Burned Naan

Soon after I returned from India I was talking with a taxi driver who told me that he had just become a father. I asked him if he planned on staying in the United States or returning to his native Jordan. I’ll never forget his response: “We will return to Jordan because I never want to hear my son say ‘fuck you’ to me.” 

―Jonathan Haidt, "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion"

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Dear Kate,

Yesterday I and my wife tried Indian food, something I haven't for I don't know how long.  We happened to be in the area, and needed to stick around for a few hours as it so happened, and there were many choices, all highly rated on Google.

I don't prefer heavy meal, but based on the reviews I chose this Indian restaurant, run by a family I was told.  You know me enough to probably know the word "family," the idea, the ideal, the vague ache of what it begins to suggest, was what spoke to me.  I am not a food person, not that I am not thankful for every morsel of it.  I wanted to meet this family.

The food was great.  Heavy, generous in every way.  How was it? one of the daughters asked.  I was fed twice over, I smiled.  I met another man of the house when he was leaving and I taking over the only washroom.  He wasn't friendly, no smile on his face; he was neutral, if you know what I mean.  So were the two ladies serving, respectfully earnest, with a reticence that suggested a rectitude that is expected in their role, from their family, of each other.

As I said the online reviews were good, not too many of them in total, and for that any bad one could really pull down the final average.  And there was one, ruthless, with pictures showing a burned piece of naan from different angles.  Apology profusive from the owner to caption the review, of course.  That's what consumers are expected to do and do it well, to speak their mind with honesty, with no reservation, for the benefit of the world so that no one else will need to suffer what they've suffered.  Power to the people, powered by technology and an open mind, knowledge and reason and responsibility our recipe of progress.

If the negative review was actually posted by a family member, a friend of this family, you would probably call it a "disloyalty," right?  So "loyalty" has to be bad then, not calling out evils, yielding to tyranny, an unauthentic, dishonest way to carry oneself, anti-progress, sans-liberty, pre-truth?

Imagine, though, that you are the owner of this restaurant, a member of this family, this ache-filled, tenacious but tenuous piece of little social fabric, and this was done to you by another member who should know the joy that was made possible despite (and often because of) the many pains mutually inflicted, and for generations too.  How would you feel?  You would probably feel something more than the trust and good faith from a customer, a "consumer," is hoped for, even demanded, because, after all, a family member should know how difficult it is to run a small business together, feeding so many mouths hungering for not exactly the same thing.  A bit of loyalty you are seeking, maybe?

But it isn't fair, you say.  The naan was burned, clearly, and that's the honest-to-God truth.  We need to seek truth and expose lies and neglects: that's how we grow.  So, Unfair, you said.  But look at all the other reviews, they were all good.  The place was clean (much cleaner than I can say about what my own culture, my "family" could offer), and the food came in big taste and portion.  Right after I paid another customer went up to do the same: to praise before pay.  Who's being unfair here?

So if the negative review was posted by a family, a friend, what would you call such action?  More than a simple "disloyalty," it calls for a word that means as damning as it sounds: treachery.

That's what it is when we can see nothing good in the checkered legacy of our fathers and mothers, including, before anything else, being blind to how our betraying them is an allowance in their vision of tolerance and liberty they have endowed us with, so that we can feel safe---actually feel proud, to be so treacherous.  They enabled, empowered us to tarnish and squander our inheritance, and they were not so stupid to not know this apparent danger.  Their generosity was ache-filled, grace made possible in a sinful world.  I, an immigrant, writing in English as my second language, freely and veraciously, in my Vancouver home, with no policeman waiting outside, echo their ache-filled voice with my gratitude for every morsel of word received and given back.

Don't cancel my Canada.  I was a stranger, but made a family member by my fathers and mothers.  They are far from perfect, but I take them in whole.  They are family, after all, and I will seek to know them as human beings, warts and all, as we all seek to be sought after likewise.

Yours, Alex