Chapter xxxiv
xxxiv
LATER THAT DAY, A PACKAGE ARRIVED AT MY HOUSE from your publisher. It was a printout of the updated version of your book, with the additional images Eric had asked for and his captions, for my review and approval. I spent the rest of the day looking through the pages and thinking about your life. Your photos from Lampedusa had been added in, together with an update from Eric about the Syrian refugee crisis ten years later as well as Lampedusa ten years later.
What struck me about the updates was that they were about situations, about the general contours of a group of people, but not about specific individuals. Not about the little girl whose photo you had taken with her doll, for example. After meeting Bashir, it made me wonder, how were these particular people? The ones whose lives you’d touched, who’d touched yours—what happened to them? I wondered if it would be possible to track them down. Yes, these photos represented something larger, but they were also photos of individuals, of sons, daughters, best friends. What had happened to them?
I sat down at my computer and typed Eric a message:
Hi Eric,
I just got the book pages and had an idea. Is there any way to find the actual people in the photographs? To see how they are now? I’d love for the readers to be able to see each person as an individual instead of as a representation of something larger. Not sure if it’s possible, but a thought I had. One I think Gabe would appreciate.
—Lucy
Eric must be on email at all times because I got a message back from him almost right away.
Lucy,
I love the idea, but not sure it’s possible. But maybe ask Bashir? See if he knows what happened to some of the people he knew on Lampedusa? I’ll be interested to hear.
—Eric
I went back over to the pages with my iPhone and snapped the images of the kids that Gabe had photographed. Then I sent a note to Bashir asking if he knew who they were and if he had any idea of how to contact them. It seemed a long shot, but you never knew what would happen unless you tried. So I tried. Honestly, I’m not sure why it was important to me. The book was lovely as it was. But meeting Bashir, knowing how you’d spent time with those kids and seen them as individuals separate and apart from the crisis they had found themselves in, it made me think you’d want this, too.
BEFORE I WENT TO BED THAT NIGHT, BASHIR HAD sent me the names of the kids. And information on three of them—one was back living on Lampedusa, working as a cultural mediator for UNHCR. Another one was picking fruit and making oil in the olive fields in southern Italy. The third one had made his way to London. And then, of course, there was Bashir.
As I was falling asleep, I had another idea: What if Bashir took over your role? What if he took photos of his friends now? Of the other places now? What if we had new visuals, not just new words? You always found images more powerful—and you were right. Now that wars are being fought on social media as well as on the ground, the images are what bring people in, make them care, make them feel.
THE NEXT MORNING, I CALLED ERIC. I TOLD HIM MY second idea. He loved it, but he knew the publisher didn’t have the funds to pay for it. “Try the Joseph Landis gallery, though,” he said. “If they like the idea, then they can sell the photographs. Bashir can make money, can have a New York show to his name. You’ll be helping him out, too.”
“What about funding any travel?” I asked.
“Tell me what you want him to cover,” Eric said. “I’ll see what kind of budget I have, as long as the AP gets the photos, too.”
He really is such a decent guy, Gabe. You were lucky to work for someone who cared so much about you, who respected what you did. A part of me wonders if he feels slightly responsible for your death. I wonder if that’s why he’s been so helpful, and more than that, so eager to keep your memory alive, to keep your work alive. I never asked, but I assume he’s the one that sent you to Gaza. Did you ask him not to go? Had you already told him you wanted to come home for good?
After I got off the phone with Eric, I kept thinking about you, about war, about humanity. I couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to talk to someone about it— wanting to talk to Dax about it. Hey , I messaged him. You around?
My phone rang a minute later.
“Hey yourself,” he said. “I’m sneaking a sandwich for lunch on the boat, what’s going on?”
“Did you make the sandwich?” I asked, sitting down on my living room couch, thinking about how good it felt to hear his voice, how warm it made me feel.
Dax laughed. “No,” he said. “That’s how bad my cooking skills are.”
“I was trying to gauge that,” I said, and could feel the smile spreading across my face.
He laughed again. I loved that he could joke about his flaws. It took confidence to do that. “What are you up to?” he asked.
“Thinking about war,” I said.
“And you called me?” I could hear him swallow. “I’m not sure how I should feel about that.”
“I was thinking about our conversation outside the gelato shop,” I told him, “and I thought you might understand. Or … might be able to help me untangle my thoughts.”
“I’m here,” he said, his voice more serious.
“I’ve been talking to Gabe’s editor about shifting the focus of the gallery show to the idea of then and now. Photographs capture a moment in time, you know? And if you go back to that person or that place a decade or two later, it’ll be entirely different. I’m going to pitch the idea to the gallery owner.”
“You can tell him our body’s cells regenerate on an average of every seven to ten years,” he said. “After a decade, you’re essentially a completely new person on a cellular level.”
“Oh!” I said. “I hadn’t known that. It kind of follows what I’ve been thinking, though. Because our cells are new, but we’re still us. As much as things are different, so much is the same. Gabe died in Gaza, and the same hate that ended his life is ending so many more.”
“It makes you wonder if it will ever stop,” Dax said, “Doesn’t it?”
“Exactly,” I said. “It makes me wonder if one day, we’ll all make peace with one another, learn how to coexist. Or if one day the human race really will destroy itself, blow itself up because there are people in power who care about pride or ideology or absolute victory more than they do any human life, who don’t think of people being killed as daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons.”
“We need to find the light, not the darkness,” Dax said, his warm voice reaching through the phone to envelop me.
“Yes,” I answered. It was like he was reading my mind.
“Have you ever watched Star Trek ?” he asked.
“I’m not a Trekkie,” I said, wondering where he was going with this, “but I’ve watched some of the movies.”
He laughed. “I am a total Trekkie, and if you hang around me long enough, I promise I will convert you. But anyway, what I was going to say is that one of the things I find fascinating about the series is that while the Federation fights other beings—there’s always some big bad like the Borg or the Gorn or the Dominion—humans themselves are at peace, Earth is at peace. It’s like Gene Roddenberry realized that the only way to explore other worlds was for humanity to get it together first. Or maybe he created his world based on the idea that once we knew there were other species out there, we Earthlings would find our own sameness.”
“I love that,” I said. “Finding our sameness. You actually might make a Trekkie out of me.” I imagined what it would be like to sit next to him on the couch, under a blanket, watching starship captains travel through space.
“Sometimes I think about what’s going on in our world,” he said, “and I wonder why we’re even here.”
“Gabe would say we make our own purpose,” I said, remembering the conversation you and I had on the day we met, about what constituted a life well-lived.
“I like that,” he said. “And I guess it’s true—we do make our own purpose. And I like how in this moment, part of my purpose is to talk with you.”
“I like that, too,” I said, my voice soft.
And I like that part of my purpose was to talk to him.