The Policy of Torture

It was a headline that begged for an adequate infusion of caffeine, which I hadn’t had, but who could resist the improbably headline in The New York Times, “Pardon Bush and Those Who Tortured.” Even more implausibly, the article—rather, editorial—was written by the head of the American Civil Liberties Union, Anthony D. Romero. Why was he adopting such a stance? Well, let him explain:

But with the impending release of the report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I have come to think that President Obama should issue pardons, after all — because it may be the only way to establish, once and for all, that torture is illegal.

Remember Abu Ghraib and all those appalling photos of naked soldiers forced to simulate sexual acts, or piled naked while a female soldier gave the thumbs up sign? Or the man, standing blindfolded on a box, connected to wires, which would “electrify” him if he fell? Well, I’m not going to show you them, nor even hyperlink them, and why is that?

They are completely irrelevant.

The story was that it was just a bunch of bad apples, and in fact, some conservatives didn’t find anything bad about them in the least. Here’s Rush Limbaugh:

This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time.'' ''They'' are the American soldiers, the torturers. And Limbaugh went on: ''You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people. You ever heard of emotional release?''

It’s an attractive narrative, this idea that a few bad apples got a little outta hand over there in the hellish condition that is war, but it misses the point. The point is that the United States had a clear—albeit sometimes hidden—policy justifying torture.  Here’s Romero of the ACLU again:

…George J. Tenet for authorizing torture at the C.I.A.’s black sites overseas, Donald H. Rumsfeld for authorizing the use of torture at the Guantánamo Bay prison, David S. Addington, John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee for crafting the legal cover for torture, and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for overseeing it all.

And no less than our current president came out and said it:

“We compromised our basic values — by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.”

Yeah? Read that sentence again, and pay special attention to the verb tenses.  And then ponder this quote, from The New York Times:

For 13 years, the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has operated as a legal black hole, imprisoning hundreds of men without any charges or meaningful access to the courts.

If government officials have their way, that blackout will include graphic videotapes of guards force-feeding inmates who have been on a hunger strike for as long as 21 months to protest their endless detention.

Oh, and the date of the article? December 7, 2014. Two days ago, as I write. And what’s in these tapes?

The 11 hours of recordings — which one military official said guards review like “an N.F.L. team watching video of the previous week’s football game” — show guards dragging a disabled Syrian man, Jihad Ahmed Mujstafa Diyab, from his cell twice a day, strapping him to a chair and forcing a tube up his nose and into his stomach. The procedure has caused some strikers to vomit or defecate on themselves. According to lawyers for Mr. Diyab and other detainees, there may be thousands of similar tapes.

And so sometime today—wait, this just in:

Have I read it? No, nor have I read the article entitled:

Well, odd that Bush didn’t see that cover of Time magazine that I saw, and distinctly remember shuddering at, one Thanksgiving when we were in—I believe—Dominica. It had the famous photo of the hooded, about-to-be-hooded man with the cover title running something like, “Does the United States Torture?”

I’ve looked for the magazine online, and could I find it? No, but I did come across Susan Sontag, and her article, “On the Torture of Others.” And she makes it clear:

The torture of prisoners is not an aberration. It is a direct consequence of the with-us-or-against-us doctrines of world struggle with which the Bush administration has sought to change, change radically, the international stance of the United States and to recast many domestic institutions and prerogatives. The Bush administration has committed the country to a pseudo-religious doctrine of war, endless war -- for ''the war on terror'' is nothing less than that.

I’d go further: the torture of prisoners was not an aberration. It was policy. And everyone who crafted that policy?

Ever heard of the Hague?

The Saga of Kitty, Part 2

She did what every friend should do: tell me the truth that I needed, but didn’t want, to hear.

“Why are you going to do that to that cat,” said Lady, after I had sobbed out the information that the vet would take a blood sample, which would reveal that Kitty, our eighteen-year old cat, was in renal failure. Then what would happen? They’d have to give him intravenous fluids, and keep him overnight or, more likely, overnights while he huddled in a cage in fear of the dogs barking nearby.

“Let him stay at home, in peace,” said Lady. “Celebrate his life, and let him die in your bed.”

Has anyone ever explained why—even though we are completely resistant to it—we recognize that someone has just told us the truth? It’s one of those things, like sensing that someone is looking at you from behind. At any rate, I knew: I wasn’t going to take that cat to the vet.

Nor was I going to stop sobbing, so it was time to go home and look for Kitty where he should have been but wasn’t. So then I sat down—after more sobbing—and thought: how do I tell Raf? For Raf has been dreading the day, the day we all knew would come.

