lashing out for no good reason, because you were a bearer of good tidings.

He was seeing what I saw but couldn’t tell him.

the air-conditioner in the trailer would pop on, devouring the sounds:

an excuse to talk about the war,

to touch her knee.

she followed the trailer to cut-rate hospitals, assisting whatever doctor had been assigned to it

staying out of his mom’s way

a dirty sliver of parking-lot curb where cigarette butts and litter had blown up

the way they both moved during the breaks

The bond

He had green eyes

added a little commentary here and there

a serial-killer nurse who had confessed to murdering, somewhere in Pennsylvania, at least a dozen patients.

The picture of Abrahim’s daughter melted away near a large green hedge with ripe, inedible red berries hanging from it. For many nights afterward, he refused to think about her or her father. There were no rewards in life for such stupidity, and he promised himself never to fall victim to that kind of blind, wishful thinkin

In Italy he was given asylum and set free. From there he worked his way north and then west across Europe.

Contrary to what Abrahim had told him, there was nothing even remotely heavenly about where he was held:

He arrived in Europe just as Abrahim had promised he would, but an important part of him had died during the journey,

Soon enough they would grow out of that and concern themselves with the things that were most immediately relevant to their own lives.

Of the vast extended family that lived around him, his mother was the only one who never mocked him for this, and even though he would have liked to save her image for later in the journey, at a point when he was far off at sea, he let himself think about her now.

He couldn’t read what was written on it

“I’ll be waiting to hear from you soon,” and my father knew that was the last time he would ever hear Abrahim’s voice

a feature that seemed almost predatory.

He was from one of the Arab tribes in the north. Such men were common in town. They controlled most of its business and politics and had done so for centuries.

I had given my students something to think about, and whether what they heard from me had any relationship to reality hardly mattered; real or not, it was all imaginary for them. That death was involved only made the story more compelling.

“Almost none of it,”

Some wondered whether he had also been in Rwanda—or in Darfur, where such things were commonly known to occur.

When it came to Europe or America, even people supposedly hardened by time and experience were susceptible to almost childish fantasies.

When you get to England you’re going to say that she’s your wife. This is how you’re going to repay me. Do you understand?”

When you get to Europe, this is what you are going to do. You are going to be arrested. You will tell them that you want political asylum and they will take you to a jail that looks like Heaven. They will give you food and clothes and even a bed to sleep in. You may never want to leave—that’s how good it will feel. Tell them you were fighting against the Communists and they will love you. They will give you your pick of countries, and you will tell them that you want to go to England. You will tell them that you have left behind your wife in Sudan, and that her life is now in danger and you want her to come as well. You will show them this picture.”

If Abrahim’s intention was to harm him, then so be it, my father thought. A decent meal and a drink afterward were not the worst way to go

When the food came, he wanted to cry and was briefly afraid to eat it.

honest exit

At night my father often heard gunfire mixed in with the sound of dogs howling. Every day he pleaded with Abrahim to help him find a way out.

t was said that in one village all the young boys had been forced to dig graves for their parents and siblings before watching their executions. Afterward they were forced to join the rebellion that still didn’t have a name.

Khartoum

They carry one of two things: food or weapons. We don’t make either in Sudan. You may have noticed this. That doesn’t mean we don’t love them equally.

walk him down to the docks in order to explain to him how the port town really worked. The only lights they saw came from the scattered fires around which groups of men were huddled.

hen he’d stuff himself into a box and drift until he reached a foreign shore or died trying.

Yosef

shortly after evening prayers,

The Abrahim who came to life in my classroom was a far nobler man than the one I had previously imagined.

“Don’t think about it too much. It’s easy to die around here and have no one notice.”

djellabahs

As a child he had been clumsy

“We won’t be needing them for now,” I said.My father’s first job at the port was bringing tea to the dockworkers

They were still in the making, each and every one of them. Somehow I had missed that.

My father was told that he could find a job there, and that if he was patient and earned enough money he could even buy his way out of the country on one of the boats.

here were burned-out tanks on the edge of town and dozens of half-destroyed, abandoned houses

Several wars had been fought nearby, the last one in 1970, between a small group of rebels and the government.

slightly bulbous nose stood in stark contrast to the sunken cheeks and wide eyes that seemed to have been buried deep above them. His clothes fit him poorly. His hands looked larger; the bones were more visible. He thought his fingers were growing.

Everything was flat, from the land to the horizon, one uninterrupted stream that not even a cloud dared to break. The fields were thick with wild green grass and bursts of yellow flowers.

but after spending several months in prison for attending a political rally banned by the government he was reduced to nothing. He knew that if he returned home he would eventually be arrested again,

He was born in a small village in northern Ethiopia. He was thirty-two when he left his home for a port town in Sudan in order to come here.

