by Holly Yasui

The days are getting shorter. As I hurry home at dusk, chilled by the wind blowing gritty dust across the arroyos, I chide myself. I grew up in Colorado, where water left by a window freezes overnight in winter, and I went to school in Wisconsin, where we routinely brought the car battery indoors when temperatures dropped 30º below zero.

I get cold here in Mexico because my house isn't centrally heated and I don't have real winter clothes. But I do have a home, extra blankets, a stove on which to prepare hot food. Thousands of Afghan refugees don't. Millions in Afghanistan - many too weak or sick to flee - face nights ten times colder than ours, without food or medicine, while their houses tremble with the thunder of bombs: carpet-bombing from B52s that cut swaths of hell on earth, cluster bombs that leave explosives strewn across the desolate countryside, “daisy-cutters,” megatons of ordnance gouging out huge craters in which nothing can survive or regenerate for decades.

It’s very good news that the UN plans to resume humanitarian aid deliveries in northern Afghanistan; perhaps millions of lives can be saved. But millions remain at risk, especially in the west and south. In spite of the rout of the despicable Taliban, the Bush administration has refused to consider cessation of airstrikes during Ramadan, even as a bomb destroyed a mosque in a southern Afghan town. And as our anti-Taliban allies, the Northern Alliance, advance southward into territories of their ethnic enemies, few media reports mention their reputation for brutal mistreatment of civilians and prisoners - rape, torture and mass executions. What price are we willing to pay for victory and will that victory become our bane, as when our former allies, bin Laden and the Taliban, drove the Russians out of Afghanistan?

I keep hearing Bush’s ultimatum, “either you’re with us or against us,” most recently declared in the UN general assembly, and I wonder where the freezing, starving Afghan people fit in that formula.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot. As a Japanese American resident of Mexico, I sometimes fancy myself a citizen of the world, enjoying people here in San Miguel from all over the Americas, Europe and Asia. For the past several years, I’ve prepared a U.S.-style Thanksgiving feast with Japanese touches for my Mexican friends who are my family here. Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays - non-nationalistic, non-religious, non-commercial - a time to express gratitude to my teachers, friends and ancestors for the gifts of life, an abundance of love, and consciousness.

But this year, I can’t bring myself to make a big meal to celebrate life and abundance, conscious that my country is abetting the death and deprivation of millions who are as innocent as any victims of terrorism.

The horror of war has never been so real to me. Why? Perhaps it’s the scale and immediacy; never before have so many Americans died at once in the span of moments; in Afghanistan, millions are at risk now. Perhaps it’s because on September 11, I was in Colorado. I don’t have a TV here in Mexico, but that week in Denver, like most Americans I was glued to the screen, hypnotized by the image of the plane crashing into the WTC, repeated again and again like a psychotic nightmare, accompanied by equally harrowing calls for vengeance. Now, when I hear a particular pro-war or anti-Muslim argument repeated by several people, I know that someone on CNN said that, or they showed a sensational documentary that comprises the fixed extent of most Americans’ knowledge of the enormously diverse culture of Islam.

Perhaps it’s because here in Mexico, I’ve seen refugee camps in Chiapas, unmediated by TV or printed words; I’ve met and feel deep affection and concern for my brothers and sisters there. Perhaps it’s because here I have Internet access to news, information and opinions from all over the world, and I’m not bombarded by U.S. mainstream media messages. Perhaps it’s because here I’ve learned to relate to others - the Other - in ways not encouraged in the U.S. We live closer to the elements here, and more in community. Our homes are less insulated, not separated by lawns or yards; we communally experience electricity and water outages; we chat with neighbors on the way to corner groceries and on roofs as we hang laundry; we greet each other in streets full of people - not just cars, as in the U.S. This sense of community in daily life has taught me something about interrelatedness: no matter how different we are, we share this earth, the same heat of the sun, the same chill of the wind.

So, I can’t detach myself from the Afghan people, whose lives depend on what my country does in coming days. I can’t deny the knowledge that the fiercely defended self-righteousness and prosperity of my country rides on the backs of people who have borne the oppression of regimes created then destroyed by my government for ideology and access to oil. This Thanksgiving; I will not feast, I will fast, as thousands are dying of starvation that could be prevented if my country were not making war upon theirs.

###