March 5, 2017

D E P A R T M E N T O F

J U S T I F I C A T I O N

The uncertain future of truth and justice at the nations top law-enforcement agency. By Emily Bazelon
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March 5, 2017

First Words Click Bait The internet has spent decades reckoning with the By Amanda Hess
11 troll that anonymous terror. But what happens now that
the worst side of the web is at the center of national politics?

On Technology Stapled Attraction The internet should have made zines By Jenna Wortham
14 obsolete. Their resilience shows the limitations of the web as
a place to nurture young creativity.

Letter of Arroyos As is the case with so many of natures once-rare By Noah Gallagher Shannon
18 Recommendation features, some scientists think climate change and resource
depletion will make more rivers more ephemeral.

11 26 22

The Ethicist Smoke Screen Should you tell Uber your driver was high? By Kwame Anthony Appiah
20
Diagnosis Black Thumb For years, the womans arthritis was under By Lisa Sanders, M.D.
22 control, and she could work in her garden. But then a rash
appeared and crippled her hand. Why?

Lives Strangers on a Train Discomfort and deliverance along an By Raq Ebrahim

25 18-hour route through Pakistan.

Eat The Swedish Season A casserole of caramelized cabbage and By Sam Sifton
26 juicy meatloaf builds a bridge between winter and spring.

Talk Evan McMullin The former presidential candidate Interview by Ana Marie Cox
62 and co-founder of Stand Up Republic is very concerned.

Behind the Cover Jake Silverstein, editor in chief: The illustration depicts the Department of Justice 8 Contributors 58 Puzzles
under a stormy night sky, with a single mysterious light on in an upstairs window a foreboding scene 9 The Thread 60 Puzzles
that captures President Trumps dark vision of a nation under threat. Illustration by Owen Freeman. 17 Poem (Puzzle answers on Page 59)
19 Tip
20 Judge John
Hodgman

4 Continued on Page 6
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March 5, 2017

The Revealer Through his stripped-down, radically humane approach to By Sasha Weiss
28 theater, the director Sam Gold has found a new dimension of
a classic American play.

Department of Stephen Bannon and Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general, have By Emily Bazelon
36 Justification long shared a vision for remaking America. Now the nations
top law-enforcement agency can serve as a tool for enacting it.

How to Steal a River To feed an enormous building boom, Indias relentless By Rollo Romig
42 sand miners have devastated the waterways that make life
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PAGE 42

6 Copyright 2017 The New York Times

Contributors

Sasha Weiss The Revealer, Editor in Chief JAKE SILVERSTEIN

Page 28 Deputy Editors JESSICA LUSTIG,
BILL WASIK
Managing Editor ERIKA SOMMER
Sasha Weiss is a story editor for the magazine.
Design Director GAIL BICHLER
She has also been the literary editor of Director of Photography KATHY RYAN
The New Yorkers website and an editor at Features Editor ILENA SILVERMAN
The New York Review of Books. Growing Politics Editor CHARLES HOMANS

up, she acted in plays and musicals but stopped Story Editors NITSUH ABEBE,
MICHAEL BENOIST,
when she realized she liked rehearsing more
SHEILA GLASER,
than performing. While interviewing the theater CLAIRE GUTIERREZ,
director Sam Gold for her article in this LUKE MITCHELL,
weeks issue, Weiss discovered that they had DEAN ROBINSON,

that in common. It was reading and rereading WILLY STALEY,

SASHA WEISS
the lines of a play that I loved, Weiss said.
Special Projects Editor CAITLIN ROPER
Gold told me this is the part he loves too, and
Associate Editors JEANNIE CHOI,
you can see how deeply he and the actors JAZMINE HUGHES
understand every nuance of every word. Gold Chief National Correspondent MARK LEIBOVICH
Photographed by Kathy Ryan at The New York Times on Feb. 17, is as much a literary critic as he is a director. Staff Writers SAM ANDERSON,
2017, at 4:24 p.m. EMILY BAZELON,
SUSAN DOMINUS,
MAUREEN DOWD,
Emily Bazelon Department Emily Bazelon is a staff writer for the magazine NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES,
of Justication, and the Truman Capote fellow at Yale Law JONATHAN MAHLER,
Page 36
School. She last wrote about Justice Antonin WESLEY MORRIS,

Scalias skeptical views on science. JENNA WORTHAM

Writers at Large C. J. CHIVERS,
JIM RUTENBERG
Wyatt Mason Telling the Truth, Wyatt Mason is a contributing writer for the
David Carr Fellows JOHN HERRMAN,
Page 50 magazine and teaches at Bard College. GREG HOWARD
He last wrote a Letter of Recommendation Art Director MATT WILLEY
for audiobooks read by the author. Deputy Art Director JASON SFETKO
Designers FRANK AUGUGLIARO,
BEN GRANDGENETT,
Rollo Romig How to Steal a River, Rollo Romig is a journalist based in New
CHLOE SCHEFFE
Page 42 York. He last wrote for the magazine about the Digital Designer LINSEY FIELDS
Indian politician Jayalalithaa Jayaram. Deputy Photo Editor JESSICA DIMSON
Associate Photo Editors STACEY BAKER,

Noah Gallagher Letter of Recommendation, Noah Gallagher Shannon is a writer AMY KELLNER,

Shannon Page 18 based in New York and teaches composition CHRISTINE WALSH
Virtual Reality Editor JENNA PIROG
at Columbia University.
Photo Assistant KAREN HANLEY
Copy Chief ROB HOERBURGER

Dear Reader: Would You Rather Copy Editors HARVEY DICKSON,

DANIEL FROMSON,

Know About Peoples Sex Lives MARGARET PREBULA,

ANDREW WILLETT

or Their Wealth? Head of Research

Research Editors
NANDI RODRIGO
DAN KAUFMAN,
Every week the magazine publishes the ROBERT LIGUORI,
results of a study conducted online in June RENE MICHAEL,

by The New York Timess research-and- LIA MILLER,

analytics department, reecting the opinions STEVEN STERN,

MARK VAN DE WALLE
of 2,563 subscribers who chose to participate. 73% 27%
Id rather know Id rather know Production Chief ANICK PLEVEN
This weeks question: Would you rather how much money how many people they Production Editors PATTY RUSH,
know how much money people have or how they have have slept with HILARY SHANAHAN
many people they have slept with? Editorial Assistant LIZ GERECITANO BRINN

Publisher: ANDY WRIGHT Associate Publisher: DOUG LATINO Advertising Directors: MARIA ELIASON (Luxury and Retail) MICHAEL GILBRIDE (Fashion, Luxury, Beauty and Home) SHARI KAPLAN (Live
Entertainment and Books) NANCY KARPF (Fine Arts and Education) MAGGIE KISELICK (Automotive, Technology and Telecom) SCOTT M. KUNZ (International Fashion) CHRISTOPHER REAM (Studios) JOHN

RIGGIO (Recruitment) JOSH SCHANEN (Media and Travel) ROBERT SCUDDER (Advocacy) SARAH THORPE (Corporate, Health Care, Liquor and Packaged Goods) BRENDAN WALSH (Finance and
Real Estate) National Sales Office Advertising Directors: KYLE AMICK (Atlanta/Southeast) LAUREN FUNKE (Florida/Southeast) DOUG LATINO (Detroit) CHRISTOPHER REAM (Los Angeles/San Francisco/
Northwest) JEAN ROBERTS (Boston/Northeast) JIMMY SAUNDERS (Chicago/Midwest) ROBERT SCUDDER (Washington) KAREN FARINA (Magazine Director) MARILYN M C CAULEY (Managing Director,
Specialty Printing) THOMAS GILLESPIE (Manager, Magazine Layout). To advertise, email karen.farina@nytimes.com.

8 3.5.17
 The Thread

Readers respond to the 2.19.2017 issue.
RE: RUDENESS
Rachel Cusk pondered what it means to
be polite.
This is absolute poetry and touches me
(and many like me, Im sure) in a very
deep and meaningful way. I have been
ummoxed at the level of rudeness weve
embraced culturally, startled by my own
failings in this department as of late
and worried that we are on some sick
carousel that is only making us sicker.
Sometimes I envy those who, by choice
or nature, can ignore the complexities of
these worlds that we occupy and simply
go about their business, rose-coloreds
and all. And I dont think this skill is nec-
essarily reserved for, or derives from,
privilege. Its a gift that, right about now,
I could really use.
Lynn Rice Scozzafava, Torrington, Conn.
Rachel Cusk describes the rudeness
of the airport employee as he directs
the crowds into the proper line and of
another employee as she bangs the gray
plastic trays . . . onto the conveyor belt.
The author decries her own rudeness to
a saleswoman who was just trying to be
helpful. A long, tedious article describing
the rudeness in these sad times.
Lets cut to the chase: We are living
in Donald Trumps world, where rude-
ness is the new orange. During the
pre-election debates, Trump displayed
a surprising lack of knowledge about
policy and practically anything else. He
tried to distract viewers from his igno-
rance by his use of rudeness toward his
fellow candidates. It was entertaining
at rst, but now that we are forced to
observe his rudeness on a daily basis for
Photo illustration by Craig Cutler
the next four rudeness-lled years, it is
not so funny anymore. I am shocked that
a man with an orange face and orange
hair who is unable to put a proper sen-
tence together without the assistance
of a teleprompter and who shows no
empathy for anyone has used rudeness
to follow the orange brick road to the
White House. Oh, am I being rude?
Bonnie Pollak, New York
the article yet, but
department seems
than our ambulatory
@DrMoghtaderi
RE: ON SPORTS
Jay Caspian Kang parsed an age-old ques-
tion: Should athletes just stick to sports?
The headline on Jay Caspian Kangs
recent essay Should Athletes Stick to
Sports? is provocative. Its also insult-
ing. Dont athletes have the same First
Amendment rights as the rest of us?
Do we ask carpenters to stick to car-
pentry? Pilots to stick to ying? Dentists
to stick to dentistry? Heres the deal: A
lot of fans use sports as an escape mech-
anism for getting away from the issues of
the day. As such, they dont like it when
athletes talk about topics beyond why
their team won or lost that days game.
Change requires activism because
those in power are comfortable with
the status quo. Athletes, like many
Americans, are starting to realize this.
Were experiencing a new wave of ath-
lete activism unlike anything weve seen
since the civil rights era of the 60s,
when Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, John
are entertainers and icons of leisure, and
they should stick to their roles in society.
It is disrespectful and dumbing down
to tell athletes to shut up and play. As peo-
ple in the limelight, they have a particu-
lar public inuence. The public notices
when N.F.L. players decide to do some-
THE COVER,
thing outside the bounds of the game:
ON TWITTER Colin Kaepernick inuenced thousands
of young people across America to take
Havent read
a knee during their own games, which
@NYTmag art created a wave of acute consciousness.
The public notices when Tom Brady does
better stocked not go to the White House to meet with
surgery center. the nations rst African-American pres-
ident. I am sure he is reviled and loved
equally for such an action.
Athletes are not merely exquisite bod-
ies; they are human beings with minds
and hearts. The dysfunction surrounding
our countrys recent election is saturat-
ing everything in its wake. Sports oer
places where people can come togeth-
er, yet sports are intrinsically tied to the
society we have. The tapestry of political
impulses in a sea of sports fans at a live
game is temporarily suspended while we
watch our beloved games. But when we
walk to our cars or public transit, every-
thing creeps back, and we are in this new
nightmare, players included.
Kim Anno, Berkeley, Calif.
Why single out athletes? What about
singers, actors and other relatively unin-
formed celebrities? I treat an opinion by

Carlos and Tommie Smith rocked our
world. Bring it on! If history is any indi-
cation, the world will become a better
place for it.
Ken Reed, Littleton, Colo.
The headline is written with the implica-
tion that, after all is said and done, athletes
Dont athletes an athlete the same way I would treat an
opinion by the man in the street. Know-
have the ing how to play football doesnt exactly
same First make you a pundit, but it doesnt take
Amendment away your freedom of speech either.
Paolo Martini, Milan, Italy
rights as
the rest of us? Send your thoughts to magazine@nytimes.com.

Illustrations by Giacomo Gambineri 9

How the news should sound.
A daily audio report on demand.
Hosted by Michael Barbaro.
This moment in history requires an explanation.
So weve created an audio show that seeks
one. Hosted by seasoned political journalist
Michael Barbaro, The Daily delivers an
educated, engaging take on the stories making
headlines. Fifteen minutes a day, five days
a week, youll hear incisive commentary and
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First Words

The internet has spent decades reckoning with the troll that anonymous terror who will
do anything to goad and incite. But what happens now that the worst side of the web is at
the center of national politics? By Amanda Hess

Click Bait
Over the course of Donald Trumps staggering political rise, observers
tried to make sense of him by borrowing a metaphor from the internet:
Trump, they said, was a troll. He was described as turning presidential
aspirants into Twitter trolls (by a primary challenger, Marco Rubio),
as the worlds greatest troll (by the data whiz Nate Silver) and, after
his inauguration, as our Troll-in-Chief (by the liberal pundit Tour).
Each was meant as a dig: The troll is the bottom-feeder of internet
culture, not a hero. But Trump himself gladly owned the slur. When
a Twitter user called him the most superior troll on the platform
back in 2013, Trump replied, A great compliment! Trolling isnt
just about manning an unhinged Twitter account. It describes an
ethos. The troll is a gure who skips across the web, saying whatever
it takes to rile up unsuspecting targets, relishing the chaos in his
wake and feasting on attention, good or bad. For Trump, that means
inciting political panic with glib news conferences, all-caps tweets
and made-up terrorist attacks, shifting his beliefs to suit his whims.
During the campaign, the ambiguity of this spectacle worked to his
3.5.17 11
First Words

advantage, freeing his supporters from

their own responsibilities: When he
called for a 2,000-mile-long wall or sug-
gested banning an entire religion from
entering the country, the sheer extremity
of these ideas let voters view them as
goading performances instead of real
plans. And with every political shrug,
the webs most antisocial sensibility
rose further into the heights of Amer-
ican public life.
Now that the trolling ethos has inl-
trated the actual core of government,
whole systems are being forced to
improvise around Trumps inscrutable
center. He is a frequently insincere and
unserious person, placed in the most
serious of positions. Politicians on the
right nd themselves staking claims on
Trumps throwaway accusations, pre-
tending that massive vote fraud exists or
that angry constituents at town halls are
paid protesters. Journalists wrestle with
late-night tweets that carry the weight of
the presidency but also seem designed
only to enrage and confuse. What does it
mean for the American presidency itself
to become a fake out?

Troll culture was forged in the primor-

dial ooze of the internet, in a time when
online social interaction took place in roll-
ing walls of text. In 1993, LambdaMOO, a
popular virtual community, was besieged
by a user called Mr. Bungle, a character
dressed as a clown in a semen-stained
costume. One evening, Mr. Bungle used
a programming trick to make it appear
as if other users were performing violent
sex acts on one another. Later, when his
targets demanded an explanation, Mr.
Bungle typed: It was purely a sequence
of events with no consequence on my RL
real life existence. He was just mess-
ing with people, delighting in the power
to provoke reactions from a remove. And
because everyone involved could just log
o, those left shaken by words on a com-
puter screen were made to feel silly. As
one commentator said during the ensuing
controversy, I think that freedom would
be well served by simple toughening up.
Mr. Bungle was a lone wolf, but troll-
ing could also be a communal activity.
On 1990s Usenet groups, users would
post in-jokes and provocations in a bid
to ush out nave newcomers. And with
4chan, an anonymous, anime-obsessed
message board started by a teenager in
2003, trolling charged beyond its online
vicinity and into the oline lives of distant
strangers. In the most notorious incident,
4chan trolls latched onto a Myspace page
memorializing a seventh-grader who
had killed himself, ridiculing the childs
recent disappointments and seizing on
grammatical errors in posts from mourn-
ers. (One had called him an hero.) Soon dont. The people
they were placing harassing phone calls
to the boys parents and snapping prank
photos at his grave.
Internet trolls work by exploiting the
gap between the virtual and the real. They
oat, weightless and anonymous, across
the web, then reach out and rattle people
who are pinned down by xed ideologies,
moral codes and human emotions. Any
attachment to principles even really
basic ones like dont torture grieving
parents gives the troll an opening.
Stretching back to Mr. Bungle, trolling
was always about the distance between
people who care and people who dont.
Trolling was The people who cared always lost. Often,
they were counseled to detach as much as
always about the trolls had: to withhold their outrage,
the distance to not feed the trolls, to pretend there
between people was a real distinction between doing hor-
rible things and meaning them. So the
who care trolls scampered on to their next targets,
and people who amassing more followers along the way.
It was during the summer of 2014 that
who cared internet trolling boiled over into a main-
always lost. stream crisis. It began with a seething,
accusatory blog post about a video-game
developer named Zoe Quinn, written by
an ex-boyfriend. What seemed like a small,
personal conict managed to explode into
a culture war, complete with bomb threats
and harassment campaigns. First came the
nihilistic trolls, some even hoping to com-
pel Quinn to an hero herself tittering
4chan code for committing suicide. But
as #GamerGate, as it came to be called,
grew, it coalesced into a movement that
looked awfully political. Despite their

12 3.5.17 Photograph by Derek Brahney

self-presentation as ciphers, trolls have are completely unaware of the absurdity Performance ironic. These days even David Duke,
always had a point of view, and #Gamer- of their replies, he wrote in the 1944 essay a sincere and straightforward white
Gate oered a platform for a whole coa- Anti-Semite and Jew. They are amusing art can be so supremacist, is sharing racist memes and
lition to express its distrust of media, themselves, for it is their adversary who is hard for normal getting called a troll. But when Spencer
resentment toward women and anger at obliged to use words responsibly, since he people to showed up in Washington for the inau-
progressive critiques of racism and misog- believes in words. Anti-Semites delight in guration, explaining his Pepe lapel pin
yny. They had demands, too: They worked acting in bad faith, since they seek not to understand. to the press, a masked protester ran up
to get journalists red, to pressure adver- persuade by sound argument but to intim- and collapsed all that ironic distance by
tisers, to silence feminist critics. idate and disconcert. punching him in the face.
To outsiders, #GamerGate looked like Recently weve witnessed a resurgence Trolls work through abstraction,
a cesspool of angry, entitled young men of this winking Nazi type. PewDiePie, a leveraging the internet and irony to
nobody else wanted to talk to. But some wildly popular YouTube video-game star, carve out a space between actions and
right-wing gures spied an opportunity. lmed a prank in which he hired two consequences. Becoming president has
Mike Cernovich, author of a hypermas- men to hold up a sign that said Death to blown Trumps cover: Theres nothing
culine self-help blog called Danger and All Jews. Pepe the Frog, an online car- more consequential than this. Trolls are
Play, joined the cause. (I use trolling toon that morphed into a 4chan meme, typically outsiders, and sad ones: They
tactics to build my brand, he later told has been co-opted by plugged-in fascists dont t into the dominant group, so they
The New Yorker.) So did Milo Yiannopou- who redraw him with swastikas for eyes. terrorize it from the sidelines. Part of
los, then writing for the website Breit- And after the white nationalist Richard what makes Trumps administration so
bart News, which helped midwife the Spencer, a man who has voiced support alarming is that the troll sensibility now
controversy from a fringe freakout to a for peaceful ethnic cleansing, yelled dominates. And when that happens, its
right-wing political perspective. (I hurt Hail Trump at a Washington confer- reminiscent of what Sartre described:
people for a reason, he said recently. I ence and received Nazi salutes from No reason, no principle, just the pure
like to think of myself as a virtuous troll.) crowd members, he claimed it was all exercise of power.
Donald Trump saw political promise in
this world, too: As his White House bid
seemed on the brink of collapse last sum-
mer, he found a new campaign manager in
the Breitbart executive chairman Stephen
K. Bannon, a sincere nationalist with troll-
ing tendencies of his own.
Now, Bannon sits on the Nation-
al Security Council, and many Trump
supporters are fusing the trolling ethos
with old culture-war tropes, amusing
themselves by calling liberals delicate
snowakes and delighting at being in
on Trumps joke. As the right-wing col-
umnist John Feehery put it after Trumps
Feb. 16 news conference: Performance
art can be so hard for normal people
to understand. People like Cernovich
who jumped easily from #Gamer-
Gate to the Trump train have taken
to calling their political posture anti-
fragile, Nassim Nicholas Talebs word
for systems that thrive on volatility and
stress. Trump, Taleb has said, is heavi-
ly vaccinated because of his checkered
history nothing new can shame him.
Nothing matters.

The troll gure feels as new as the smart-

phones in our hands, but his trail of
destruction stretches deep into history.
Toward the end of World War II, Jean-
Paul Sartre looked at the anti-Semites of
Europe and saw something that still sounds
familiar. Never believe that anti-Semites
On Technology By Jenna Wortham
The internet should have made zines
obsolete. Their resilience shows
the limitations of the web as a place
to nurture young creativity.
14 3.5.17
As a lonely teenager growing up in Vir-
ginia, I fed o any pop culture that could
show me dierent ways of being from
what I saw on The Cosby Show reruns
or read about in an Ann M. Martin book.
This was the early 2000s, before social
platforms had taken o: LiveJournal was
still in its infancy; Tumblr had not yet
been created. Friendster and Myspace,
the most popular of the networks that did
exist, were more about sharing perfectly
angled photos than having conversations
or bouncing ideas o someone. When,
in college, a spirited English teaching
assistant (who once canceled class for the
week to attend a riot-grrrl punk reunion
show in Washington) introduced me to
zines and the early feminist publish-
ing movement of the 1990s, I felt as if I
had been given a lifeline to the outside
world. Those self-published, unocial
magazines oered tangible glimpses of
radical feminism, social-justice move-
ments, queer history and subcultures that
I always knew existed but had little access
to. The world seemed to open up for me.
In theory, the maturation of the inter-
net should have killed o the desire for
zines entirely. The web is a Gutenberg
press on steroids, predicated on free soft-
ware platforms created by companies that
invest considerable sums to lure people
to their sites and make exactly the kind
of content I craved growing up. Millions,
maybe hundreds of millions, of posts are
published to social-media sites each day.
And yet somehow, it can feel impossible
to engage with new ideas, even as our
compulsive inability to stop scrolling
exposes us to an unending stream of new
content. Yes, you can catch tweetstorms
on Twitter, watch someones life unfold
on Instagram, do deep dives into hashtags
on Tumblr or watch video diaries on You-
Tube that explore diverse perspectives,
but the clutter of everything else happen-
ing at the same time online can make it
dicult to really digest and absorb the
perspective being oered.
Which might be part of the reason
zines never disappeared and are even
available in abundance in 2017. A few
months ago, I walked into a Laundromat
in Brooklyn where a former cellphone
kiosk had been transformed into a fem-
inist queer shop called the Troll Hole. I
was thrilled to nd it stocked with the
same kinds of small booklets I consumed
in college, though much better designed
Illustration by Adam Ferriss In two weeks: On Photography, by Teju Cole
Navigate the
uncertain waters of
the migrant crisis.
Witness firsthand the efforts of the Bourbon Argos as it
conducts the last of 59 African migrant rescue missions in
the Mediterranean in 2016.

The New York Times is using Samsung Gear 360 cameras to

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Experience it at www.nytimes.com/thedaily360
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On Technology
and produced. They contained nonbinary
coming-of-age stories, photo essays fea-
turing gender nonconforming people of
Latin-American descent, trans Muslim
narratives, rst-generation essays, fat-pos-
itive imagery. I scooped up as many as I
could rationally read in one sitting.
Many of the oline zine projects I
came across have some online pres-
ence, too. Sula Collective, for example,
which describes itself as a journal by
and for people of color, actually start-
ed out on the web as an art magazine
for people growing up in the suburbs
and Deep South, as one of its found-
ers, Kassandra Piero, put it to me. It
was meant for anyone who didnt have
access to galleries and events. Piero
is 21, and the only world she has ever
known is one that is also lived partly
online. But she found that publishing on
16 3.5.17
the internet often had the unintended
and unconscious eect of causing her
to cater to the aesthetics of those plat-
forms. The internet should be a place
with no rules, and freedom, but its not,
Piero said. There is a certain pressure
to conform to certain aesthetics. It was
something I had noticed myself. Each
social-media platform tends to reward
certain behaviors and styles of post-
ing, all in the interest of building fans
and followers who are invested in the
performance of a persona (maybe even
more so than the Geppetto-like person
orchestrating it all). Instagram is a place
for intimate-seeming photos, Twitter for
clever quips and collaborative memes.
Facebook demands an unmitigated raw-
ness that can be terrifying at times. With
all, the works are often made to t the
platform, not the other way around.
Illustration by Adam Ferriss
Producing zines Producing zines can oer an unexpected
can offer an
respite from the scrutiny on the inter-
unexpected respite
from the scrutiny net, which can be as oppressive as it is
on the internet. liberating. Shakar Mujukian, publisher
of The Hye-Phen a zine by and about
queer and trans Armenians who, as he
puts it, often feel as ignored and invis-
ible as their motherland told me via
email that just because technology can
fully replace something doesnt mean it
should. He described zines as the pre-
cursor to personal blogs, but personal
blogs have been on the decline over the
last decade. And zines cant get replies or
hateful remarks in a comments section.
Publishing ideas outside the mainstream
can make an author incredibly vulnera-
ble; the web is polluted with a culture
of toxicity that invites attacks. Zines, in
Jenna Wortham
is a sta writer Mujukians vision, are essentially about
for the magazine. reclamation. You get to make your own
 Poem Selected by Matthew Zapruder

media and dene your own narrative in In his debut collection, the poet Chen Chen writes from a position of colliding identities: Chinese, American, gay.
the way you want to and can. He has said his poems are a way for those dierent experiences to come together, for them to be in the same
Karen Gisonny is the periodicals room. Here, the poet uses metaphor to investigate his own hopes and familial disappointments. The poem has the
librarian at the New York Public Library feeling of genuine, uneasy discovery, as if only through writing could he come to know who he is and what he feels.
and specializes in alternative publica-
tions and zines. Weve spoken over the
years about alternative media and the
role that it plays among the people who
make it and consume it. She noted that
zines allow for an element of freedom
thats not beholden to anyone. We think
of the web as a place for freedom, but
with zines, authors control every aspect,
from the design to the distribution.
When I visited her at the library, she
showed me some of her newest acqui-
sitions, which included the rst issue of Self-Portrait as So Much Potential
Dr. RADs Queer Health Show, a guide By Chen Chen
for self-exams and checkups for all gen-
dered bodies, and Blue Collar Review, Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango.
a journal of progressive working-class
literature that is made in Virginia. She As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront.
explained that zines could be seen
as a historical record of the current
moment. To their creators, zines can Realizing I hate the word sip.
feel like necessary means of deance,
even resistance to cultural norms that But thats all I do.
rarely acknowledge them.
Devin N. Morris, who edits and pub- I drink. So slowly.
lishes 3 Dot Zine, told me that he sees
self-publishing as a political and radical
act. Hes a young queer artist from Balti- & say Im tasting it. When Im just bad at taking in liquid.
more, and the zines he creates reect that
experience and create a historical narra- Im no mango or tomato. Im a rusty yawn in a rumored year. Im an arctic attic.
tive that otherwise would be ignored. For
him, the act of creating a zine is more Come amble & ampersand in the slippery polar clutter.
about dening his reality on his terms
and legitimizing it than it is about the
novelty of making indie media and dis- I am not the heterosexual neat freak my mother raised me to be.
tributing it. It was a sentiment I heard
from almost every zine creator I spoke I am a gay sipper, & my mother has placed whats left of her hope on my brothers.
to. Morris, who recently hosted an indie-
press fair at the Museum of Contempo- She wants them to gulp up the world, spit out solid degrees, responsible
rary African Diasporan Arts, said that
grandchildren ready to gobble.
zines have a way of encouraging people
to have inspiring interactions in real
life. He described a hunger to physical- They will be better than mangoes, my brothers.
ly interact beyond simple likes or direct
messages. Social apps werent made to Though I have trouble imagining what that could be.
inspire that desire; they were created so
that there would be no need. Flying mangoes, perhaps. Flying mango-tomato hybrids. Beautiful sons.
And it perhaps reects why zines
can feel so much more intimate than a
Facebook post. The deliberation and care
that goes into making them is important.
The internet is especially adept at com-
pressing humanity and making it easy to Matthew Zapruder is the author of four poetry collections and Why Poetry, coming from Ecco. He teaches poetry at Saint Marys
forget there are people behind tweets, College of California and is editor at large at Wave Books. Chen Chen is a poet whose debut collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be
posts and memes. a List of Further Possibilities, will be published by BOA Editions next month.

Illustration by R. O. Blechman 17
Letter of Recommendation
Arroyos
By Noah Gallagher Shannon
Earlier this year, while driving through
one of those lulling stretches of desert
sameness, on the way to visit family in
Arizona, I came to a river. Or better to
say, I came to a sign that warned me of
an approaching river. A ribbon of trees,
which stood out cloudy green against
the fractal red desert, seemed to cor-
roborate its story. Up here, the scene
said, water. Except that, as I passed
over the rivers otherwise imposing
bridge, the view turned grim. In both
directions ran a broad channel of sand
18 3.5.17
and tumbleweeds, clotted with grass
and littered with logs bent into X forma-
tions, like Czech hedgehogs at a military
checkpoint. Dry, inert and ugly, it didnt
seem to be a river at all.
The river, I gathered, was an ephemer-
al one (sometimes called a wash, a wadi
or, my particular favorite, an arroyo); it
ows with water only occasionally, then
briefly, during rainstorms and after
snowmelt. For most of the year and in
places for many years on end arroyos,
which cross the deserts of the world and
Photograph by Damon Casarez
An ephemeral drain arid mountain ranges, are merely
rivers fullness is
riverbeds or incisions in canyon rock,
achieved not
in spite of volatility tracts of barren ground more desert
but out of it. than river. In the West, where I grew up,
the landscape is etched with them, and
many still bear the disappointment of
the explorers who named them. In 1839,
when the mapmaker David Burr hoped
to chart the course of the Buenaventura,
a fabled waterway linking the Rockies to
the Pacic, he instead wound up draw-
ing dry riverbeds so thoroughly disap-
pointing that he made the sentiment
permanent, giving them names like
Defeat River and Inconstant River.
Deserts teem with paradoxes: Goth-
ic-looking cactuses sprout satiny owers,
some of which are edible; scorching days
give way to nights that dip below freezing;
summer monsoons bring ragged black
clouds, torn along seams of white light-
ning. Growing up in such a landscape, you
end up desensitized to this environmental
duplicity what tourists invariably call
the areas enchantments. Like local fur-
niture commercials, their peculiar charm
soon softens to background noise. If I
thought about arroyos at all, it was as the
sketchy blank spots on the map where
teenagers would sneak cigarettes. Even
after rainfall, when a mountainous slurry
swept the channels, calving away sec-
tions of riverbank and sending boulders
whirling downstream like kids in a water
slide, ephemeral rivers seemed incidental
to the water they carried.
And yet, the dessicated view from
my car brimmed with density. Curious,
I decided to take a hike in the riverbed.
Called the San Pedro Riparian National
Conservation Area, its a 57,000-acre cor-
ridor tracing the San Pedro Rivers mean-
dering path northward out of Mexico to
its conuence with the Gila River near
Phoenix, which it often doesnt reach for
several months at a time. Riparian refers
to the cottonwoods and willows crowd-
ing the San Pedros banks, where javeli-
nas scratch out dens and water collects in
silty rain pools. A pamphlet handed out at
the visitors cottage informed me of 250
species of migratory birds, more than 80
mammals and a Clovis archaeological site
13,000 years old.
As I waded through waist-high bunch
grass, clambering over caked barricades
of branches and mud, I was struck by
the abundance of wilderness uncovered
by a rivers ebb. What remained, after
years of periodic deluges and droughts,
was a landscape cleansed of any sense
of plainness or constancy. Everywhere
huge plugs of earth had been restyled
into swirling modern sculptures, collect-
ing in their furrows piles of dead leaves
and, I feared, live rattlesnakes; trellised
twigs, ung up in the high reaches of
trees by torrents long gone, ltered
down coppery light; and the braided
system of channels and sandbars left me
stumbling, lost, picturing an imminent
wall of water ahead.
Percentage of It felt as though I were hiking through
streams that
an uncanny valley, a place hushed by ruin
are ephemeral,
by state: but humming with growth. As I struggled
Arizona: 94%
upriver, the dierences between wet and
Nevada: 89% dry rivers now seemed coyly supercial.
New Mexico: 88% My folk-song understanding of the river
Utah: 79% as a timeless tableau of placidity had swift-
Colorado: 68%
California: 66% ly been subverted by an appreciation for
the arroyos deant fullness a fullness
achieved not in spite of volatility but out
of it. Recently, after a thousand-year-ood
event in Death Valley retreated, the desert ngers, reaching between bushes and
erupted in luminous carpets of wildow-
ers. In a landscape without visible seasons,
it was a reminder there are some cycles of
loss and rebirth beyond anticipation, and
probably for the better.
As is the case with so many of natures
once-rare features, some scientists think
Tip By Jaime Lowe
How to Start
A Soccer Chant
Start with just a few words chants that
are easy to learn and that are repetitive,
says Max Jack, an ethnomusicologist
who specializes in music and sports at
the University of California, Santa Barba-
ra. Chants like the frequently heard ol,
ol, ol catch on quickly because theyre
simple and often stay within a ve- or six-
note range. But most of the time, chants
are familiar songs that have been adapted:
You might take a melody from a song
you like, and you might just mess around
with the words. For example, fans of
the Shamrock Rovers, a soccer club in
the League of Ireland Premier Division,
changed the chorus of Lykke Lis song
I Follow Rivers to I, I, follow/I follow authority of the chant, and then when
you, Shamrock Rovers. (The same club
has also been known to chant the lyrics to
Illustration by Radio
climate change and resource depletion
will make more rivers more ephemeral
a sublimity too cheaply got. And yet, in
March 2014, the Zin River, a scar of chalky
rock in Israels Negev desert, began for
the rst time in years to ow with water.
A video posted to YouTube captured the
happening in real time: A crowd gathers
on the edges of a sandy wash as a shal-
low body of water materializes upriver.
Slowly, the water lengthens into muddy
spreading over stones, before plunging
over a cli face. There is a miraculous
quality to watching a dry riverbed ll, and
the video circulated online with allusions
to the Bible. Its impossible to freeze just
the right frame, the eeting instant when
a river is reborn.
Build Me Up Buttercup without chang-
ing the lyrics at all. They didnt have their
own home ground, the club went through
all these hardships and the lyrics spoke
to the hardships of the club, Jack says.)
Dont try to start a chant alone. You
need someone to arm your performa-
tive gesture and return it in kind, and
once you can do that, it will grow, Jack
says. You have to nd the people who
come for the atmosphere and not just for
the game. In European soccer culture,
youre there to create this thing and be
in the middle of it. Get on your feet.
Standing is one of the rst components
to starting a chant, Jack says. Ive never
seen it done while sitting down.
Dont limit your chants to the stadi-
um. The most committed supporters go
to every game, Jack says, and will spend
hours on a bus chanting and singing before
they arrive. An entire social life develops
around the primary goal of creating atmo-
sphere, Jack says. You make banners and
ags through the week for the match, and
theyre huge; they might take up a whole
stadium curve behind the goal. That
involves a lot of time spent preparing.
Because the power of the initial chant
inuences how many other fans will fol-
low, show passion. You have to seem
authentic: You cant just shout it loud
people have to see it in your eyes,
Jack says. A group of fans will arm the
you have 50 people chanting, it can total-
ly change the vibe in the stadium.
19
The Ethicist By Kwame Anthony Appiah
Should
I Tell Uber
My Driver
Was High?
While traveling with my daughter
and granddaughters, I booked an Uber
car to go to the airport. When I got in
the car, I smelled marijuana. Because we
were running late and there was a lot
of trac, I stayed in the car, though my
instinct was to get out and order a taxi.
The womans driving was not good,
and when we arrived at the airport,
I told her that she shouldnt smoke weed
when driving passengers. She denied
doing it, and when I told her that her
car smelled, she said it must have been
a passenger. I told her she shouldnt
let her passengers smoke either.
If I report her to Uber, she may lose her
job. She is a black woman with children,
and she just moved to the area. If I dont
report her, there is a risk that she or others
may be injured in her vehicle. Marijuana
is not legal in the state where I hired her,
so there are other ramications, too.
Name Withheld
To submit a query:
Send an email to
ethicist@nytimes Your drivers race or parental status isnt
.com; or send mail
to The Ethicist, The relevant to what you should do. It was her
New York Times responsibility not to violate the terms of
Magazine, 620 her contract with Uber. Yours is to decide
Eighth Avenue, New
whether she put you, your daughter and
York, N.Y. 10018.
(Include a daytime your grandchildren at risk, and if so,
phone number.) whether you should share this with the
20 3.5.17 Illustration by Tomi Um
company that sent her to you. I doubt that My husband often engages in horseplay
your telling Uber your concerns will get
your driver in trouble with the law. But a
serious passenger complaint can get an
with our daughter, who is 9. Sometimes
when shes had enough, she will call
out Stop! or No! even if she instigated
Uber driver deactivated.
Should your driver get the boot? Car
accidents are one of the largest causes of
the tickling or wrestling. My husband
doesnt always stop, saying, Oh, but you
started it! or Youre just trying to get
death in our country. So we should do what
we can to reduce the risks. Unfortunately,
the research on marijuana use and driving
away! Its generally in good fun, although
sometimes it all ends in tears.
If I call him on it, saying, No means
isnt very clear, as the National Institute
on Drug Abuse concedes. A careful study
by the National Highway Trac Safety
no or She said stop, hell usually
tell me not to butt in, that he is her parent,
too. I know he doesnt mean anything
Administration found no significant inappropriate, but in my view, daughters
increased crash risk attributable to can- learn a lot about how to deal with boys
nabis after controlling for a number of and men from their fathers, and he should
factors. Other studies have reached dier- stop, thereby teaching her that her wishes
ent conclusions. What matters is that you should be respected.
thought her driving was not good. Am I overreacting? Am I doing more
Of course your judgment here could be harm than good by my making her dad
biased by your suspicion that she might be uncomfortable? Or is a line being crossed?
high. And a suspicion is all it is: You dont
know whether she was high or whether Name Withheld
you were detecting the fragrance of a
previous passengers habit (or an earlier Your main question is one for a develop-
episode of her own). Telling Uber that she mental psychologist. I have no idea wheth-
was driving under the inuence would be er this sort of play leads girls to grow up
putting someones livelihood at risk on to accept abuse from people in authority.
a hunch. If youre positive that she was (Common-sense assumptions can turn out
driving badly, however, thats something to be mistaken.) I do, however, have some
you should pass on, without mentioning thoughts on the ethical issues you raise.
your hypothesis about the marijuana. My Your husbands complaint that you
guess is that reducing the number of peo- are butting in suggests that he thinks
ple who provide taxi services while high parental responsibility is something each
would reduce car accidents. Im certain of you has independently and to equal
that reducing the time spent behind the degrees. Thats wrong. Joint responsibili-
wheel by bad drivers would. ty is something you exercise together. You
Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman
Timothy writes: My wife wants to hold a wedding for our
dogs. One is a Chihuahua, and my wife wants to make sure
she can stay in the country after President Trump builds the
wall. I love my wife; I love our dogs. We hold a birthday
party every year for one of them. But a dog wedding seems
a step too far.
It is so rare to get a hetero marital dispute in which the
husband isnt automatically wrong that I had to hear this
case, even though there isnt much to it. Dogs are not
people. Your Chihuahua will not be deported, and to suggest
Illustration by Kyle Hilton
as much is insensitive to the many actual foreign-born
humans who are afraid to travel or even open their front
doors these days. Now its entirely possible that this
column may prompt an executive order against Chihuahuas
tomorrow, but until then your fur family is safe. Have a
dog privilege party instead.
need to discuss what is appropriate for
your child and collaborate in rearing her.
This doesnt mean youll always be
in lock step. Kids know that there are
gradients to keep in mind that when
Dads driving them home from soccer
practice, a plea to stop at Dairy Queen
will be more availing than when Moms
at the wheel. Still, the view that you can
each discharge your parental respon-
sibilities on your own, in light of your
own beliefs and values, doesnt make
much sense. Suppose your fears are well
founded. Suppose, too, that children who
hear a mother say No means no tend
to resist abuse. Then what hes doing is
undermining what youre doing. And its
undermining an aim you doubtless share,
which is to raise a woman who will resist
attempts to mistreat her.
On the other hand, your husbands
statement that hes her parent, too,
might mean that his view of whats good
and bad has the same weight as yours.
Hes asking you to respect his judgment
that its all good, clean, harmless fun. He
may think of it as strengthening his rela-
tionship with your daughter and perhaps
as building her resilience too. If hes right,
there are costs to doing things your way.
Youre both, in eect, saying, I have as
much right to my hunches as you do.
What would be helpful would be trying
to see what the evidence actually shows.
almost a year. If I were to report his
work, it would be quite obvious that it was
me. Am I obligated to report him?
Name Withheld
Ah, yes: the case of the Annoying Cana-
dian. Those of us who identify with the
United States feel pride in its achieve-
ments and shame in its failures, but were
mostly not keen to have those failures
pointed out by foreigners. It must be
doubly annoying that hes proting from
his presence in a country he reviles. But
none of this aects whether hes entitled
to his criticisms. And it certainly doesnt
aect whether they have any validity.
Still, though there are bad reasons for
wanting to report him, there are good ones,
too. The immigration laws that hes out-
ing are not unreasonable. States must have
the right to control who comes in and out.
The rules shouldnt be racist or religious-
ly discriminatory or otherwise immoral;
The view that they should recognize the special situa-
tion of those eeing persecution. (Execu-
you can each tive orders that run roughshod over such
discharge your basic principles rightly provoke revulsion.)
parental But you shouldnt overstay a tourist visa or
work without the necessary papers. And
responsibilities, hes presumably breaking the tax laws, too.
in light of The fact that there are creditable grounds
your own beliefs for reporting him, however, doesnt mean
youre obliged to do so. And, in fact, there
and values, are good reasons not to. For one thing, if
doesnt make you do report our Annoying Canadian, you
much sense. would be betraying a friend and, given
what you say, ending a friendship.
A nal thought: Your friend thinks
you cant criticize someone for a kind of
oense that you yourself have committed.
Thats a mistake. If we lived in a world
where that rule was honored, there would
be a lot of silences to ll.
Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy
at N.Y.U. He is the author of Cosmopolitanism and
The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen.

A friend of mine met a Canadian man

online. He is handsome and charming
and treats her very lovingly. At rst she
was reluctant to become more involved,
because he is working illegally here
in the United States. He does consulting
work and is paid quite well in cash.
He told me that he crosses the border at
a place thats easier than others, which
makes me wonder what other laws he
might be violating. He is openly critical
of this country, seeing it as the root of
all evil. He seems to think thats enough
reason to fudge the rules.
I told my friend that no matter how
charming and loving this man is, it would
be dicult for me not to be frank with him
about his dishonesty and his lack of a right
to criticize our politics when he disregards
the law. She said she had overstayed her
visa while traveling in Australia some years
ago and didnt see how she could criticize.
She has continued the relationship and
knows my feelings; I havent seen her for
Diagnosis By Lisa Sanders, M.D.

The 72-year-old woman carefully loos-

For years, her arthritis was ened the bandage she had wrapped
around her thumb. As she gently revealed

under control, and she could the injured nger, her daughter gasped.
The top third of what should have been
the eshy part looked eaten away. The
work in her garden. But then esh that remained was black and hard.
A foul odor emanated from the wound.

a rash appeared and crippled Yesterday I thought there was a dead

mouse in my living room, the woman
told her daughter. Then I realized it was
her hand. Why? my thumb. She couldnt do anything with
that hand now, not even work in her gar-
den. It was very upsetting.

Black Thumb
The daughter wondered: Was this gan-
grene? Was her mother going to lose
her thumb? She took out her phone and
snapped a picture of the digit. She and
her mothers internist worked in the
same medical center in nearby Joplin,
Mo., and he needed to know how seri-
ous this was.
The doctor had seen the rash before.
The patient came to his oce a few
months back when her hands first
swelled up. The next time he saw her,
just a few weeks ago, the skin on her
hands had red, painful blotches. But
this was new, he told the daughter after
seeing the pictures. He didnt know
what her mother had. After a moment
of silence, he made his recommenda-
tion: She should take her mother to the
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., nearly
600 miles away. Dont make an appoint-
ment, he told her. Take her to the emer-
gency room. Theyd gure it out. He was
sure of that.

On the Road
Early the next morning, mother, two
friends and another daughter set o on
the 10-hour, four-state trek north to the
Mayo Clinic. By the time they arrived, the
mother could barely walk to the door. In
the waiting room, she suddenly began
to shiver. She was so cold, she told her
daughter. Her teeth chattered. She had a
fever. To her daughter, she seemed dis-
oriented and confused. Clearly theyd
brought her in just in time.
It was past midnight when the patient
was admitted and settled into a hospital
room. Dr. Daniel Partain, the doctor in
training assigned to her care, introduced

22 3.5.17 Illustration by Andreas Samuelsson

 WE STARTED

A BIOTECH REVOLUTION THAT

SAVES MILLIONS OF LIVES A YEAR

2017 City of Hope

He is Art Riggs, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases Research. At City of Hope, Dr. Riggs
work led to discoveries such as synthetic human insulin, used by millions of patients around the world to manage their
disease. Dr. Riggs also improved antibodies through recombinant DNA technology. This breakthrough produced engineered
antibodies that are the basis for some of todays most widely used smart cancer drugs. At City of Hope, we believe the future
cant wait for the future. Find out more at CityofHope.org
Diagnosis
himself. Until recently, arthritis had
been her biggest health problem, she
explained. A few years earlier she started
to see a rheumatologist, who told her she
had something called psoriatic arthritis
an aggressive type of arthritis caused
by the bodys immune system, which
mistakenly attacks itself. Left untreated,
this disease can destroy bone. He started
her on strong immune-suppressing medi-
cines, and she did feel better.
Shed been on those medicines for
four years and was doing ne. Then,
three months earlier, the swelling start-
ed and the ugly red patches appeared
all over her hands and arms. The joints
didnt hurt, but the rash did. The rheu-
matologist attributed it to a are-up of
her psoriatic arthritis and increased her
immune-suppressing meds. When that
didnt help, he switched her to more
powerful drugs. But her hands, especially
her thumb, just got worse.
The woman told her story cheerfully
enough, but it was clear to Partain that
she was in pain. Her right hand lay mostly
immobile on her lap, swollen and covered
with red blotches. Her thumb was shock-
ingly ugly, the raw esh on the tip covered
by a thick black scab. There were other
areas of scaly, deep red skin on both her
arms, but nowhere else.
The young doctor wasnt sure what was
going on. If arthritis was causing this rash
and black thumb, then why werent her
medications helping? Maybe she had an
infection as well; because the meds she
took suppressed her immune system, our
most important defense against invad-
ing organisms, she was vulnerable to all
kinds of bugs. Partain ordered antibiotics
just in case. He asked that a rheumatol-
ogist and a dermatologist come by later
that day. He gave the woman something
for the pain, and then he went to see his
next patient.
The Wisdom of Experience
In the morning, Dr. Ruth Bates, the senior
resident on the team, listened with inter-
est as her intern told her about this new
patient. She praised him for his thoughtful
approach. When they entered the room,
the patient unwrapped the bandage to
give the team a chance to see the lesion
that brought them together. They exam-
ined the patient and then left, promising
to come back after lunch.
24 3.5.17
Lisa Sanders, M.D.,
As soon as they were in the hall, Bates
is a contributing writer turned to her intern. I think I know
for the magazine what this is, she told him. Ive seen it ger medications, her immune system was
and the author of Every before. Two years earlier, when she was
Patient Tells a Story:
Medical Mysteries and an intern, a man came in with a sore just
the Art of Diagnosis. like this one. Like this woman, he had
been on immune-suppressing medica-
tions. They tested him for everything,
and it turned out that he had something
fairly uncommon in Minnesota he
had been infected by a fungus called
Histoplasma capsulatum, resulting in a
condition called histoplasmosis. Bates
thought it was likely that this woman
had it as well.
A Dangerous Fungus
There are approximately 1.5 million dier-
ent species of fungus on Earth, but only
about 300 make people sick. Many live in
soil and cause infection when the fungus
is inhaled. Dierent fungi are common
in dierent areas of the country. Histo-
plasmosis is one of the most common
endemic fungal infections nationwide but
is seen primarily in the Southern and cen-
tral United States around the Mississip-
pi and Ohio River Valleys. The patients
home was in a region where the fungus
could be found. The organism is carried
by infected bats or birds and deposited
into the soil in their waste. When Bates
went back to the patients room, she asked
whether shed had any exposure to soil or
Illustration by Andreas Samuelsson
birds. Yes, she was an avid gardener and
she had many bird feeders.
The doctors ordered tests of blood
and urine to look for the fungus. The
dermatologist took biopsies of the red
plaques on her hands. The tests con-
rmed infection the following day, and
she was started on an intravenous anti-
fungal treatment.
Most people who get histoplasmosis
never know it. The infection is either
asymptomatic or causes symptoms mild
enough that patients dont seek medi-
cal attention. Among those who have
symptoms, most have a disease that is
limited to the lungs, like bronchitis or
pneumonia, that usually doesnt need to
be treated.
Not so for this patient. The test came
back positive, and CT scans conrmed
the presence of infection throughout her
body, including in her chest and abdo-
men. The immune-suppressing medica-
tions she was taking for her arthritis had
created a welcoming environment for
the fungus. As she took more and stron-
further weakened, and the fungal infec-
tion only got worse.
Slow Healing
Recovery for this patient was slow and
dicult. Every day, she was given a bright
yellow intravenous antifungal medica-
tion, which she called her Mountain Dew
From Hell. Each infusion caused her
heart to race and her blood pressure to
spike. She had constant diarrhea. Despite
treatment, the fungus ate through her
gut, and she had to have a foot and a
half of her small intestine removed in an
emergency operation. In all, she spent
four long weeks in the hospital and a
few more in rehab back in Joplin. Even
after all that, she had to take an antifungal
medication every day for a year.
She is now nearly three years out from
that long trip to Mayo. She will never
be able to take any immune-suppressing
medications again. Her arthritis bothers
her a lot more now, but she says that tak-
ing extra-strength acetaminophen helps.
Even though shes off immune-sup-
pressing medications, she doesnt take
any chances: Her bird feeders are gone.
And every spring and summer, she has
her six grandchildren do all her planting
for her. 
Lives
Strangers on a Train
Discomfort and deliverance
along an 18-hour route through Pakistan.
By Rafiq Ebrahim
Many years ago, before my family immi-
grated to the United States from Pakistan,
we used to travel frequently by train.
During a more recent trip home, instead
of ying back to Karachi from Lahore, I
decided to go by train again. I was inter-
ested to see what it was like traveling in
economy class. I got a seat in Car No.
3, and amid thunder and rain, the train
hissed out of the station. Its pace was slow.
The compartment was packed.
Those who had reserved seats occupied
them, while others were perched on the
oor, next to the seats or even by the toi-
lets, with the result that it became dicult
to move around or to use the toilet yourself.
Families with little children spread quilts
and pillows on the seats and on the oor.
A conductor entered the car and start-
ed checking tickets. The passenger in Seat
54, a tall, middle-aged man with sharp
gray eyes, had only an unreserved ticket,
so he was asked to vacate the seat. But he
took the conductor aside and returned in
a few minutes to the same place. The con-
ductor, overlooking the mess everywhere
in the car, smiled and went about his duty.
If it were not for the rains in Punjab, the
heat and dust would have been unbear-
able. I noticed that the man sitting in
Seat 54 kept watching a young woman in
a window seat with a little child on her
lap. The womans eye fell on the mans
face, and she immediately looked down
and adjusted her dupatta, her scarf.
The night wore on, and people began
to close their eyes, but the seats were so
uncomfortable that only a very heavy
sleeper could manage to get any rest.
The train continued its slow pace, stop-
ping every so often at another station.
Because of the heat and suocating air in
the compartment, many windows were
kept open. The woman with the child on
her lap looked over at the man in Seat 54.
Name: later, the child began to climb the open
Rafiq Ebrahim
Age: 78
Location: Karachi-
Peshawar Railway
window one leg went over it. The man
in Seat 54 leapt up and grabbed the child
before he fell out.
The commotion woke up the woman.
Line, Pakistan
She seemed to be in a panic, and then
Born in Mumbai,
Ebrahim now
reality dawned. Here you are, the man
lives in Chicago. said as he gave the child back to her. Your
A former copywriter, child has been looking for an opportuni-
he has written ty to crawl out of the window, he said.
three novels and
has contributed
Thats why I have been watching the
to various publications whole time. He stretched his back and
including the online moved away. The woman was dumb-
editions of The Nation founded, and so was I.
of Pakistan and
He was still staring at her. I was beginning Pakistan Today. The woman had a few sips of water,
to get angry with him. Even under such then got up to thank the man, but he was
lthy and uncomfortable circumstances, nowhere to be seen. The train moved
he couldnt resist indulging his desire to on. Early in the morning, at Drigh Road
gaze at an attractive woman. She began Station, the woman got up to get o the
to look back at him with re in her eyes. train. She searched for the man again but
Turning her face away, she played with couldnt nd him.
the child again for a while. The train was Bhai, she addressed me, calling me
approaching a station. I could see the brother. If you see that man, will you
familiar lights of Khanewal, and as we kindly thank him on my behalf ?
stopped, a memory ashed through my I nodded. Before I got down at Karachi
mind. Two decades earlier, whenever we Cantt, I searched the whole compartment
traveled this route and stopped at this sta- for him but he was gone.
tion, my little daughter would urge me to
take her out and buy some ceramic toys
from one of the stalls. We would buy the
toys, and I would enjoy a cup of tea in a
clay cup at a tea stall. It was now 2 a.m.,
and I got down from the train to recap-
ture this pleasant memory. I was drinking
my tea when two burly men came near
me and stood on either side. I could feel
something probing at my right. Take out
your wallet and give it to me, ordered
one of them. I took it out and handed it
to him. The other man relieved me of my
wristwatch. Have a safe journey, one said
before they both disappeared.
I was shaken, and not just because I
lost my wallet and watch. The watch was
cheap, bought for four dollars from Kmart
in Chicago, and there were only a hundred
rupees in my wallet; the rest of my money,
my credit cards and my IDs were safely
tucked inside my shoes. But it struck me
that you should never try to recapture the
memorable scenes of the past, because
you are likely to lose those memories for-
ever. I nished the cup of tea and returned
to my seat on the train.
The train started again. The child was
still awake on his mothers lap, but the
woman found it dicult to keep her eyes
open. She was soon lost in a short wink of
sleep. Her head fell forward. A moment
Illustration by Melinda Josie 25
Eat By Sam Sifton

The Swedish Season

A casserole of caramelized cabbage and juicy meatloaf builds
a bridge between winter and spring.

26 3.5.17 Photograph by Gentl and Hyers Food stylist: Hadas Smirnoff. Prop stylist: Rebecca Bartoshesky.
The scent of Karolina Petersson was nesting. Preg-
nant with her rst child, she stood in the
the cabbage kitchen of her home on the North Fork of
was ambrosial, Long Island and stirred a pan of cabbage
approximating and butter. Her husband, Vincent Cata-
lano, was upstairs painting the babys
caramel on room. Petersson had a bowl of ground
the razors edge meat on the counter beside her, some
of burned. potatoes, a small glass of cream. It was
her grandmothers recipe she was making,
she said, a kind of cabbage meatloaf that
she remembered from childhood outside
Gothenburg, in Sweden. Kalpudding, its
called. You serve it with lingonberries. I
wanted to eat it right away.
These are hard days for cooking, as
winter too slowly gives way to vernal rain
and sunshine. Farmers markets are bare
in many precincts, and for some a kind of
fatigue has set in, an exhaustion with soups
and stews, with root vegetables and pot
roasts, with salads built of factory greens
and avorless tomatoes. Soon there will
be strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb, snow
peas and watercress, the paschal lamb, the
Easter ham. But soon is not now. Early
March can leave cooks adrift in home
and restaurant kitchens alike, unsure of
themselves, desirous of inspiration.
And here was mine. I wasnt staying for
dinner. I had only dropped by for a brief,
neighborly check-in before the birth,
a whats-up-Vin and see you soon. But
the scent of the cabbage was ambrosial:
sweet-bitter, approximating caramel on
the razors edge of burned. I could imagine
the vegetables stirred into and enrobing
the meat, and I knew if I couldnt nd
lingonberries, I could swap them out for
cranberries and be happy with the result. I
cooked a kalpudding the next day. I cooked
a lot of them after that: ground beef and
pork mixed with bread crumbs and some
of the caramelized cabbage, formed under
a cloak of more cabbage and baked until
the top went dark and almost dry at the
edges, delicious crunch above the succu-
lent meat. I served them with lingonberry
preserves (thanks, Internet!), cut with vine-
gar and Worcestershire sauce, made velvet
with butter, alongside boiled potatoes.
One day in the middle of all this cook-
ing, I called Magnus Nilsson, the chef at
Faviken, a restaurant on a large estate
in northwestern Sweden that regularly
appears on lists of the worlds best. Nils-
son is fanatical in his devotion to Nor-
dic cuisine. In 2015, he published The
Nordic Cookbook, an invaluable guide
Comment: nytimes.com/magazine
to the regions cooking, from the braised
guillemot of the Faroe Islands to the taco
quiche of suburban Stockholm. He has a
recipe for kalpudding in the book. It was
as much casserole as meatloaf.
Kalpudding, he told me and Im
just theorizing here is just an easi-
er-to-make version of the stued cabbage
the Swedes call kaldolme, a dish Nilsson
traces back to the 18th century, a Nordic
version of the Turkish dolmas that Swed-
ish soldiers tasted in the Ottoman Empire
when they sought refuge there after an
unsuccessful military campaign against
the Russians. Its an indels version, with
pork, he said. But hard to make, with all
that stung and rolling. So kalpudding is
what youd make at home.
Nilsson said he was once particular
about the preparation of the dish. When he
set out to compile the cookbook, he said, it
was a big documentary project. I was dead
set on accuracy. There was no room for
adaptation. But making the recipes work
for the regular home cook put the lie to
that goal, he said, and so did the hundreds
of regional dierences in particular dishes
prepared in dierent parts of Sweden, Nor-
way, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. (What,
you dont have any goose blood around to
make the svartsoppa?) Nilsson used as an
example the binders that are used in kal-
pudding, to help the meat hold together.
Historically, there are breadcrumbs in
kalpuddings made in Stockholm, he said.
Thats because there were bakeries there.
You dont see that to the north, where there
were no bakeries, and crushed barley is
used instead. Some bind their kalpudding
with rice, or shredded potatoes.
Thats good, I said, because Nilsson
calls for the use of golden syrup to help
caramelize his cabbage, and the rest of
the world doesnt easily have access to
the Swedish version of that sugar-beet
syrup, amber and salty-sweet, very dif-
ferent from our own (the Internet isnt
perfect). Nilsson laughed. And we dont
use molasses, he said.
But you can. The result will be no less
Nordic, Nilsson said. Cabbage smells in a
very special way when it almost burns, he
told me. It gets savory, almost like a beef
stock. It tastes almost brown and umami
yummy. How you get it to that point, he
added, is whats interesting, what hap-
pens when you cook a dish elsewhere,
with what you have available to you. It
always, always, makes sense.
Kalpudding (Meatloaf
With Caramelized Cabbage)
Time: 90 minutes
For the meatloaf:
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon
unsalted butter
1 head green cabbage, approximately
3 pounds, cored and shredded
3 tablespoons molasses
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper,
to taste
pound ground beef
pound ground pork
1 small yellow onion, peeled and chopped
1 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons breadcrumbs
cup chicken, beef or vegetable stock,
ideally homemade or low-sodium
store-bought (or water)
For the sauce:
cup lingonberry preserves
1 tablespoon red-wine vinegar
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce,
or to taste
1. Heat oven to 350. Put a large pan
over medium-high heat, and add the butter.
When it starts to foam, add the cabbage
and molasses, lower the heat to medium
and sprinkle with salt. Cook slowly, stirring
often, until all the liquid has evaporated and
the cabbage is caramelized, approximately
20-25 minutes.
2. While the cabbage is cooking, lightly
mix the meats in a large bowl, then add the
onion, cream and breadcrumbs, and mix
again to combine.
3. When the cabbage is done, add about
a third of it to the meat mixture, and
mix to combine. Use the remaining butter
to grease an 8-inch-square baking pan,
and transfer the meat mixture to it, spreading
it out to cover the whole surface evenly.
Spread remaining cabbage over the meat,
pour the stock or water over the top and
place in the oven, on a sheet tray, to cook
for approximately 40 to 45 minutes, or until
the cabbage is very, very caramelized, almost
dry and crunchy at the edges. Allow it to sit
for 10 minutes or so before serving.
4. While the meat and cabbage cooks, make
the sauce. Heat lingonberry preserves, vinegar
and butter in a small pot set over medium
heat, then add Worcestershire sauce to taste.
Serve alongside the kalpudding.
Serves 4.
27
 T H E

R E V E A L E R

T H R O U G H H I S

S T R I P P E D - D O W N ,

R A D I C A L L Y

H U M A N E A P P R O A C H

T O T H E A T E R ,

T H E D I R E C T O R

S A M G O L D

H A S F O U N D A

N E W D I M E N S I O N

O F A C L A S S I C

A M E R I C A N P L A Y .

B Y

S A S H A

W E I S S

P H O T O G R A P H S

B Y

C H R I S T O P H E R

A N D E R S O N

28
E

N
 O N E The audience watched in silence as Laura
inched up the stairs backward, with Amanda
bowed before her, tenderly placing her daugh-
E V E N I N G ters legs on each successive step. The operation
lasted nearly two full minutes. It was painful
and made all the more so by the realization that
I N
Ferriss inability to walk was real. We watched
Ferris pull herself up the stairs, moving through
E A R L Y a world that wasnt designed for her comfort,
just as we were sitting in a theater that wasnt
designed for ours. The atmosphere in the room
F E B R U A R Y , thickened. It was as if everything in the theater
an eager crowd attended a public dress rehearsal stage, actors and audience had been laid bare.
of Sam Golds new Broadway production of The This feeling of unsettling intimacy was
Glass Menagerie, which will open on March 9. familiar from every Sam Gold production Ive
The audience faced a barren stage: no curtain, no seen from his downtown tragicomedy The
backdrop, nothing more than a folding table with Flick, to his Tony-winning Broadway musical
a bowl of apples on it and an industrial shelf with Fun Home, to his wrenching Othello, which chair cast in a leading role. Gold decided that
a few props. They couldnt have known that this played this winter at the New York Theater
banal view had been elaborately and expen- Workshop. At 38, Gold is one of the most cele-
sively produced. The exposed pipes stretching brated theater directors in New York, a master
across the vast black brick wall of the theater at gently stripping both audience and actors of
had been installed by the set designer, as had their expectations and creating a sense of collec-
the sprinkler system. Sixty thousand pounds of tive interdependence. He does this by dispens-
concrete was poured to create the eect of an ing with theatrical conventions showy sets
unremarkable gray oor. and costumes, a clear separation between stage
For anyone familiar with Tennessee Williamss and audience, acting that titillates or entertains
masterpiece the story of a young man who so that the focus stays xed on the bodies of
abandons his mother and sister to pursue a life the actors and their words. Im not very inter-
of artistic freedom these choices will be surpris- ested in pretend, Gold told me. Im interested
ing. Williams was a controlling aesthete, and in his in putting people onstage. I want people. And
stage directions, he species that the set consist of I want a world that reects the real world. His
a threadbare living room on the ground oor of pared-down worlds are, paradoxically, inviting:
a grim St. Louis tenement around 1938. But what They corral everyone in the theater toward max-
we saw next was an even more profound revision. imum receptivity. Once you learn the rules and
The house lights stayed on as the plays four submit to them, its as if youve been initiated
performers appeared, emerging from a door at into a family.
audience level and lining up before a staircase A few days before the dress rehearsal, I joined
that led to the stage. First, the character of Tom Gold at the Belasco Theater. As we talked, stage
Wingeld (Joe Mantello), whom Williams based technicians rushed around us, testing micro-
on himself, mounted the stairs and delivered the phones and arranging props. Gold has worn
plays famous opening monologue directly to the the same uniform since he was 19: a dark shirt
audience. He explained that the play is not a tra- with slightly baggy black jeans, gray New Bal-
ditional play but a memory and that he will be ance sneakers and owlish glasses that make his
both the narrator and a character in it. He then childlike face appear solemn. A tangle of curls
introduced the other characters, who one by sticks up from the top of his head, giving him
one climbed the stairs to join him onstage: His a touch of appealing dishevelment. His walk is
mother, Amanda Wingeld (Sally Field), a glori- tentative, as if he is testing the oor beneath his
ously needy woman; his sister Laura (Madison feet, but when he speaks, he is lucid and assured.
Ferris, making her Broadway debut), an eccentric When Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie
23-year-old who is written as having a limp; and in the early 1940s, Gold explained, he was resist-
Jim (Finn Wittrock), the gentleman caller, an ing the theatrical conventions of his time, what
emissary from a world of reality that we were Williams called the straight realistic play with its
somehow set apart from. genuine Frigidaire and authentic ice cubes. So he
When it was her turn, Laura approached the wrote a story that was supposed to operate like a
staircase in a wheelchair. She folded her body in memory: shadowy, poetic, expressive. He creat-
half and placed her hands on the ground, put- ed an autobiographical narrator who comments
ting most of her weight on them. She hoisted her on the action, something that had rarely been
butt high in the air and shuled backward on her done before. And he wrote honestly though
hands and feet over to the rst step to sit down. discreetly about being gay.
Amanda collapsed the wheelchair and, lifting it Gold asked himself what it would really mean
with visible eort, carried it up the steps. Then to put a memory onstage. A memory is not a
she came back down to help Laura. simulacrum of an event its a version of it
30 3.5.17
thats colored by emotion, and it can present
itself to us anywhere, anytime. To me that
means there cant be a set, he said. There cant
be fake walls, and there cant be a couch. The
biggest thing was no couch. He staged the play
this way in Amsterdam rst, at the invitation
of the director Ivo van Hove, but when he was
thinking about bringing it to New York, he want-
ed to go further in his updating of Williams. It
was very emotional and vulnerable for him to
say: This is my life. Im haunted by my sister and
my mother, Gold said. He was putting himself
out in this raw, vulnerable way. Letting his faults
be there, letting his homosexuality into the play
at a time that that was dangerous.
Gay characters on Broadway are now a norm,
but there had never been an actor in a wheel-
to be faithful to Williamss revolutionary spirit,
he would put onstage a person the audience is
unused to seeing there. He and Scott Rudin, the
shows producer, began a search throughout the
United States and England for actresses with
disabilities. They chose Ferris, who at 25 had a
range of performing experiences but had never
appeared in a professional production.
When Ferris mounts the stairs, she moves as
she would in real life. This is the beginning of
Golds transformation of Laura a character
usually played as pathologically fragile from
symbol into human being. She doesnt have to
act like shes vulnerable, because the vulnera-
bility is in the prop theres a wheelchair that
gets to do that vulnerability for her, Gold told
me. She gets to have agency, and she gets to be
the kind of woman Id rather see onstage. Gold
hoped that by watching her climb the stairs, we
would be roused to an immediate understand-
ing of the family whose lives we were about to
enter: The diculty of their situation is palpably
real. The stakes are urgent. Sitting in silence,
with the lights up, we were also being invited to
see our bodies in Lauras. All bodies have limita-
tions and failures. All bodies are, at one time or
another, dependent on someone elses for help.
G O L D SAYS T H AT one of his favorite pieces
of theater he ever saw, Ariane Mnouchkines
Tambours sur la Digue, when he was 22, made
him fall asleep that kind of sleep where you
still feel like youre seeing the show, sitting in
your unconscious. His roots are in conceptual
downtown theater, and he remains unafraid
to challenge audiences. But hes a pop avant-
gardist; he likes to make an 800-seat theater
feel as intimate as a 70-seat theater, to create
public spaces that have the emotional freedom
of a living room.
His hit musical Fun Home which won ve
Tonys and is now on a national tour may have
come closest to this ideal. For that play, based
on Alison Bechdels autobiographical graphic
novel about gay life, suicide, family dysfunction
 M A D I S O N F E R R I S , W H O P L AYS L AU R A , D U R I N G A
R E H E A R S A L O F T H E G L A S S M E N A G E R I E .

and unarticulated love, he wanted to show the
audience three dierent time frames at once:
Alison at 10, Alison at 19 and Alison at 43. To
accomplish this, Gold staged the play in the
round, something that is almost never done
with musicals because the format can make it
hard to hear the singing in every seat. But Gold
insisted on it, because it allows for simultaneity,
so that the stage imitates the page of a graphic
novel. It gave me this opportunity to have the
older Alison involved in scenes shes not in, and
watch them and participate in them, Gold said.
And because of that, theres a kind of doubling
of the intimacy and emotional intensity of the
piece. You can keep turning it and looking at it
from another angle. In a play about the closet,
nothing was hidden: Audience members could
gaze at one another as well as the performers.
Its the only musical I can think of that has a
young girl singing an anthem about the beauty
of an older butch woman she saw in a restaurant,
desire and pride playing across her face.
The Glass Menagerie is Golds sixth Broad-
way show, another experiment in making a large
audience experience how small a theater can be.
At a rehearsal for the play in early January, in a
studio in the Flatiron district, Gold sat behind a
table, clutching a mug with a picture of a kitten
on it. His resting face is sphinxlike, but when
he speaks with actors, he is teasing and open.
They were rehearsing the nal scene of the
play, in which Laura has her rst romantic
encounter, with Jim, who has come over to her
familys apartment for dinner. The meeting was
engineered by Amanda out of the mixed motives
that alict most parents: a genuine desire to see
her daughter settled, and a projection of her
own fantasies onto her child. Gold had cast both
characters against type, so as to complicate the
balance of power between them. In most pro-
ductions, Laura is a pale, tremulous being, and
Jim is perfectly ordinary. But Ferris has thick
blond hair, high cheek bones and the vivacity
of a stereotypical ingnue. Likewise, Wittrock
looks like a teen heartthrob condent and
crisply handsome.
That day, Gold was staging the beginning
of their meeting, when Jim approaches Laura wet concrete glinting all around them. Getting
holding a lit candelabrum and wine and looks
around for a place to sit.
Jim: Where shall I set the candles?
Laura: Oh oh, anywhere. . . .
Jim: How about here on the floor? Any
objections?
Laura: No.
Jim: Ill spread a newspaper under to catch the
drippings. I like to sit on the oor. Mind if I do?
Laura: Oh, no.
Jim: Give me a pillow?
Laura: What?
Jim: A pillow!
Laura: Oh. . . . [she hands him one]
Jim: How about you? Dont you like to sit on
the oor?
Laura: Oh yes.
Jim: Why dont you, then?
Laura: I will.
In Golds production, Jims invitation to Laura
to join him on the oor had become a mineeld
of potential humiliations. The only light onstage
would be provided by the candelabrum, and the
two would huddle over it, warmly illuminated,
them there, during this exchange, required
a complex choreography. And to make the

Photograph by Christopher Anderson for The New York Times The New York Times Magazine 31
 Daquain Jenkins was a 25-year-old father of three when
he was rst diagnosed with congestive heart failure. He
received a pacemaker and debrillator at a local hospital,
but his condition continued to deteriorate. So much so that
his cardiologist recommended he come to Mount Sinai for
further treatment.
Doctors at Mount Sinai Health System evaluated Daquain
and recommended he undergo a heart transplant. But a year
after getting the donor heart, his body rejected it and his
DAQUAIN JENKINS WAIT
new heart was failing rapidly. Daquain needed another heart
transplant immediately. But this time, there was no suitable
donor heart available. What was available, though, was a new
mechanical heart which our doctors believed was the only
hope of saving Daquains life until a donor heart became
available. In an 8-hour surgery, the Mount Sinai surgical
team removed Daquains weakened heart and replaced it with
the new mechanical heart.
Daquain Jenkins became the rst patient in the New York
WHI
WE GAVE HIM
 metropolitan area to return home to await a heart transplant
without a human heart, but with the assistance of a portable
mechanical heart. The milestone was remarkable in a number
of ways. First, the new mechanical heart replaced both failing
heart ventricles and four heart valves, eliminating the risk
of heart failure. By relying on a mobile power supply that
he carried in his backpack to power the mechanical heart,
Daquain was able to leave the hospital until a suitable donor
heart was found.
HILE
ITED FOR A NEW HEART,
IM A LOANER.
While he waited, Daquain greeted every day with a smile,
walking his three kids to the bus stop and taking online classes
in web design. And when a donor heart became available, he
traded in his mechanical heart, thankful for how it saved his
life. He, however, has yet to trade in his smile.
For you. For life.
1-800- MD-SINAI
mountsinai.org/cardiology
moment believable, Golds direction would have
to answer a number of questions. How could
Jim ask this of a woman in a wheelchair? Is he
being cruel? Or is he simply clueless and is it
precisely his cluelessness that is liberating for
Laura, giving her the wherewithal to crawl to
his side? Together with the actors, Gold set out
to explore all the possible oscillations of feeling
that they each might be experiencing.
How about you? Dont you like to sit on the
oor?
The question hung in the air, as Ferris bent
down, moved aside the bulky footrest at the
bottom of her wheelchair and then supported
herself with her hands so that her body became
a triangle with her butt as the peak. She then
swung the bottom half of her body downward,
where she landed in a squat. Ferris repeated
the movement again and again, trying dier-
ent ways to maneuver her body toward Jim and
the candelabrum: walking on hands and feet,
crouching and sliding. None of it looked casual,
and she would have to practice until it did. Gold
wants every gesture and utterance in his plays
to feel so inevitable that its as if there was never
any direction at all. This takes a lot of extremely
detailed directing.
When Jim asks Laura to come even closer, so
he can see her better in the candlelight, Ferris
tried a few moves, saying, I have to do this very
embarrassing sort of walk-crawl in front of him,
so it just adds to the uh Yeah, its so embar-
rassing, Gold interjected. Ferris moaned lightly
for a moment, then said, I dont like doing it in
front of you guys! At this frank acknowledgment,
the mood in the room shifted a feeling akin to
the dimming of the lights at a party and the
rehearsal continued.
I asked Gold a few weeks later if he remem-
bered this moment, and he answered wryly: Act-
ing is humiliation. Im always asking actors to do
things that theyre going to feel humiliated by. If
theyre not humiliated, Im not doing my job.
In the same way he does with an audience,
Gold intentionally destabilizes actors as a way
of bringing out raw feelings. Sally Field told me
how demanding the opening of the play is. Its
arduous, she said. I may not make it one night.
The chair could come ying down. My legs are
completely black and blue from that chair banging
into my legs. But the diculty of carrying that
wheelchair up the stairs helped her understand
something new about Amandas character. The
predicament that life has handed her is so mind-
boggling. Shes so without choices of how to x the
predicament, because the ailment that her oldest
child has is so real, is so true. Its so physical. There
is an unadorned humanness to Golds vision.
Annie Baker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play-
wright with whom Gold has collaborated for
nearly a decade, told me about an argument
they had when they were making The Aliens, a
play about three stunted young men, which takes
34 3.5.17
place on the back patio of a coee shop in Ver- W H E N T H E
mont. Gold and the set designer Andrew Lieber-
man felt that the set should be only four feet deep
which is nothing, basically. The idea of such L I G H T S W E R E
a shallow stage worried Baker. They eventually
compromised and ended up with a set that was
six feet deep. I just remember it changed in this
O U T , A N D
incredible way, Baker said. Its just these guys
up against a blue wall for the entire play. The I W A S L O S T
actors could hardly gesticulate, much less move
across the stage for dramatic eect. The picture
the audience saw was so still, it was almost like a I N T H A T
photograph. Gold is always asking himself, Can
the audience read the minds of the actors? By S T O R Y ,
taking everything away, he was trying to leave
only what he calls pure thought onstage, so that
the audience would register even tiny ickers on I F E L T
the actors faces as they experienced emotion.
In The Flick, a play about two popcorn
sweepers and a projectionist at a small-town
I N T I M A C Y .
movie theater, Gold limited the actors by ask-
ing them to repeat the same movements over I F E L T
and over again. The set consisted of rows of dirty
red velour theater seats, and for three and a half
hours, the actors walked up and down them with C O N N E C T E D
brooms and dustpans, unfolding their hopes and
failures in the ohand way that can happen in T O M Y S E L F .
the weird proximity of a workplace. Because
the space was so conned, every gesture had to
be precise, every word and pause teased out for
maximum nuance. Matthew Maher, a 45-year-old When Gold was 15, the family moved to Man-
actor who has appeared in Golds Uncle Vanya, hattan. He went to Dalton, the Upper East Side
The Flick and Othello, explained that every prep school, where he began to act and direct
sequence in The Flick, down to the eye rolls, and found the artistic community he had always
was tightly choreographed, and yet he said he wished for. He instantly identied with what
has never been in a show that felt more impro- he calls a New Yorkers psychology, feeling
visational: Its sort of like a demonstration of relaxed in a dense crowd. The atmosphere of
some weird physics rule that chaos can exist in a subway car, where one person might be in
the tiniest space. The whole performance was a mourning while another was late for an appoint-
high-wire act. He puts actors in a position where ment, became a model for him of the kind of
the only way they can make the thing work is democratic place a theater could be.
for you to give the performance of your career, In college at Cornell, Gold took a course with
Maher said. He thinks youre a genius. a lm professor who was also a Jungian psycho-
analyst. The small group of students met in a tiny
EVER SINCE HE was a boy, Gold has felt most room to watch Tarkovsky, Bergman and Bresson
at home in dark theaters. Throughout his child- on 16-millimeter lm. For Gold, sitting there, in
hood, he went to the movies three or four times that melancholic and vulnerable little space,
a week. He grew up in Chappaqua, N.Y. a sort was an otherworldly experience. Each meeting,
of corporate training ground, where he felt out after the movie ended and before the class dis-
of place. I was always thinking about death and cussion began, there was a short break. Gold
dying, while other people were talking about would go across the street to a deli for a snack,
who won the basketball game, he said. His and every time he felt as if he were about to get
father is an investment banker, and his mother hit by a car. I was living in this kind of emotional
is an interior designer who studied painting and mental space for so long, he said, that it was
sculpture. He has two brothers, who are eight really hard to reintegrate long enough to get a
and 10 years older than he. His parents were bagel. When the students returned, they would
devoted, but they werent demonstrative. He discuss the lm, but he was still lost in the world
talked to them like they were my colleagues of the movie. He wanted to be the creator of that
who I could have a conversation about stu experience, to bring people together in a small
with, he said. I was born an adult. At the mov- room and send them to an unfamiliar place that
ies, he felt liberated. When the lights were out, they would have to nd their way back from.
and I was lost in that story, I felt intimacy. I felt At rst, he became an actor, and he moved
connected to myself. back to New York to try to make it. It took him
E a year to realize that he was a terrible at it, sim-
ply unable to live in the present tense. What
appealed to him, he realized, was the commu-
E nity that coheres around a play how the play
becomes this little story that everybody can
invest in together.
D In 2003, Gold was accepted at Juilliard for
directing. He had a small, close-knit ensemble
T at his disposal: the third- and fourth-year act-
ing students, who had been living, playing and
wriggling on the oor together for two years.
T While at school, he also served as an assistant
director to Elizabeth LeCompte at the Wooster
, Group, the legendary company at the vanguard
of the downtown theater scene. The two plac-
es were in productive conict. At Juilliard, he
T found a group of openhearted young people
who were being groomed for traditional suc-
cess; the Wooster Group was wild and vision-
. ary, a company held together by the enigmatic
charisma of LeCompte.
T The Wooster Group, whose core members
have now been together for 42 years, rehears-
es every weekday for six hours or more in the
D Performing Garage in SoHo. Work on projects
often goes on for years before an audience sees
them, and after a play opens, the actors continue
rehearsing it. From LeCompte, Gold learned
that directing is a process of creation in layers,
like painting, and that the most spellbinding
performances emerge from intimate knowledge
of the actors: drawing from their personal his-
tories and designing productions around their
specic bodies. It was a process Gold compared
to biological evolution. I found that the rhythm
in the ritual of coming in every day, the bore-
dom, the space meant that something more
weird and interesting and unexpected would
enter the room.
Like LeCompte, Gold resists what he calls
representational reality: a detailed mirage of
recognizable life that the audience can passively
witness. Gold, along with a small group of set
designers he works with again and again, makes
the space of the theater feel unfamiliar in order
to prod the audience into alertness. This can
mean dispensing with a stage altogether and
having an entire play take place in front of the
proscenium, right on top of the audience, as he
did in Look Back in Anger, or creating a sealed
ecosystem for the performers and spectators to
share, as he did when he staged Fun Home in
the round and Othello in a one-room plywood
army barracks that the audience sat in too.
For Othello, Gold and Lieberman realized a
fantasy that they always had: to do away entirely
with theatrical lights. Instead, the actors used
military-style lamps to light the space them-
selves. The rst scene of the show takes place in
complete darkness, with the actors lying down
on mattresses on the oor and the audience
surrounding them on three sides. Gold wanted
to let the audience breathe, let them hear each
other breathe and let the Shakespeare and the
poetry sort of come out of the darkness.
Golds production was an attempt to make
the plays muscular tragedy immediately acces-
sible connecting Shakespeare to our era by
staging it in a contemporary war zone, but also
reaching back to an ancient way of experiencing
theater, as a form of collective catharsis. Attend-
ing plays was considered a rite of passage for
young men in ancient Greece. Because military
service was mandatory for all Athenian citizens,
many in the audience and onstage were veter-
ans of combat. They sat together watching plays
about war and loss. The plays were a place for
the whole society to deal with grief and suer-
ing, Gold said. And that was a very powerful
idea to me. Gold told me that Othello has
an abundance of open vowels (O-thell-o; Des-
de-mo-na), and in his production, he wanted to
preserve those sounds which to him are ele-
mental cries (people howl, he says, when theyve
committed murder, or are betrayed).
Gold brushed it o when I asked if he thinks
the ancient civic ritual of theater attendance
ought to be revived in our fragmented modern
age. The Greeks didnt have movies or Netix
or the printing press, he said. I wouldnt be
that prescriptive or be that self-important about
the role of theater. But Golds mission is not
unlike that of his predecessors: to engineer a
place where we sit alongside other people as we
encounter our most complex, hidden emotions.
GOLD AND HIS wife, Amy Herzog, a playwright,
have two daughters. The elder, Frances, who is
4, has nemaline myopathy, a muscle disease,
and uses a wheelchair. Their younger daugh-
ter, Josephine, is 2. Becoming a parent to both
daughters, he told me, has brought him into
contact with his own fragility. Your life is in
three acts, and that second act is a hard shift to
make, toward dependency, community, vulnera-
bility, unconditional love. Now that he had been
pried open, the project of turning the lights o
and inviting people into a room to experience
their own vulnerability felt more pressing.
Most theater you see has a reassuring quali-
ty, Herzog explained to me in an email. Sam is
not someone who requires or even likes reassur-
ance, so he also doesnt provide it in his work.
This has the paradoxical eect of rendering the
audience both more alert (I am not being closely
chaperoned through this experience) and more
trusting (I am not being manipulated/lied to).
In recent years, Gold has wanted to take on only
projects that feel important enough to draw him
away from his children.
In mid-January, I returned to the rehearsal
studio to watch the progress of the gentleman-
caller scene. Gold took his seat at the direc-
tors table, and Ferris and Wittrock began to
run the sitting-on-the-oor sequence. After
Laura decides to join Jim on the oor, the stage
directions specify that she should place her pil-
low several feet away from him, prompting him
to invite her to come closer.
I cant hardly see you sitting way over there,
Jim says to Laura. I can see you, she replies.
But thats not fair, Im in the limelight, he says.
Laura then edges toward him.
For this moment to make sense, Ferris
needed to rst seat herself outside the halo of
the candlelight, and then, at Jims beckoning,
move toward it. This required some more del-
icate maneuvering for Ferris, negotiating the
balance between fragility and empowerment,
pity and straightforwardness in the interaction
between Jim and Laura. By the end of the play,
Gold hoped that the audience would see Laura
anew, as a person with a playful inner life. She
goes to the zoo because she likes it there, not
because she is lonely and limited. She collects
glass because it appeals to her imagination.
Shes a person, Ferris told me. Shes not just
this ctitious idea.
I want to try to ride the line between being
courteous but not being overly sensitive, Gold
instructed them from behind the directors
table. When I pictured this moment in the
story, Ive always told myself that Jim is not
thinking about it. That hes like: Come sit on
the oor! Lets sit on the oor! And that youre
like, Yeah, I would like that. Its like, Great, Id
love to sit on the oor with you! As opposed to
just, I dont want to have to do that in front of
you. But I dont know. Maybe that story isnt
the right story.
Gold probed this idea with the actors for a
few minutes how to play it like a romantic
scene: two beautiful young people in candle-
light, trying things together.
This is what you wanted your whole life,
Gold said to Ferris. Have fun with this guy. And
so when hes like, Lets sit on the oor, its like:
Yeah. Im going to have fun with you. Im going
to do this. It isnt humiliating yet.
What I had watched, I realized later, was
Gold substantially reinterpreting the lines of
the play, complicating them so that a moment
that could have been smooth and quick pass-
ing a pillow, sitting on the oor had become
ridged with silence, surprise, subtext. He was
performing a kind of freestyle literary criticism,
turning a scene thats often played for pathos
into a funny, sparky one about a woman with
spunk and originality encountering an unre-
markable man, manipulating him a little to get
what she wants.
They ran the sequence again. Jims tone was
even more guileless, and Lauras was bolder, but
still questioning. You could hear the meaning
of the scene deepen.
As Gold watched them, his ordinarily dead-
pan expression became radiant. He looked like
a kid hypnotized by a movie. He was seeing how
much he could uncover.
The New York Times Magazine 35
DEPART
M E NT
O
JUS T
I FIC A
TI ON
36
Stephen Bannon and Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general, have long shared a vision for remaking America. Now the nations top
law-enforcement agency can serve as one of their best tools for enacting it. By Emily Bazelon Photographs by Andrew Moore
 ne night in September 2014, when he was the country. He said that the 1924 immigration quota system, which barred
chief executive of Breitbart News, Ste- most Asians and tightly capped the entry of Italians, Jews, Africans and
phen Bannon hosted cocktails and din- Middle Easterners, was good for America. Bannon is also uncomfortable
ner at the Washington townhouse where with the changing face of the country. When two-thirds or three-quarters
he lived, a mansion near the Supreme of the C.E.O.s in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think
Court that he liked to call the Breitbart he said on the radio with Trump in November 2015, vastly exaggerating the
Embassy. Beneath elaborate chandeliers actual numbers. A country is more than an economy. Were a civic society.
and anked by gold drapes and stately At a time when other, more libertarian conservatives had begun to
oil paintings, Je Sessions, then a sena- embrace critiques of the criminal-justice system, each man saw crime as
tor from Alabama, sat next to the guest of yet another way that the fabric of society was deteriorating. While Bannon
honor: Nigel Farage, the insurgent British was chief executive, Breitbart created a specic tag for articles called black
politician, who rst met Sessions two years earlier when Bannon introduced crime and ran article after article demonizing the Black Lives Matter
them. Farage was building support for his right-wing party by complaining movement (calling protesters blood-lusting junkies) and showing Lati-
in the British press about uncontrolled mass immigration. Sessions, like no immigrants as violent (One Sex Oender Illegal Alien Caught After
other attendees, was celebrating the recent collapse in Congress of bipartisan Another Alleged Oender Legalized). The site also frequently covered
immigration reform, which would have provided a path to citizenship for Sessionss condemnations of criminal-justice reform. Opposing a bipartisan
some undocumented people. At the dinner, Sessions told a writer for Vice, bill to reduce sentences for some nonviolent drug oenses, Sessions said
Reid Cherlin, that Bannons site was instrumental in defeating the measure. last May that Republican supporters of the legislation in no way represent
Sessions read Breitbart almost every day, he explained, because it was putting the conservative movement and warned against signing death warrants
out cutting-edge information. for thousands of American innocent citizens.
Bannons role in blocking the reform had gone beyond sympathetic cov- As the Republican primary season progressed, it became clear to Ses-
erage on his site. Over the previous year, he, Sessions and one of Sessionss sions and Bannon that Trump could be the vessel for their brand of Repub-
top aides, Stephen Miller, spent an enormous amount of time meeting licanism. Back in August 2015, Bannon emailed a friend, according to The
in person, developing plans and messaging and strategy, as Miller later Daily Beast, that while he felt good about other candidates like Ted Cruz,
explained to Rosie Gray in The Atlantic. Breitbart writers also reportedly he was ready to pick Trump, because he was a nationalist who embraces
met with Sessionss sta for a weekly happy hour at the Union Pub. For most Sessionss immigration plan. Six months later, Sessions became the rst
Republicans in Washington, immigration was an issue they wished would senator to endorse Trump for president. Last August, Sessions helped create
go away, a persistent source of conict between the partys elites, who saw a new immigration policy for Trump, which called for reducing immigration
it as a straightforward economic good, and its middle-class voting base, by, among other things, tightening the rules about visas for high-skilled
who mistrusted the eects of immigration on employment. But for Ban- workers. That same month, Bannon took over Trumps campaign.
non, Sessions and Miller, immigration was a galvanizing issue, lying at the Their shared view was central to Trumps Inaugural Address, which,
center of their apparent vision for reshaping the United States by tethering according to The Wall Street Journal, Bannon and Miller principally wrote.
it to its European and Christian origins. (None of them would comment For a president taking oce amid peacetime and economic growth, the
for this article.) That September evening, as they celebrated the collapse speech oered a singularly dark vision. Trump spoke of American carnage
of the reform eort and the rise of Farage, whose own anti-immigration a country made increasingly dangerous by the crime and the gangs and
party in Britain represented the new brand of nativism it felt like the the drugs, its economy ravaged by production abroad, its borders inltrat-
beginning of something new. I was privileged enough to be at it, Miller ed by marauders. The speech was a perfect distillation of the foreboding
said about the gathering last June, while a guest on Breitbarts SiriusXM view of America broadcast by Breitbart a land in disarray and decline
radio show. Its going to sound like a motivational speech, but its true. To that has reached the point of crisis.
all the voters out there: The only limits to what we can achieve is what we In fact, violent crime has been declining sharply for 25 years; with a
believe we can achieve. small uptick in 2015, it remains low. The number of undocumented immi-
The answer to what they could achieve, of course, is now obvious: every- grants has fallen slightly in the last decade, and these newcomers are less
thing. Bannon and Miller are ensconced in the West Wing, as arguably the likely to commit violent crimes than people who were born here. Evidence
two most inuential policy advisers to Donald J. Trump. shows that immigrants are an engine of economic growth
And Je Sessions is now the attorney general of the United and entrepreneurship. While they take a small bite out of
States. The genesis of their working relationship is crucial the wages of native-born workers without a high school
to understanding the far-reaching domestic goals of the diploma, they provide an overall boost to productivity
Trump presidency and how the law may be used to attain that increases the pay of more educated workers by up
Sessions said the
them over the next four years. Bannon and Sessions have to 10 percent, labor economists say. As for the totalitar-
eectively presented the countrys changing demographics 1924 immigration ian threat that, according to Sessions, Americans face
the rising number of minority and foreign-born residents quota system, from radical Islam, since Sept. 11, white supremacists and
as Americas chief internal threat. Sessions has long been which barred most other non-Muslim extremists have killed nearly twice as
an outlier in his party on this subject; in 2013, when his many Americans as radical Muslims, according to the
Asians and
Republican colleagues were talking primarily about curb- New America Foundation.
ing illegal immigration, he oered a proposal to curb legal capped the entry Why would the Trump administration paint a picture
immigration. (It failed in committee, 17 to one.) of Italians, Jews, so starkly at odds with reality? Its simple: A vision of the
Talking to Bannon on air in September 2015, Sessions, Africans and nation besieged provides clear justication for policies that
who has received awards from virulently anti-immigrant will advance Sessions, Bannon and Millers divisive nation-
Middle Easterners,
groups, described the present day as a dangerous period of alism. In the administrations early moves, we can already
radical change for America, comparing it to the decades of was good see the contours beginning to take shape. An executive
the early 20th century, when waves of immigrants ooded for America. order presented as an emergency measure to protect the

38 3.5.17
country from terrorists winds up barring immigrants coming here to study successfully prosecuted Ku Klux Klan members in the early years, for the most
or work from seven countries that have not been a source of terrorist attacks part, Shugerman told me, the D.O.J. handcued the federal governments
in the United States since Sept. 11. Another order refers to immigrants who lawyers from doing more.
pose a risk to public safety and then makes millions of the undocumented At the time, lawyers worked all over Washington, in the State Department,
people in the country a priority for deportation. