WEBVTT

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One year ago, I rented a car in Jerusalem

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to go find a man I'd never met

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but who had changed my life.

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I didn't have a phone number to call to say I was coming.

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I didn't have an exact address,

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but I knew his name, Abed,

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I knew that he lived in a town of 15,000, Kfar Kara,

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and I knew that, 21 years before, just outside this holy city,

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he broke my neck.

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And so, on an overcast morning in January, I headed north

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off in a silver Chevy to find a man and some peace.

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The road dropped and I exited Jerusalem.

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I then rounded the very bend where his blue truck,

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heavy with four tons of floor tiles,

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had borne down with great speed onto the back left corner

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of the minibus where I sat.

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I was then 19 years old.

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I'd grown five inches and done some 20,000 pushups

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in eight months, and the night before the crash,

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I delighted in my new body,

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playing basketball with friends

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into the wee hours of a May morning.

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I palmed the ball in my large right hand,

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and when that hand reached the rim, I felt invincible.

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I was off in the bus to get the pizza I'd won on the court.

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I didn't see Abed coming.

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From my seat, I was looking up at a stone town

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on a hilltop, bright in the noontime sun,

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when from behind there was a great bang,

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as loud and violent as a bomb.

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My head snapped back over my red seat.

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My eardrum blew. My shoes flew off.

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I flew too, my head bobbing on broken bones,

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and when I landed, I was a quadriplegic.

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Over the coming months, I learned to breathe on my own,

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then to sit and to stand and to walk,

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but my body was now divided vertically.

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I was a hemiplegic, and back home in New York,

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I used a wheelchair for four years, all through college.

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College ended and I returned to Jerusalem for a year.

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There I rose from my chair for good,

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I leaned on my cane, and I looked back,

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finding all from my fellow passengers in the bus

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to photographs of the crash,

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and when I saw this photograph,

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I didn't see a bloody and unmoving body.

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I saw the healthy bulk of a left deltoid,

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and I mourned that it was lost,

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mourned all I had not yet done,

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but was now impossible.

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It was then I read the testimony that Abed gave

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the morning after the crash,

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of driving down the right lane of a highway toward Jerusalem.

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Reading his words, I welled with anger.

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It was the first time I'd felt anger toward this man,

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and it came from magical thinking.

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On this xeroxed piece of paper,

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the crash had not yet happened.

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Abed could still turn his wheel left

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so that I would see him whoosh by out my window

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and I would remain whole.

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"Be careful, Abed, look out. Slow down."

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But Abed did not slow,

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and on that xeroxed piece of paper, my neck again broke,

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and again, I was left without anger.

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I decided to find Abed,

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and when I finally did,

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he responded to my Hebrew hello which such nonchalance,

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it seemed he'd been awaiting my phone call.

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And maybe he had.

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I didn't mention to Abed his prior driving record --

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27 violations by the age of 25,

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the last, his not shifting his truck into a low gear on that May day —

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and I didn't mention my prior record --

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the quadriplegia and the catheters,

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the insecurity and the loss —

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and when Abed went on about how hurt he was in the crash,

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I didn't say that I knew from the police report

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that he'd escaped serious injury.

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I said I wanted to meet.

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Abed said that I should call back in a few weeks,

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and when I did, and a recording told me

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that his number was disconnected,

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I let Abed and the crash go.

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Many years passed.

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I walked with my cane and my ankle brace and a backpack

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on trips in six continents.

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I pitched overhand in a weekly softball game

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that I started in Central Park,

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and home in New York, I became a journalist and an author,

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typing hundreds of thousands of words with one finger.

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A friend pointed out to me that all of my big stories

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mirrored my own, each centering on a life

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that had changed in an instant,

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owing, if not to a crash, then to an inheritance,

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a swing of the bat, a click of the shutter, an arrest.

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Each of us had a before and an after.

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I'd been working through my lot after all.

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Still, Abed was far from my mind, when last year,

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I returned to Israel to write of the crash,

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and the book I then wrote, "Half-Life,"

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was nearly complete when I recognized

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that I still wanted to meet Abed,

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and finally I understood why:

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to hear this man say two words: "I'm sorry."

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People apologize for less.

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And so I got a cop to confirm that Abed still lived

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somewhere in his same town,

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and I was now driving to it with a potted yellow rose in the back seat,

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when suddenly flowers seemed a ridiculous offering.

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But what to get the man who broke your fucking neck?

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(Laughter)

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I pulled into the town of Abu Ghosh,

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and bought a brick of Turkish delight:

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pistachios glued in rosewater. Better.

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Back on Highway 1, I envisioned what awaited.

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Abed would hug me. Abed would spit at me.

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Abed would say, "I'm sorry."

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I then began to wonder, as I had many times before,

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how my life would have been different

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had this man not injured me,

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had my genes been fed a different helping of experience.

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Who was I?

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Was I who I had been before the crash,

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before this road divided my life like the spine of an open book?

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Was I what had been done to me?

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Were all of us the results of things done to us, done for us,

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the infidelity of a parent or spouse,

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money inherited?

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Were we instead our bodies, their inborn endowments and deficits?

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It seemed that we could be nothing more than genes and experience,

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but how to tease out the one from the other?

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As Yeats put that same universal question,

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"O body swayed to music, o brightening glance,

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how can we know the dancer from the dance?"

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I'd been driving for an hour

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when I looked in my rearview mirror and saw my own brightening glance.

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The light my eyes had carried for as long as they had been blue.

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The predispositions and impulses that had propelled me

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as a toddler to try and slip over a boat into a Chicago lake,

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that had propelled me as a teen

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to jump into wild Cape Cod Bay after a hurricane.

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But I also saw in my reflection

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that, had Abed not injured me,

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I would now, in all likelihood, be a doctor

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and a husband and a father.

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I would be less mindful of time and of death,

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and, oh, I would not be disabled,

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would not suffer the thousand slings and arrows of my fortune.

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The frequent furl of five fingers, the chips in my teeth

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come from biting at all the many things

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a solitary hand cannot open.

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The dancer and the dance were hopelessly entwined.

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It was approaching 11 when I exited right

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toward Afula, and passed a large quarry

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and was soon in Kfar Kara.

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I felt a pang of nerves.

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But Chopin was on the radio, seven beautiful mazurkas,

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and I pulled into a lot by a gas station

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to listen and to calm.

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I'd been told that in an Arab town,

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one need only mention the name of a local

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and it will be recognized.

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And I was mentioning Abed and myself,

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noting deliberately that I was here in peace,

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to the people in this town,

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when I met Mohamed outside a post office at noon.

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He listened to me.

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You know, it was most often when speaking to people

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that I wondered where I ended and my disability began,

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for many people told me what they told no one else.

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Many cried.

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And one day, after a woman I met on the street did the same

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and I later asked her why,

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she told me that, best she could tell, her tears

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had had something to do with my being happy and strong,

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but vulnerable too.

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I listened to her words. I suppose they were true.

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I was me,

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but I was now me despite a limp,

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and that, I suppose, was what now made me, me.

NOTE Paragraph

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Anyway, Mohamed told me

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what perhaps he would not have told another stranger.

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He led me to a house of cream stucco, then drove off.

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And as I sat contemplating what to say,

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a woman approached in a black shawl and black robe.

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I stepped from my car and said "Shalom,"

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and identified myself,

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and she told me that her husband Abed

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would be home from work in four hours.

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Her Hebrew was not good, and she later confessed

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that she thought that I had come to install the Internet.

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(Laughter)

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I drove off and returned at 4:30,

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thankful to the minaret up the road

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that helped me find my way back.

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And as I approached the front door,

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Abed saw me, my jeans and flannel and cane,

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and I saw Abed, an average-looking man of average size.

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He wore black and white: slippers over socks,

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pilling sweatpants, a piebald sweater,

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a striped ski cap pulled down to his forehead.

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He'd been expecting me. Mohamed had phoned.

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And so at once, we shook hands, and smiled,

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and I gave him my gift,

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and he told me I was a guest in his home,

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and we sat beside one another on a fabric couch.

NOTE Paragraph

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It was then that Abed resumed at once

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the tale of woe he had begun over the phone

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16 years before.

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He'd just had surgery on his eyes, he said.

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He had problems with his side and his legs too,

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and, oh, he'd lost his teeth in the crash.

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Did I wish to see him remove them?

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Abed then rose and turned on the TV

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so that I wouldn't be alone when he left the room,

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and returned with polaroids of the crash

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and his old driver's license.

NOTE Paragraph

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"I was handsome," he said.

NOTE Paragraph

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We looked down at his laminated mug.

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Abed had been less handsome than substantial,

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with thick black hair and a full face and a wide neck.

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It was this youth who on May 16, 1990,

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had broken two necks including mine,

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and bruised one brain and taken one life.

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Twenty-one years later, he was now thinner than his wife,

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his skin slack on his face,

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and looking at Abed looking at his young self,

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I remembered looking at that photograph of my young self

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after the crash, and recognized his longing.

