Numb, Number

Number of people murdered by Hamas on October 7th: between 1,400 (early estimate) and 1,200 (latest estimate).  Time elapsed: early morning October 7th, to evening.  Call it 12 hours. 12 hours = 12 x 60 minutes = 720 minutes.  720 minutes/1,200 murders = 0.6 minutes/murder.  

Population of Israel: 9.364 million.  1200/9364000 = 0.000128 murdered per capita.

Number of people murdered on 9/11: 2,977, between 8:46 AM and 10:28 AM.  102 minutes.  102/2977 =  0.0342 minutes/murder. 

Population of  US in 2001: 285 million.  2977/285000000 = 0.00001044 murdered per capita.  If the 9/11 attacks had killed as many people, proportionally, as the October 7th attacks did in Israel, 36,480 people would have died.  

Population of Iraq in 2003: 27.07 million.  Number of people killed by US and coalition forces: 150,000. This includes at least 120,000 civilians.  Total number of violent civilian deaths caused, in a ripple effect, by the second Iraq War might be as high as a quarter of a million.  Per capita: 0.0089.  A single event that killed the same proportion of Americans would have killed 2,536,500  people: 852 times as many as the 2977 who died in 9/11.

Population of Afghanistan in 2001: 19.69 million.  Number of people killed as a result of the Afghanistan war: 70,000 military + 46,319 civilians + 53,000 opposition = 169,319.   0.0086 deaths per capita.  Corresponding number of deaths, adjusted for the population of the US in 2001: 2,451,000.  823.3 Nine-Elevens.

If Israel does the same in Palestine: population of Palestine = 4.923 million.  Assuming 0.0088 deaths per capita, 43322 Palestinians will be murdered. The equivalent, for Palestinians, of 843 Nine-Eleven events.

(If, however deaths per capita also increases in proportion: 0.000128 x 843 = 0.108 Palestinian deaths per capita.  531,684 Palestinian deaths.)

Number of people killed in Palestine over the first 31 days: 10,022.  4,104 of them children.  2,000 under rubble.  25,408 wounded.   

31 days = 31 x 24 x 60 minutes = 1,440 x 31 minutes = 44,640 minutes  

One person wounded every 1.757 minutes.  One person killed every 4.454 minutes.  A child killed every 10.877 minutes.  

Assuming that the velocity of deaths does not change greatly, there are 103 days left.  148320 minutes.

Those numbers were from two days ago, as I write this.  101 days left.  Another 1,639 wounded.  647 killed.  265 of them children.  No, the numbers are from three days ago, as I revise this.  100 days left.  Another 2,458 wounded.  971 killed.  397 of them children.  It has taken me two minutes to write this.  Another person wounded.   No, the numbers are from six days ago, as I deliberate whether to show them to you.  97 days left.  4916 wounded.  1942 killed.  794 of them children.

Average speed for reading out loud: 183 words per minute.   From the beginning (“Number”) to that last “minute” = 318 words.  1.738 minutes.  Probability that a person has been wounded while you were reading: 0.995.  99.5%.  And climbing.  Probability that a person has been killed while you were reading:  0.39.  39%.  And climbing.  Probability that a child has been killed while you were reading: 0.16.  16%.  And climbing.

Number of people killed, either directly or indirectly, by European conquest of the Americas, between 1492 and 1592: one estimate is 55 million.  100 years = 100 x 365 x 24 x 60 = 52560000 minutes.  52560000/55000000 = 0.956 minutes/death.  The velocity of murder, of multiple pandemics, of starvation, of ecological disruption so complete that it caused a shift in the climate of the Earth.

Total number of people murdered by the Khmer Rouge.  “Between 1.5 million and 3 million” is what Google says.  Let’s average it.  How absurd.  There is no justification.  No excuse.  But the average is 2.25 million.  Over the course of–how long?  Four years.  Four years = 4 x 365 x 24 x 60 = 2102400 minutes.  2102400/2250000 = 0.934 minutes/murder. 

Total number of people murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust: 6 million.  Auschwitz lasted from May 1940 to January 1945.  5 years, minus 4 months, let’s call it.  4 years 8 months.  Roughly (4 x 365) + (8 x 30) = 1460 + 240 = 1700 days.  1700 days = 1700 x 24 x 60 minutes.  2448000 minutes.  Number of people murdered at Auschwitz: 1.1 million.  2448000/1100000 = 2.225 minutes/murder at Auschwitz.  2448000/6000000 = 0.408 minutes/murder in the Holocaust.   

I am not comparing genocides.   I am mapping them.   Are you familiar with the Hotel Infinity?  It doesn’t matter how many people check in.  There’s always another room.  There is room for you and you and you and me.  

It has taken me an hour to write this.  There are 413 words.  Now there are thirteen more.  While you were reading, 2.328 minutes have elapsed.  A person has been wounded.  Probability that a person has been killed: 52.27% and climbing.  Probability that a child has been killed: 21.4% and climbing.  