“I have a fucking post-doctoral in grief, and it’s fucking not fair,” I was wailing to myself, while I girded myself to call Raf at work. And Raf, unfortunately, cannot do what I do, which is wail, let it out, feel better, eat something, and go stoically on. “And I could do it for my mother, dammit, and fight the medical establishment and let her die peacefully at home, but I could do it because she asked. But what do I do about a cat who can’t speak?”

Or was he?

Because I had drifted through the house, and was he anywhere he normally is? No, which meant that he had found a corner, solace under a couch or behind a chair. So taking him to the vet? Couldn’t do it…

Then it occurred to me—hiding is how cats tell you they want to die. When all is well, a cat will be on the chair or sofa or rug that he has decided is his. But when a cat decides to die? They go someplace quiet, sheltered, alone.

And so he had told me, and did I have the energy, after so much worry and weeping, to go all through a very large house, looking for the cranny he had chosen? And though old, Kitty can move with surprising speed.

He also knows perfectly well when the hand stretched out to him is offering a caress or an impending grab. Nor does he—like the other cats—need to see the cat carrier to know that a trip to the vet is imminent.

And so I called Raf, and told him what Lady had said: he was sad, but he agreed. And then I called my brother, since….well, somebody in the family had to know. And in a way—though only the smallest way—he was responsible for Kitty’s being with us.

John and Jeanne and their son, Tyler, had visited us shortly after Kitty arrived, and I had announced to Raf that Kitty’s stay in the house was completely transitional: the cat was on strict probation. It was utterly impossible to assure continued residence of the cat until all of the paperwork had been completed. I then went on to invent increasingly ridiculous roadblocks.

“The alleged cat has failed to comply with a Friday, four PM, deadline providing his certification as a mouse catcher grade three or above,” I would tell Raf.

“How can we grant residency if the alleged cat has failed to apply in writing for a temporary evaluation period, during which time his skills and talents as an entry level cat can be assessed?”

“The alleged cat has refused to sign even the acknowledgement of receipt of The Cat Handbook: Rules and Regulations Guiding Feline Behavior which was provided to him immediately after his provisional entrance into this domicile.”

Raf, of course, had paid utterly no attention to all this; John, a lawyer, would furl his brow, look grave, and murmur, “hmmmmm.” And so it went on, a standing joke between Raf and me, when Tyler, with the impetuosity of an 8-year old, decided to force the issue.

“Let’s vote!” he cried, “All those in favor of rejecting Kitty’s residency request raise your right hand!”

My hand shot up; significantly, John raised his as well.

“John,” said Jeanne, horrified, “how could you?”

“Just felt it was the right thing to do,” said John.

“Who cares!” cried Tyler, “raise your hand, everyone who wants Kitty to stay! It’s three against two! Kitty wins!”

“Just a moment,” I told him, “may I see some legal identification establishing your majority of age?”

So it was disputed—officially—though somehow Kitty eluded the long arms of the immigration authorities for years. Until yesterday, when Raf came home, and said, almost in tears, that he felt incredibly guilty: two days ago, when Raf was cooking, Kitty came into the kitchen and yowled for food.

Look, even if you love them, there is nothing more grating than a cat begging for food. So what had Raf done? Screamed at him.

“So now he’s upset with me, and refusing to eat,” said Raf. And you think a cat would stage a hunger strike in protest? You little know cats.

I took my sore eyes—remember all that crying?—off to play Rummikub, after telling the iPad that look, it had been a lousy day, but do you think it let me win? So I was more than annoyed when Mr. Fernández called me, since he always interrupts me when I’m playing Rummikub, and it’s usually for some stupid question like, “have you seen the refrigerator?”

What was it?

Kitty and Raf in bed, and Raf was beaming and Kitty was…

…eating.      

 

An Approaching End

It doesn’t seem like a day that holds much promise. Consider: a beloved cat, Kitty, has stopped eating, and for anyone who has had a cat, and who has heard the veterinarian say, “it’s his kidneys,”—well, you know how the movie ends. You will spend large sums of money providing the cat with the feline equivalent of filet mignon. You will sit with the cat—in the evenings—or lie in bed with the cat—in the mornings—and shoo away the other cats who are rapturous to eat the food the ailing cat is lacklusterly eating. And the cat will go on, pulled by the strength of your love, and because, well, the life of a housecat is not so difficult. How hard is it to spend a day lying in the sunlight on the floor?

The day will come. Or rather, the night, since it was at about three in the morning when Raf told me, “I think Kitty is dying.” I said what you say—we’ll see how he eats in the morning, and I’ll take him to the vet if he doesn’t. Yes—that sentence was badly cast, but that’s how you speak at 3 AM.

He’s always been Raf’s cat, though it was I who was on my stomach, beside the parked car on which Kitty had—not too intelligently—taken refuge. But on second thought, perhaps it was intelligent after all. How was he to know that the dark, warm, and especially hidden shelter would roar, spin, crush him? And he was smart enough to yowl, in inverse proportion to his size.

Forget crying babies—it’s that feline distress sound that gets us every time. “There’s a cat who needs help,” I will tell Raf, and he’ll prick up his ears. And then we’ll open up the tuna fish that somehow we never eat, but that we always seem to have.

Let no one tell you that he or she has selected a cat: they select you. OK—there are some disordered individuals who actually go out and buy a cat—probably a Persian or Siamese—but no true cat-lover would think of it. Ours is to wait until the call comes—either from under the car or from a friend.

That’s how Madame came—the only female cat we’ve ever had, and so-called because she was a calico, which meant that she could teach imperiousness to an opera diva. There was only one way to sell her on us, and the “friend,” seized on it.
“Marc says he wants her,” said the friend to Raf. “Raf says he wants her,” said the friend to Marc. And Madame sailed in the door.

So they arrive, and we take them in. They have been astonishingly beautiful and ordinarily ugly. They have—mostly—been stupid as posts, though in the case of Kitty, Raf is convinced that Kitty could talk—and discuss Kierkegaard—if the necessary anatomy were there. They allow themselves variously to be petted, and shed copious amounts of fur.

Not able to have children, we got into the habit of always having four cats. And so, when I take Kitty to the vet in half an hour, the familiar ritual will begin. Or rather, it has just begun, since I have just called the vet.

One of the odd things about learning a language because you’re living it instead of because you’re studying it is that you develop a special vocabulary and set of tasks. And so I knew what to do—say “salud” when the receptionist sneezed over the phone—and tell her that Kitty was bien viejito and having trouble with his kidneys. This elicited the classic response in Puerto Rico: dito!

It can be used variously, this “dito” which is as common as a horn in a traffic jam. Here, it was quite sincere—“aw, poor thing.” But with a sarcastic intonation, it becomes, “yeah, sure…” In any case, I hung up the phone—though how one hangs up a cell phone I can’t quite tell you—with that strange feeling. To the receptionist, I am one more call, one more task to get through her day. But at 3:30, I will be a parent, with a sick cat, with the prognosis quite sure, and with the certainty that the lab results will be bad, and that “hospitalization” will be necessary. Not so bad for dogs, I will think, since after all, aren’t they the ones barking? But how will it be for Kitty?

Worse, how will it be for Raf, who will “visit” Kitty after work? Our nerves are already frayed from a street festival that took place underneath and a little to the right of us, in addition to the worry about Kitty. Now, Raf will be standing next to a bank of cages, in one of which will be Kitty, whom Raf will be stroking. He can do this; I cannot.

Paradoxical, really, since I am the “strong” one in these matters, or so my reading of the dynamics of our relationship goes. But however often it has been I who said, after an imploring look from Raf, to the vet, “yes, we think it’s time,” I cannot stand—in either sense—next to a caged pet and comfort him. Raf is the greater of the two of us.

It may be in a day, or we may get lucky and have another month or two. Kitty, however, is completely misnamed, since he has to be near twenty years old. And that, for a cat, is long in the tooth indeed.

It will be worse for Raf than it will be for me. Also, it will be worse for me than it will be for Raf, since to see someone grieve acutely as you grieve slightly less is painful. And yes, that word “grieve” stands: I have had two parents die on me, as well as four or five cats. And the experience, if not the same, is similar. What’s different?

No one in the world would dispute the justice of a writer quietly crying in a corner of a café, as I am, if the tears were for a dying parent. But the work of growing up means that we keep a certain distance, physically, from our parents. In the week before my mother’s death, I had a lingering wish to crawl into the hospital bed in which she was lingering and hold her. Did I? No, though why I can’t say.

But this cat, this Kitty who is not Kitty, has jumped into bed every day of his life with us, to be stroked by Raf even as Raf sleeps, to be fed in the morning as I struggle not to wake, and especially not to smell his food. Raf will leave, and Kitty will remain, sleeping on Raf’s pillow.

Why am I crying?

This time, it’s Kitty who will leave….

         

The Governor and the Singer

OK—in some places reality tends to be a dull, cold, lumpish thing: the existential version of a mild hangover. But here, in Puerto Rico? It’s a bird of paradise, flaunting one brilliant plume after another, flashing through trees, and at times disappearing altogether. So I can tell you that the island has been watching the governor fight for la crudita, which will raise the tax on petroleum from 9.25 to 10.50 per barrel. And that, of course, drew near panic on the island: what would it do to the price of gasoline? The governor assured us: it would increase the price by just 16 cents more a gallon. Did anybody believe him? Of course not.

So the Highway Authority was broke, and that meant that the bus system was broke, and then the governor said there was no money to pay the bus drivers, so tough luck, you 35,000 to 50,00 users of the Metropolitan Bus Administration—find yourself a ride to work or your medical appointment. If la crudita didn’t pass, he was taking his bus off the streets and locking them up—so there!

Chantaje! Or blackmail, cried the opposition, but the governor was adamant. Then the Feds wrote and pointed out that they had given funds to operate the buses, as well as to do some projects—and if those things weren’t happening? Well, completely unreasonably, they wanted their money back! Can you imagine?

And our dear governor was facing asps even in his own party, which controls the legislature and should therefore be a trifle more rubber-stampish than they turned out to be. There were three of such snakes, but at last, the governor was able to address the island on Sunday evening, and assure the anxious populace that all was well, the votes were there, la crudita was a certainty hovering on the horizon.

Well, was that good enough for the press? Of course not—ever eager to find and pick nits, the press called the three senators, all of whom said “no, I haven’t changed my vote!”

So Monday, would there be buses? Would the crudita pass? What deals were being struck in the Casa de las Leyes, or the House of Laws? So the crudita got modified and then sent to the other side of the House, and that got batted around, and the Independence senator alleged that the whole thing was illegal, and the opposition party murmured darkly about going to court. A normal state of affairs, in short.

In sails the mayoress of San Juan, and guess what? She’s against the increase too, and probably a little annoyed that she had to drop every and cook up a scheme to rent school buses and find drivers and try to get as many people around as possible. So the governor, having hallucinated the support of three senators, got it into his delusional head that Carmen Yulín Cruz was on board too. So Carmen Yulín whipped out the cell phone and showed everybody the text messages she had sent out to the three senators, urging them to remain steadfast in their opposition.

The island was busy watching—and commenting on—all this, when tragedy struck: Topy Mamery died! And that’s terrible news, because Yolandita is destroyed—utterly and fatally destroyed—and has vowed: the show is over, and never will she sing again!

Here—with all the operatic intensity of a Maria Callas—are her words:

"Quiero que ustedes lleven el mensaje que parte de la prensa de este país me lo mató. Ellos saben quiénes son y los quiero felicitar porque se salieron con la suya. Lo mataron a él y me mataron a mí, porque yo no canto más. Este circo se acabó. Yo me llevo de aquí (Puerto Rico) a mis hijos. Me voy. Yo estoy muerta".  

(I want all of you to take the message that part of the press in this land killed me. They know who they are and I want to congratulate them because they succeeded. They killed him and they killed me, because I will sing no more. This circus is over. I will take myself from here (Puerto Rico) to my children. I’m going. Now, I am dead.)

Right—so who are these people, and what had the press done?

“How do you say artista in English,” my students used to ask.

“Artist,” I initially said, only to discover that Ricky Martin was the example par excellence of the artista.

“Entertainer,” I then changed it. And Yolandita is such an entertainer, having sold out at the coliseums and appeared on Broadway and been nominated for a Latin Emmy. And Yolandita had been about to celebrate her 25^th anniversary with Topy Mamery, who had a massive heart attack while taking a shower in their home.

Fortunate, that, since the press had been publishing photos of—allegedly—Mamery in an “intimate encounter” with a model and television personality, who learned of the death while at the television station, and immediately fled, overwhelmed, strickened, utterly unable to go on.

“Yolandita’s never going to sing again,” I told Sunshine at the café.

“Bah, she’ll be out with a new album, Ahogada en Luto, or Drowning in Grief, in three months, and it’ll make her a couple more millions. Then she’ll find a guy twenty years younger and fly off to Spain with him….”

“Yolandita’s never going to sing again,” I told Elizabeth in the shop.

“Está completemente en choque,” she said, and went on to tell me that Yolandita was under 24 / 7 medical attention, and heavy sedation, since there was every likelihood—nay, probability—that she would kill herself, were she to realize the full horror of what had happened.

Farándula—or celebrity gossip, and it’s one of our minor talents on the island. So Yolandita’s voice has been muted, and she will leave the island of her birth, never more to return to a land where tongues become daggers, the moment one person—through sheer talent and immense hard work—managed to crawl out of the mediocrity and shine!  

Don’t cry for her, Puerto Rico!