NOTE Paragraph

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"The crash changed both of our lives," I said.

NOTE Paragraph

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Abed then showed me a picture of his mashed truck,

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and said that the crash was the fault of a bus driver

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in the left lane who did not let him pass.

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I did not want to recap the crash with Abed.

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I'd hoped for something simpler:

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to exchange a Turkish dessert for two words and be on my way.

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And so I didn't point out that in his own testimony

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the morning after the crash,

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Abed did not even mention the bus driver.

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No, I was quiet. I was quiet because I had not come for truth.

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I had come for remorse.

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And so I now went looking for remorse

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and threw truth under the bus.

NOTE Paragraph

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"I understand," I said, "that the crash was not your fault,

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but does it make you sad that others suffered?"

NOTE Paragraph

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Abed spoke three quick words.

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"Yes, I suffered."

NOTE Paragraph

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Abed then told me why he'd suffered.

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He'd lived an unholy life before the crash,

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and so God had ordained the crash,

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but now, he said, he was religious, and God was pleased.

NOTE Paragraph

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It was then that God intervened:

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news on the TV of a car wreck that hours before

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had killed three people up north.

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We looked up at the wreckage.

NOTE Paragraph

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"Strange," I said.

NOTE Paragraph

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"Strange," he agreed.

NOTE Paragraph

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I had the thought that there, on Route 804,

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there were perpetrators and victims,

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dyads bound by a crash.

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Some, as had Abed, would forget the date.

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Some, as had I, would remember.

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The report finished and Abed spoke.

NOTE Paragraph

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"It is a pity," he said, "that the police

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in this country are not tough enough on bad drivers."

NOTE Paragraph

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I was baffled.

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Abed had said something remarkable.

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Did it point up the degree to which he'd absolved himself of the crash?

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Was it evidence of guilt, an assertion

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that he should have been put away longer?

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He'd served six months in prison, lost his truck license for a decade.

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I forgot my discretion.

NOTE Paragraph

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"Um, Abed," I said,

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"I thought you had a few driving issues before the crash."

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:38.957 --> 00:13:42.918
"Well," he said, "I once went 60 in a 40."

00:13:42.918 --> 00:13:46.319
And so 27 violations --

00:13:46.319 --> 00:13:49.024
driving through a red light, driving at excessive speed,

00:13:49.024 --> 00:13:51.006
driving on the wrong side of a barrier,

00:13:51.006 --> 00:13:53.046
and finally, riding his brakes down that hill --

00:13:53.046 --> 00:13:55.504
reduced to one.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:55.504 --> 00:13:58.991
And it was then I understood that no matter how stark the reality,

00:13:58.991 --> 00:14:02.106
the human being fits it into a narrative that is palatable.

00:14:02.106 --> 00:14:06.023
The goat becomes the hero. The perpetrator becomes the victim.

00:14:06.023 --> 00:14:12.727
It was then I understood that Abed would never apologize.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:12.727 --> 00:14:16.023
Abed and I sat with our coffee.

00:14:16.023 --> 00:14:18.815
We'd spent 90 minutes together,

00:14:18.815 --> 00:14:21.177
and he was now known to me.

00:14:21.177 --> 00:14:23.545
He was not a particularly bad man

00:14:23.545 --> 00:14:25.878
or a particularly good man.

00:14:25.878 --> 00:14:28.036
He was a limited man

00:14:28.036 --> 00:14:31.066
who'd found it within himself to be kind to me.

00:14:31.066 --> 00:14:32.576
With a nod to Jewish custom,

00:14:32.576 --> 00:14:36.523
he told me that I should live to be 120 years old.

00:14:36.523 --> 00:14:38.344
But it was hard for me to relate to one who had

00:14:38.344 --> 00:14:41.642
so completely washed his hands of his own calamitous doing,

00:14:41.642 --> 00:14:46.006
to one whose life was so unexamined that he said

00:14:46.006 --> 00:14:50.781
he thought two people had died in the crash.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:53.012 --> 00:14:56.636
There was much I wished to say to Abed.

00:14:56.636 --> 00:15:00.341
I wished to tell him that, were he to acknowledge my disability,

00:15:00.341 --> 00:15:02.516
it would be okay,

00:15:02.516 --> 00:15:04.314
for people are wrong to marvel

00:15:04.314 --> 00:15:07.556
at those like me who smile as we limp.

00:15:07.556 --> 00:15:11.492
People don't know that they have lived through worse,

00:15:11.492 --> 00:15:15.154
that problems of the heart hit with a force greater than a runaway truck,

00:15:15.154 --> 00:15:17.505
that problems of the mind are greater still,

00:15:17.505 --> 00:15:21.681
more injurious, than a hundred broken necks.

00:15:21.681 --> 00:15:24.531
I wished to tell him that what makes most of us who we are

00:15:24.531 --> 00:15:26.032
most of all

00:15:26.032 --> 00:15:28.465
is not our minds and not our bodies

00:15:28.465 --> 00:15:30.273
and not what happens to us,

00:15:30.273 --> 00:15:33.135
but how we respond to what happens to us.

00:15:33.135 --> 00:15:35.713
"This," wrote the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl,

00:15:35.713 --> 00:15:37.530
"is the last of the human freedoms:

00:15:37.530 --> 00:15:42.430
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."

00:15:42.430 --> 00:15:45.254
I wished to tell him that not only paralyzers

00:15:45.254 --> 00:15:49.125
and paralyzees must evolve, reconcile to reality,

00:15:49.125 --> 00:15:51.102
but we all must --

00:15:51.102 --> 00:15:55.988
the aging and the anxious and the divorced and the balding

00:15:55.988 --> 00:15:59.833
and the bankrupt and everyone.

00:15:59.833 --> 00:16:02.438
I wished to tell him that one does not have to say

00:16:02.438 --> 00:16:04.454
that a bad thing is good,

00:16:04.454 --> 00:16:07.002
that a crash is from God and so a crash is good,

00:16:07.002 --> 00:16:08.693
a broken neck is good.

00:16:08.693 --> 00:16:11.953
One can say that a bad thing sucks,

00:16:11.953 --> 00:16:16.075
but that this natural world still has many glories.

00:16:16.075 --> 00:16:21.101
I wished to tell him that, in the end, our mandate is clear:

00:16:21.101 --> 00:16:24.328
We have to rise above bad fortune.

00:16:24.328 --> 00:16:27.354
We have to be in the good and enjoy the good,

00:16:27.354 --> 00:16:33.238
study and work and adventure and friendship -- oh, friendship --

00:16:33.238 --> 00:16:37.007
and community and love.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:37.007 --> 00:16:39.766
But most of all, I wished to tell him

00:16:39.766 --> 00:16:42.135
what Herman Melville wrote,

00:16:42.135 --> 00:16:45.062
that "truly to enjoy bodily warmth,

00:16:45.062 --> 00:16:48.119
some small part of you must be cold,

00:16:48.119 --> 00:16:50.422
for there is no quality in this world

00:16:50.422 --> 00:16:53.714
that is not what it is merely by contrast."

00:16:53.714 --> 00:16:56.155
Yes, contrast.

00:16:56.155 --> 00:16:58.494
If you are mindful of what you do not have,

00:16:58.494 --> 00:17:01.722
you may be truly mindful of what you do have,

00:17:01.722 --> 00:17:05.616
and if the gods are kind, you may truly enjoy what you have.

00:17:05.616 --> 00:17:08.045
That is the one singular gift you may receive

00:17:08.045 --> 00:17:11.016
if you suffer in any existential way.

00:17:11.016 --> 00:17:13.345
You know death, and so may wake each morning

00:17:13.345 --> 00:17:15.375
pulsing with ready life.

00:17:15.375 --> 00:17:16.970
Some part of you is cold,

00:17:16.970 --> 00:17:20.469
and so another part may truly enjoy what it is to be warm,

00:17:20.469 --> 00:17:23.391
or even to be cold.

00:17:23.391 --> 00:17:25.415
When one morning, years after the crash,

00:17:25.415 --> 00:17:28.198
I stepped onto stone and the underside of my left foot

00:17:28.198 --> 00:17:31.661
felt the flash of cold, nerves at last awake,

00:17:31.661 --> 00:17:36.948
it was exhilarating, a gust of snow.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:36.948 --> 00:17:40.184
But I didn't say these things to Abed.

00:17:40.184 --> 00:17:44.985
I told him only that he had killed one man, not two.

00:17:44.985 --> 00:17:49.459
I told him the name of that man.

00:17:49.459 --> 00:17:53.272
And then I said, "Goodbye."

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:53.272 --> 00:17:55.189
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:55.189 --> 00:18:01.924
(Applause)

00:18:01.924 --> 00:18:04.660
Thanks a lot.

00:18:04.660 --> 00:18:08.660
(Applause)