ustxtxb_obs_2001_11_09_50_00030-00000_000.pdf

them, according to publishing industry sales figureshave spent the last two decades lapping books off the shelves of religious stores, and lately Barnes & Noble: books whose exissecular media barely acknowledges. Books that issue a siren call of End Time theory and scenarios of the Second Coming, and which lovingly prophesy bloodbath in the Middle East, ancillary carnage in America, hellfires in Israel, and everything culminating in the Rapture, Gog, Magog, the Antichrist and finally, the welcome return of the Messiah. Go to any Christian store or onto Amazon.com and you will find this stuff selling like hotcakes, as it has been for years. Even people who don’t buy are sticking flags in their yards, lighting candles, asking everyone to pray. The editor of Vanity Fair announces that henceforth, the slick Internet and newsstand journals of comment and culture will cease printing irony. Ironythat smart-ass mocker of God, so irksome yet so heady, like the smell of one’s own B.O. No more irony, much more God. On some deep, primitive level, people comforted by September 11 even as we are utterly panicked by it. The anthropologists call it magical thinking. We explain what we don’t understand by weaving hindsight webs of “prophesy” or by arbitrarily connecting unrelated facts that all supposedly point to some sin we committed. In my case, the sin is this: I left for New York, taking my son from quiet streets in Texas where he was doing wheelies in the twilight with other little boys, and now he has run from death. I left even though I knew my father’s days in Houston were numbered, and now his grandchildren are too scared of planes to attend the funeral. I left because I wanted Jewish Irony. I was bored and offended by Christians and “WWJD” bracelets. Now my divinity is the Great God Anthrax. My father used to tell me not to go, because “In New York, the help take your money and act like they’re doing you a big favor taking it.” “That’s exactly what I like about it,” I would answer, though not to his face. He had a picture of FDR on the wall, and he was from a place where the help take your money and act like you’re doing them the favor. I’ve always been a Texan who hated Texas etiquette. Still, I’ve been such a good daughter. For years I went to Temple every single Saturday \(the executive producer of “West Wing” was in my young girl learning all the stories and prayers of the Old Testament. Sure, I had big and little rebellions. Once I sneaked into a synagogue kitchen and mixed up all the milk and meat plates. Later I turned very .Marxist, and when my dad and I argued about Keynes and the Depression, I got so ironic that he threw a square carton of lemon custard ice cream at me. It missed, and today as he lies dying, I am convinced that I am the Whore of Babylon who has brought deadly aerosoled bacteria to the world. I am wholly aware that this is wholly insanemy mix of repressed religiosity and tedious narcissism. But in this epoch of growing Christian, Islamic, ewish and other fundamentalisms, the sacred and the egocentric may be premiere elements of terror. How brilliant of our terrorists: Not only did they disappear 6,000 people, they also sucked us closer to the God of Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Nostradamus, and handwriting analysis. Right now I am waiting at the bier for my father’s eyes to close so I can push away from Godstop being as downcast as a veiled woman, and soft-voiced with grief, and riven to rabbis and hospital television sets with their white noise of sanctimony and fear. I want to start reading little, woolly journals of political analysis again. I want books by the likes of Edward Said. I want to know about Afghanistan and oil and Israel. I want to forget my family and Texas. I want to be smart-ass again, and brave. My sister and I sit by the deathbed, whispering against what Bush has taken lately to calling the “Abrahamic faith” of our great country. She and I were always the scandal of our Texas clan: the sharp-tongued, difficult girls, the ones who wouldn’t be nice. That phone hotline I set up in NewYork? One call had the irony I crave. That caller I told you about in the beginningthe one who feels like his balls have been bombed. “Man. I feel violated!” he kept repeating about his testicles. Violated!!” “And man,” he continued, “I loved those little bitches! I loved the towers.” I loved those little bitches, too, and wonder what will take their place. Debbie Nathan’s father was buried in. Houston on September 28. In my case, the sin is this: I left for New York, taking my son from quiet streets in Texas where he was doing wheelies in the twilight with other little boys, and now he has run from death. I left even though I knew my father’s days in Houston were numbered, and now his grandchildren are too scared of planes to attend the funeral. I left because I wanted Jewish Irony. I was bored and offended by Christians and “WWJD” bracelets. Now my divinity is the Great God Anthrax. 30 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 11/9/01