We can’t split something off when we’re surrounded by it. The same forces flattening Gaza are showing up here under different names—economic inequality, xenophobia, the rollback of human rights. I’m trying to bridge the divide between denial and collapse, to find ways of staying engaged without turning away.
My brother, Mamoun, was murdered in Khartoum. I write as a Sudanese psychotherapist, sister, and witness, carrying a grief that lives in my bones. This war has ruptured not only bodies and homes but our sense of self and belonging. To write is an act of refusal—a way to remember, to mourn, and to insist on life amid death.
The folks in the images appearing with this essay hold the traumas of racism, immigration, natural disaster and genocide. I show these faces because they reflect experiences of trauma so many of us Americans contain, directly or intergenerationally. I point to these images also to reflect on the ongoing fact that Donald Trump and his supporters’ aggressive words, policies and actions
against these already vulnerable people — against what is vulnerable in us all — has been traumatizing or re traumatizing for far too many.
With 25.4% of the United States population identifying as Evangelical Christian, and with 81% of Evangelicals voting for Trump, we cannot afford Freud’s attitude quoted here in the left side bar. Where religious…