Number of people killed in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: between 110,000 and 210,000.   About 80,000 instantly, in Hiroshima.  The bomb at Hiroshima took 53 seconds to fall.  Nuclear fission began 0.15 microseconds after the bomb detonated.  One second after detonation, the fireball reached its maximum size.  The blastwave swept out at 984 miles per hour.  Hiroshima at the time was about a mile in radius, which means that the blastwave took 0.001 seconds to cover the entire city.  1.001 seconds = 0.1668 minutes.  0.1668/80000 = 0.000002085 minutes/death.

It has taken me another 40 minutes to write this.  Another 22 people wounded.  9 people killed.  Between 3 and 4 of them children.  Since I started writing, 55 people wounded.  22 killed.   Between 10 and 11 of them children.

The numbers numb.  Name them.

Since I started writing, Mohamed has been wounded.  Fatima has been wounded.  Ahmed has been killed.  Mariam has been wounded.  Iman has been wounded.  Mona has been killed.  Omar has been killed.  Nasreen has been wounded.  Ismail has been killed.  Ashraf has been wounded.  Saeed has been wounded.  Maher has been wounded.  Yasser has been killed.   Rana has been wounded.  Khadjia has been wounded.  Zainab has been killed.   Rayan Abdullah Zakaria Al-Astal has been killed.  He was 0 years old.   Mian Yahya Youssef Al-Astal has been killed.  She was 0 years old.  Salam Wael Ahmed Al-Astal has been killed.  He was 0 years old.   Mahmoud has been killed.  He was 16.  His mother was also killed.  Also his sister, Sham, who was 7.  Also his nephew, who was one-and-a-half.   Nada Essam Ahmed Salah has been killed.  She was 5.  Ahmed Hossam Khalil Zaqout has been killed.  He was 10.  Suhail Ramez Al-Souri has been killed. He was 14.  Bombed in a church.   Julie Ramez Al-Souri has been killed.  She was 12.  Bombed in a church.   Majd Ramez Al-Souri.  She was 10.  Bombed in a church.

It took me 30 minutes to look up the names.  To choose, from the list of the dead, the names of 11 children. 

That was enough time for another 3 children to have been killed.    

I compartmentalize.  I bury feelings.  I lock them up.  In order to write at all I must construct a key to open the boxes.  The act of writing is the making of the key.  Writing is a kind of Zeno’s paradox.  Writing is the key with which I unlock my humanity.  Humanity is the knowledge of everything humans do.  How humans stop being human.  How humans transform other humans into objects.  Humanity outpaces the writing.

Mohamed who was wounded is covered in dust.  Fatima who was wounded is covered in blood.  Ahmed is no longer Ahmed.  Mariam who was wounded shivers under the rubble.  She is holding what she still thinks is Ahmed’s hand.  Iman who was wounded lies on a bed of fallen olive leaves.  She doesn’t know what she is saying.  Iman’s mouth says: mother mother mother mother where are you.  Iman’s mouth says: there was fire there was wind there was upside down there was a rain of bloody rocks there was a rain of bone.  Mother where are you.  Iman’s mother Mona is no longer Iman’s mother Mona.  Omar is no longer Omar.  He has fallen as rain.  Nasreen is covered in rain.  Ismail is no longer Ismail.  He is fire.  The fire licks at Nasreen, licks at the rain that was Omar, like a cat who licks her wound.  The fire reaches for the olive leaves as a cat reaches for its food.  Ashraf who was wounded can feel the fire on his bloodied face.  But Ashraf cannot see the fire.  Saeed who was wounded reaches out to Ashraf his brother.  Saeed reaches through the fire.  He reaches as a brother reaches with bloodied hands for his brother, for his brother who is on fire.  

It is terrible to imagine this.  It is forbidden to imagine this.  To imagine this cheapens the real.  We like to pretend that poems can be more real than the real.  Nothing is more real than death.  Nothing is more real than genocide.  Nothing is more real than the ability of humans to turn away from other humans.  From their suffering.  To avert their eyes.  To pretend the anguished voice on the subway does not exist.  To pretend the child holding the box of chocolates is unlike your child.   To pretend your father was not once a child running behind a GI’s jeep begging for chocolates.   It is too easy.   To say the child covered in dust and trapped under rubble is suffering in a way that is forbidden for you to imagine to represent to write.  Because you do not understand.  Because you have never lived through that experience.  Because you do not share their culture.  Their language.  Their history.  Their knowledge of the moods of their weather.  Their recipes for bread.  Their names for onion, parsley, garlic, lemon, sumac, pepper, olive.  Their love for the familiar places.  For the small lives that populate those places, of insect and bird and goat and sheep and cat and dog.  It is too easy to turn away, to banish, to close the border, to bar the door, to patrol it with machine guns.  To lock them up.  In the name of caution.  In the name of how dare I write about this.  In the name of by what right do I write about this.  In the name of if I write about them will I be wearing their suffering like a costume.  In cowardice.  In cowardice justified because to write about such things without love is to betray them.  And in cowardice that must be overcome because to write about the suffering of strangers, to imagine them, is to begin to love them.  Therefore we must imagine what is forbidden to imagine. 

It has taken me another 50 minutes to write this.