WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.370 align:middle line:90%


00:00:07.370 --> 00:00:11.480 align:middle line:84%
I was in Syria in 2007
with a small group

00:00:11.480 --> 00:00:16.219 align:middle line:84%
of American writers traveling
through a few countries

00:00:16.219 --> 00:00:18.110 align:middle line:90%
in the Middle East.

00:00:18.110 --> 00:00:20.270 align:middle line:90%
That was before the civil war.

00:00:20.270 --> 00:00:22.610 align:middle line:90%
The war in Iraq was raging.

00:00:22.610 --> 00:00:26.690 align:middle line:84%
Syria had taken in
750,000 refugees.

00:00:26.690 --> 00:00:31.250 align:middle line:84%
But it was a perfectly
functioning police state

00:00:31.250 --> 00:00:36.050 align:middle line:84%
when I was there, and
not that long afterwards,

00:00:36.050 --> 00:00:38.040 align:middle line:90%
the civil war broke out.

00:00:38.040 --> 00:00:41.420 align:middle line:84%
And I thought about all
those university students

00:00:41.420 --> 00:00:44.480 align:middle line:84%
we had spoken to,
and to this day,

00:00:44.480 --> 00:00:49.850 align:middle line:84%
I am haunted by what must have
become of their lives, whatever

00:00:49.850 --> 00:00:52.070 align:middle line:90%
became of their lives.

00:00:52.070 --> 00:00:54.440 align:middle line:84%
This poem is thinking
about-- there

00:00:54.440 --> 00:00:57.920 align:middle line:84%
was a woman
anesthesiologist who helped

00:00:57.920 --> 00:01:00.680 align:middle line:84%
guide our little group
around because you needed

00:01:00.680 --> 00:01:03.650 align:middle line:84%
a woman to take women into
the women's entrance of the,

00:01:03.650 --> 00:01:08.480 align:middle line:84%
as she pronounced it,
mosque, the mosque.

00:01:08.480 --> 00:01:15.290 align:middle line:84%
She did, with her college-aged
son, escape early to Paris,

00:01:15.290 --> 00:01:16.190 align:middle line:90%
and she now--

00:01:16.190 --> 00:01:18.740 align:middle line:84%
she worked first for
Medecins Sans Frontières,

00:01:18.740 --> 00:01:23.870 align:middle line:84%
Doctors Without Borders, and
now she works for the UN HCR.

00:01:23.870 --> 00:01:28.430 align:middle line:90%
So I think about her a lot.

00:01:28.430 --> 00:01:31.850 align:middle line:90%
She breathes in the scent.

00:01:31.850 --> 00:01:35.150 align:middle line:84%
As the front of a box
would miss the sides,

00:01:35.150 --> 00:01:38.300 align:middle line:84%
the back, the
grief of the living

00:01:38.300 --> 00:01:41.810 align:middle line:90%
misses the grief of the dead.

00:01:41.810 --> 00:01:44.330 align:middle line:84%
It is like a woman who
goes to the airport

00:01:44.330 --> 00:01:48.740 align:middle line:84%
to meet the planes from a
country she long ago lived in.

00:01:48.740 --> 00:01:52.520 align:middle line:84%
She knows no passenger,
but stands near as they

00:01:52.520 --> 00:01:55.910 align:middle line:84%
exit, still holding
their passports.

00:01:55.910 --> 00:02:00.400 align:middle line:84%
She breathes in the
scent of their clothes.

00:02:00.400 --> 00:02:03.000 align:middle line:90%