Much of what is here was given to me: the green trunk and the folded winter clothes by a friend whose family left Habba Kadal, other details by voices I found in testimony and reporting. I have tried to hold what was shared with me without claiming it as mine.
This is the fairytale you inherit. Told at kitchen tables, retold in sighs and sorrowful silences. The details are few, but the shape of the story remains. You fill in the rest with the whispering ghosts in your head, reaching for closure on their behalf.
We woke into three acts: the shock of the convoy and the burning market; the work that made names legible; and the long, stubborn labor of repair. These were not theatrical pieces but the … three moves my hometown made to hold itself together.
That first night in Vietnam there was a grunt—he was going home the next day—who shot himself in the head after reading the latest letter from his girlfriend. Her letter said she met someone else, had a whirlwind romance, and she married him.
Author’s Note: The core of this article was based on interviews with Svitlana Petrovskaya, a ninety-year-old Ukrainian woman currently living in Berlin. We had access to her collection of personal letters and memorabilia, including publications about her.
As was the case on a ward like ours, young men were fighting to survive not just their injuries but the disappointments, regrets, and fears that came with being disabled for life…. Buddy was the one who helped me the most in that grueling and uncertain time. And he would go on to be a source of inspiration to me through the rest of my life.
Magistrate Sparrow ponders the pluck of this quixotic, bedraggled man. Clearly, he decides, Pádraic Ó Conaire is more an eccentric than one of those ‘wild Irish’ militant-types about which the authorities and newspapers have been warning.
On March 28th, 2021, I drove to Redding, California for the first day of smokejumper rookie training. Smokejumpers parachute into mountains to suppress remote wildfires, and the six-week entry program is notoriously difficult: a typical rookie class will see an attrition rate of about forty percent.
The bartender told Jacob that she hadn’t seen Hale, that besides, the description he’d given her matched hundreds of foreign men in the city. Then she said he needed to order or step out of line. He felt his face crumple a bit. It had been a long day getting here. This place was his only lead, provided by a short Reddit conversation he’d found online.
American historians say Hungary’s political system is dangerous, but conservatives find inspiration in its Christian government. I expected dark shadows in Budapest storefronts, people yearning for freedom. Instead, I found old stones with Hebrew etchings of familiar names, Jewish memory on the hilly side of a fast river.
Night had fallen in Israel and I was on the main highway, traveling home after a long day. Suddenly, in the opposite lane snaking up to Jerusalem, I saw a swarm of people blocking the road. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had just been fired by Prime Minister Netanyahu; the changes of a hostage deal or an end to hostilities had once again dwindled.
The last time I saw him, at Thanksgiving break, he wasn’t dying, not exactly. He had been a heavy smoker for most of his life. From the time I could remember he was regularly wracked by intense coughing that invoked the specter of future illness. So, the call from my mom was one I had always expected.
