decks of cards to help you pass the time. You’ve packed toilet paper in your ears to muffle the echoing cries of an infant. 

You’re thin and frail, because the food you’ve been given is only edible when your hunger pangs are too strong to ignore. Lacking medication, your arthritis has worsened and you keep having heart palpitations. A cage-mate named Gabriel was beaten to the floor last week when he begged to see a doctor. Only when he stopped moving did the guards notice his rash and realize that “sarampión” is Spanish for “measles.” You haven’t seen him since. 

It’s for the best that your family knows nothing about any of this. You haven’t spoken with them in almost a year. You hope you’ll be reunited with them soon, unaware that your lawyer’s current priority is keeping you from being deported to an impoverished country where you don’t know anyone: Rwanda or Uzbekistan, perhaps, or maybe Eswatini – a country you don’t even know exists. 

You have no idea how lucky you are to be lying on a metal cot, hungry and achy and counting fruit flies. There are 22 of them. You give them names, put them in minuscule jerseys, and quietly channel Al Michaels as you imagine your grandson’s favorite fruit fly football team winning the Super Bowl with a Hail Mary.  

You choose to believe that Americans of conscience are calling their representatives on behalf of you and Gabriel and the unvaccinated infant who won’t stop crying. Maybe this nightmare will end soon. You cannot fathom that your neighbors have stopped watching the evening news because they don’t want to know you are narrating fly football games and choking down servings of bug-infested gruel. 

Now step out of those shoes: In 1961, President Kennedy said to the Canadian Parliament, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Maybe you are old enough to remember when he first spoke so eloquently on your behalf: It was on the evening news, back when televisions still had knobs and changing the channel required actual effort.