HOMICIDE BOMBINGS Officials and advocates trying to shift the focus from suicide bombers to their victims coined this term, and they can have it. It’s really more a play on words than a serious attempt at a better description. Doesn’t bomber already imply homicidal intent? People who kill themselves by taking pills or firing a gun are called suicides, not suicide pill-takers or suicide gunmen. And bombers of Timonthy McVeigh’s ilk are simply called bombers; the homicide is understood. Suicide bombings are called suicide bombings to set them apart from McVeigh-style bombings; if you think that somehow glorifies the bomber, I think you’re nuts.

INTO, ONTO The distinctions between into and in to–and between onto and on to–are quite confusing, as the definition of the one-word forumations is the two-word formulations. The important thing to keep in mind is that idioms ending in in and on should be preserved. So it’s logging on to the Internet, not logging onto. And the absurdity of The suspect turned himself into police should be readily apparent.

People hold to their food customs because of the positives: comfort, nourishment, heavenly aromas. A sturdy food tradition even calls to outsiders; plenty of red-blooded Americans will happily eat Italian, French, Thai, Chinese, you name it. But try the reverse: hand the Atkins menu to a French person, and run for your life.

Will North Americans ever have a food culture to call our own? Can we find or make up a set of rituals, recipes, ethics, and buying habits that will let us love our food and eat it too? Some signs point to “yes.” Better food–more local, more healthy, more sensible–is a powerful new topic of the American conversation. It reaches from the epicurean quarters of Slow Food convivia to the matter-of-fact Surgeon General’s Office; from Farm Aid concerts to school lunch programs. From the rural routes to the inner cities, we are staring at our plates and wondering where that’s been. For the first time since our nation’s food was ubiquitously local, the point of origin now matters again to some consumers. We’re increasingly wary of an industry that puts stuff in our dinner we can’t identify as animal, vegetable, mineral, or what. The halcyon postwar promise of “better living through chemistry” has fallen from grace. “No additives” is now often considered a plus rather than the minus that, technically, it is.

What the hell was I doing waiting for an ex-stripper to bring me the keys to a short school bus?

On the most obvious level, the bus represented a path set in motion when I was eight years old and labeled learning disabled. I was drawn to the short bus because it was a public symbol of disablity and special education. The bus emerged out of federal legislation, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975, which mandated that children with disabilities be educated in a public school setting. It was a historic moment for my tribe, but there were problems: Schools were not required to fully integrate students with disabilities, and a segregated system of special education programs was created. Then along came segregated transportation: the short bus. Thrown together under the rubric of special education, these passengers included kids with physical disabilities, Down syndrome, learning disabilities, autism, as well as emotional problems. Special education and the short bus grouped together all these different students, expanding our culture’s definition of disabled. The short bus as a symbol of special education says as much (or more) about that culture–its values, beliefs, fears, aspirations, and injustices–as it ever did about people with disabilities.

Nondisabled Americans do not understand disabled ones.

That was clear at the memorial service for Timothy Cook, when longtime friends got up to pay him heartfelt tribute. “He never seemed disabled to me,” said one. “He was the least disabled person I ever met,” pronounced another. It was the highest praise these nondisabled friends could think to give a disabled attorney who, at thirty-eight years old, had won landmark disability rights cases, including one to force public transit systems to equip their buses with wheelchair lifts. But more than a few heads in the crowded chapel bowed with an uneasy embarrassment at the supposed compliment. It was as if someone had tried to compliment a black man by saying, “You’re the least black person I ever met,” as false as telling a Jew, “I never think of you as Jewish,” as clumsy as seeking to flatter a woman with “You don’t act like a woman.”

