Love in the Time of Corona

Photo: Nusrat Durrani

The geckos of summer were already slithering up the bathroom walls, their stone-age eyes winking at us knowingly in slow-motion: we were leaving & they would have the apartment to themselves again. Beggar kids counted the day’s haul under the streetlight, bugs crackling around their heads, rendering them small Gods with electric halos. 

The reptiles & urchins, the long-tailed parrots on our window sill, the presswallah & fruit seller, the electrician & cleaning woman, blissfully unaware of Covid-19. The virus has been in the headlines all through spring, it made monsters out of men & heroes out of women. Its diabolical games spilled blood on the streets & made a mockery out of justice. It manipulated us through screaming TV hosts & imposter pundits infected a long time ago. It rose like toxic black smoke in our bloodstream, fogged our brains, shrunk our hearts & blinded us. The virus robbed us of humanity. 

I disinfected my seat & swabbed my hands obsessively with Dettol on the Emirates flight back. “Evil cannot be removed by antiseptics”, said the computer scientist from Bengaluru in the window seat, laughing at my naiveté, “This disease is karma” she added, adjusting her pink N95, “It’s been a long time coming.” 

I watched “Honeylands” & “Jojo Rabbit” to drown out images in my head of incinerated grandmothers, young men with fingers chopped off & heads beaten to pulp, cars on fire, houses plundered, children lost & wailing on the streets, dodging bullets, while the virus multiplied, overtaking the city.

As we flew over Iran I dreamed of live pangolins, their scales ripped off, being hacked into pieces, shrieking like infants. In a bazaar of horrors, I saw dancing bears with bleeding fore legs, their paws sliced into strips to make soup. I saw boiling vats of bats being stewed, & skinned badgers turning on a grill. The street was lined with stalls heaped with the decapitated heads of dogs, & hearts of rabbits being wrenched out by butchers to be tossed into salads for rich men to gorge on. A little girl with matted hair & haunted eyes was selling live snakes. They were wrapped around her arms, their necks clamped & mouths open like deadly entrances to hell, spitting venom at passersby. 

The Lebanese air hostess woke me from my nightmare for a hot snack before landing. “Dreaming of food?” asked the lady scientist as I wiped the sweat off my brow. “We become what we eat”, she said, biting into her slice of pizza marguerite. 

At least two thousand people are jammed into the immigration hall at JFK. Lines of somber, red-eyed passengers are spilling out of planes, each a constellation of ideas, joy & pain, wrong & right, love & hate. Some of us are carrying the virus. We picked it up from our cities, our places of worship, our mothers & fathers, friends, leaders & saints. We did not argue, we did not resist as it crept into our eyes & nostrils, slithered into our ears & spoke through our mouths. 

There’s no screening at the end of the long lines. The virus is welcomed into the United States. “Every time I pick up a ride, I wonder if this will be the one who infects me,” the Bangladeshi driver confesses. Highways are empty, the sky is magic blue. It feels safer to be back home in NYC even in the desolation. My street, “the most Instagrammed spot in America” is eerily devoid of Japanese tourists & spring breakers. Not a single newlywed couple being artfully photographed. The subways are lonesome, schools closed, food being stockpiled. I walk into my apartment & do what I always do on return: buy new songs to cleanse myself of travel. Deserta, a new EP by Christine & the Queens, Squirrel Flower…. women torch singers, singing away evil, the real scientists & priestesses of our time:

“Bugs in the streetlight
our time is over soon”

Where have we come, what have we done, where will we go now? The dystopian sci-fi love story I was writing had scenes of a terrifying pandemic & refugees of California wild fires invading the north. Inequality, oppression, greed & corruption had hollowed out the system. Public schools housed homeless children. Thousands of sick & starving prisoners were set free. Asians suspected of infection were herded into internment camps in Arizona. Transgenders outlawed & illegal immigrants indiscriminately shot down as the rich & powerful sheltered themselves from the chaos. I need not make that movie anymore. 

Sunday night, I went to see a modern staging of “Hamlet” at St. Anne’s Warehouse in the reassuring company of friends. The electrifying performance dissolved our collective angst. New Yorkers momentarily forgot the doom, united again by art & beauty under the protective arches of the Manhattan Bridge. At some point, Ruth Negga, the lead actor, looked me straight in the eye, challenging me to rise above the apocalypse. Underneath us, in silver blue night, the F shuddered through the tunnel like a ghost train, carrying but a few brave masked passengers. A pair of Ethiopian lovers, alone at last, kissed passionately, defying the Gods. 

The Vice President is on TV. “Soon we will be able to screen a million people for Covid-19”, he says, his right hand on the bible. The virus has fooled the greatest country in the world too: hate masquerading as novel corona. We are screening people for the wrong disease. Gangsters disguised as Godmen are slaughtering the weak. Fascism running rampant, the planet collapsing under the weight of our depravity. The President is playing golf.

I listen to Ustad Saami’s masterpiece “God is Not a Terrorist”. I listen to the music of truth, of tolerance, of compassion. I have come back to my prophets. They will teach me how to fight the virus. I will wash my hands & clean my heart. I will fortify myself with love.