Tayari's Blog: Lest We Forget

Not only did our government fail to answer the call of its most vulnerable citizens during that fateful period; it still fails each and every day to rebuild, redeem and rescue those who are ignored because of their poverty, their race, their passage into old age

I remember, being there at the Convention Center, there was not a single person in sight. There never was in those days. I put my face up to the glass. Inside, it was as though Judgment Day had come and gone, everyone vanished. And no one had touched a thing since. There was an ungodly amount of food, sodas, water, cigarettes, shoes, bedding, these last posessions they had after losing everything else, all of it covered in flies, millions of them flitting about lazily. Two torn pages were pressed up against the window with a pillow. They were from the Bible, The Book of Lamentations.