Here in this memorial chapel was a small clash between the reality of disabled people and the understanding of their lives by others. It was the type of collision that disabled people experience daily. Yet any discordancy went unnoticed even to the well-meaning friends of a disability rights fighter like Cook. To be fair to the praise-givers, their sincere words were among the highest accolade that Americans routinely give those with disabilities. In fairness, too, most disabled people gladly would have accepted the compliment some fifteen years before, the time when the speakers’ friendships with Cook had begun. But most people with disabilities now think differently. It is not that disabled people are overly sensitive. But as a result of an ongoing revolution in self-perception, they (often along with their families) no longer see their physical or mental limitations as a source of shame or as something to overcome in order to inspire others. Today they proclaim that it is okay, even good, to be disabled. Cook’s childhood polio forced him to wear heavy corrective shoes, and he walked with difficulty. But taking pride in his disability was for Cook a celebration of the differences among people and gave him a respectful understanding that all share the same basic desires to be full participants in society.

The city below looked made of pale-blue blocks of ice. All of a sudden, a cloud appears, a quick, slanted shadow. And the ice turns leaden and swollen and, like when standing on the banks of a river in the springtime, you anticipate–any moment now–a cracking, a surging, a twirling, a bolting away. But then the moment passes, and the next does too, and the ice is still, and instead, you yourself are swelling, your heart is beating more anxiously and frequently. (But why am I writing about this, and where do these strange sensations come from? There’s no such thing as an icebreaker that could break the most transparent and most durable crystal that is our life.)

I glanced at him across the table, his nails chipped and black with engine oil, his knuckles scraped, the smells of the gas station–dust, sweat, and gasoline–on his clothes. Baba was like the widower who remarries but can’t let go of his dead wife. He missed the sugarcane fields of Jalalabad and the gardens of Paghman. He missed people milling in and out of his house, missed walking down the bustling aisles of Shor Bazaar and greeting people who knew him and his father, knew his grandfather, people who shared ancestors with him, whose pasts intertwined with his.

For me, America was a place to bury my memories.

For Baba, a place to mourn his.

God calls us to the hard work of compassion for our enemies. Some people may quarrel with that characterization, but we do have enemies. It’s a word that Jesus used. The hard part is following Jesus’ own command to love our enemies. Not to like them, not to be paralyzed by their opposition, not to give in to their outrageous demands, but to love them nonetheless. To treat them with infinite respect, listen to what drives them, try our best to understand the fear that causes them to reject us, to believe them when they say they only want the best for us. That’s hard work, and we can’t do it without God’s own Spirit blowing through us like wind, breaking down our walls, causing our assumptions to “come loose,” and reminding us all that our enemies are children of God, for whom Christ died and through whom they will be saved.

Despite the numerous historical examples that could be presented for both of these positions, what is important is how Turkish society perceived “human rights” and “democracy” in this context. Because the Great Powers used these terms to legitimize the most obvious colonial moves, Turks began to view both notions as “Western hypocrisy.” Beyond the specific historical reasons, the fundamental problems that lay behind the failure to bring the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide to justice persist to this day. If it is not possible to draw a clear line of division between humanitarian goals, on the one hand, and a state’s economic and political interests, on the other, then how are we to come to a consensus about ethical norms? And on what legal and theoretical grounds shall we justify international interventions? These questions remain unanswered.

Most people are against books on writing on principle. So am I. It’s ridiculous to set down rules when it comes to art. Most of the truly great artists have broken all the rules, and this is precisely what has made them great. What would have become of Beethoven’s music if he’d chased rules instead of inspiration? Of van Gogh’s paintings?

There are no rules to assure great writing, but there are ways to avoid bad writing. This, simply, is the focus of this book: to learn how to identify and avoid bad writing. We all fall prey to it, to different degrees, even the greatest writers, even in the midst of their greatest works. By scrutinizing the following examples of what not to do, you will learn to spot these ailments in your own writing; by working with the solutions and exercises, you may, over time, bridge the gap and come to a realization of what to do. These is no guarantee that you will come to this realization, but if you do, at least it will be your own. Because ultimately, the only person who can teach you about writing is yourself.