I had just finished talking to him,

as a monkey trying to teach their language back to them.

I told him.

I had been teaching a course in Early American literature to privileged freshmen.

warm October morning in New York

Ethiopia, he died in a room in a boarding house in Peoria, Illinois,

Germanic influences

assoil

That whatsoever he were which ministered unto me, his ill conditions could not hurt my faith, but in spirit I received nevertheless the body and blood of Christ.

straight

With his free duty recommends you thus

re-stem

after

Ottomites

wage

latest

pageant

Signior Angelo

preparation

In fearful sense.

Tis oft with difference,)

on a just account

disproportion’d

warrant

inclining

away

attach

disputed on

motion

Keep up

Marry to

Have with you

carrack

sequent

heat.

Janus

soul

parts

unhoused

unbonneted

demerits

siege

Tis yet to know

signiory

cable.

potential

the magnifico

fast

yerk’d

contriv’d

stuff

command

deserve

property of youth and maidhood

charms

despised time

raised search,

Sagittary

stand in act

loud

embark’d

safety cast

check

produc’d

not meet

accident

taper

tinder

That from

odd-even

answer

making the beast with two backs.

germans

Barbary horse

nephews

Zounds

grange

place

start

malicious bravery

snorting

tupping

Zounds

timorous accent

owe

peculiar

not I for

trimm’d

Whip me

cashier’d.

provender

content you.

Moor

affin’d

gradation

affection

God bless the mark

ancient

propose

theoric,

A fellow almost damn’d in a fair wife

arithmetician

Tush, never tell me,

Certes,

Nonsuits

epithets of wa

Off-capp’d

’Sblood

Iago

OTHELLO, THE MOOR OF VENICE

It is presumptively wrong to create new beings that are likely to cause significant harm to others.

procreation on the grounds of what procreation does to the person who is brought into existence.

starvation, rape, abuse, assault, serious mental illness, infectious disease, malignancy, paralysis.

every birth is a death in waiting.

The case against procreation need not rest on the view, for which I have been arguing, that coming into existence is always worse than never existing. It is enough to show that the risk of serious harm is sufficiently high.

anti-natalism does not imply either suicide or murder

Asking whether it would be better never to have existed is not the same as asking whether it would be better to die.

They argue that although life does contain much that is bad, the bad things are necessary (in some or other way) for the good things

there must be more bad than good

However, if the quality of life can be underestimated it can also be overestimated.

The suggestion that life is worse than most people think is often met with indignation. How dare I tell you how poor the quality of your life is! Surely the quality of your life is as good as it seems to you?

houghtful people should pause and reflect rather than hastily dismiss it

humans were not built to withstand the weight of celebrity.

Everything is darker now

because Yeezy never got old.

The pain of these policies is not equally distributed.

West might plead ignorance

West, who, however blithely, have chosen collaboration.

. We need a revolution in the research and the practice of medicine, and we need it yesterday. We need to train doctors to listen to women, and to recognize that their inability to diagnose a woman may not be because she is lying or being hysterical: the problem may be the gender data gaps in their knowledge. It’s time to stop dismissing women, and start saving them.

Male-dominated funding panels may also explain why we have so few drugs available for uterine failure. E

one research round-up found five times as many studies on erectile dysfunction than on PMS.

A particularly troubling side effect of Yentl syndrome is that when it comes to medical issues that mainly or only affect women, you can forget about including women in trials because here the research is often lacking altogether.

the average GP “has no idea that drugs such as paracetamol and morphine work differently in women.”

So why are more women being treated with antidepressants? Are women simply more “feeble-minded”? Does living in a world in which we don’t quite fit affect our mental health? Or are antidepressants the new (and obviously preferable) lobotomy for women dealing with trauma?

We no longer lock women up and cut out parts of their brains. Instead, we give women drugs: women are two and a half times more likely to be on antidepressants than men.

Bitches be crazy, as Plato famously said.

they rated the baby as in more discomfort than when the cry was labelled female.

the traditional medical interview model may be unsuccessful in getting the information from women that is needed to diagnose them effectively.

The traditional advice of using condoms to avoid HIV infection is simply not practicable for many women who lack the social power to insist on their use.

When symptoms are listed in order of frequency for all patients rather than separated by sex, female-specific symptoms can be presented as less significant than they are in reality.

Assuming a woman gets lucky and has her heart disease diagnosed, she must then navigate the obstacle course of male-biased treatment:

The tests

se.”

universal basic income

excessive work and pressure are status symbols

The countries with the biggest disparities in wealth are precisely those with the longest workweeks.

we also have to share them across the generations