Across the Great Divide

Fridays with Abdi.

I was never a bad guy, he tells me, but I was surrounded by it. 

Now, he says, he has left it behind. But what has taken its place?

Abdi half in shadow in the back

Abdi and I stand in back of Peace House. The late afternoon sun has changed the cold pavement from something to flee into somewhere to linger.

He has a new bike. I joke that I don't recognize it because there's no U-lock clamped on the front fork. He rode his last bike for a year only able to turn in one direction because the key had broken off in the lock. We tried various strategies to remove it, but the best solution proved to be accepting that once again he was out of luck.

His bike before that was stolen after he was assaulted in a park. This too he accepted. After all, he's already gimped from a car accident. What is he going to do to three young guys?

He is not a bad guy, but it follows him. 

How do you live a fulfilling life after you have screwed up too many times, suffer pain from a bad back, travel exposed through dangerous neighborhoods you don't have the means to leave?

You have to learn the way as you go.

He tells me about a trip to Mall of America where he walks as if in a dream, moving between this life and the next, not quite alive, not yet dead. He was high and he is old. Not that old, but too old to pretend he can start fresh. Too young to embrace the end, but old enough to see reasons to consider a short cut.

If you had kids, it would be different, he says. You would want to see how things turn out. But the days are pretty much the same. Abdi has no kids, and he has no illusion about how things end. He considers prayer, more as a good intention than a quid pro quo.

I nod in commiseration. We have no delusions about the ultimate future. Meanwhile, we like standing here in the sun talking about matters at the edge of consequence.

He has girl friend. Sometimes he visits, not intending to stay the night, but he sits in her rocking chair and thinks, this is better than mine. Her television is bigger than mine. He falls asleep and then wakes again at 1 a.m. and it is too late to go home.

That's how you know you are getting old, I say. You spend the night because your woman has a bigger television.

We laugh, and it reminds me of a few weeks ago when we were in the library, laughing about something. Suddenly, Abdi grew quiet. I forget now exactly what he said, but he had noticed a woman across the room involved in a tearful phone call. Abdi did not want our laughter to disrespect her pain.

He was never a bad guy, but now he is a good man. If only that were enough to smooth the years ahead, to fill the days as he rides through the park or walks the mall or heads to his girl friend's for a good night's sleep, only to wake again and stare down the midnight hours.

He walks in the door here most Fridays, and when he doesn't, I miss him. I suppose I should say so.

 

Daylight at the Oasis.

My occasional dispatches from Peace House Community come from a place of hope and positivity. I write of poignant moments and decent impulses, since there is already enough pain and darkness to go around.

But this picture is incomplete. A tough neighborhood surrounds us, overseen by imperfect, fragmented systems and buttressed by a safety net made of shoestrings.

Photo: Mike Hazard

Yesterday, we learned about the death of a longtime community member, Peter, who had earlier in the week fixed our dishwasher. Street word, though immediate, can be inaccurate, and several theories floated. What's undeniable is that he has struggled with addiction and was found dead in his vehicle, which he used generously to transport people.

I got my first view of the new fence surrounding the back of Peace House and our parking lot. Since the police shut down nighttime stays in a nearby park, our back porch has increasingly become an overnight shelter for drug activity unwelcome on the block. Our lockbox for the key has been pried off the wall. Some mornings, the pavement is filthy with urine, vomit, needles and trash.

Last week, disgruntled men who had been banned for violence cut two tires of a volunteer. The fenceposts were in place, but the fencing itself came too late.

Also yesterday, police converged down the alley to arrest drug dealers believed responsible for recent overdose deaths in a nearby apartment building. The street drugs have become cheaper, more plentiful, unpredictable and lethal. Their marketing is inescapable if your background and addiction have consigned you to this poor neighborhood.

In our meditation yesterday, a recovering heroin addict told how dealers offered her free samples on the street and, after she refused, they followed her and threw in baggies of the drug when she opened her apartment door.

We want to be a good neighbor, and we certainly don't want to be blamed for bad actors who use our building to shield themselves from the street or congregate on the vacant lot across the alley. So we repair vandalism, install security cameras, erect fences and contribute to the cost of night patrols, spending money from a spartan budget that could better be used to benefit people. 

Or could it?

An oasis can only exist in the desert. Peace in a war zone is most precious. Our candles have no effect in well-lighted places. So we head for the danger and, almost miraculously, it disappears for awhile.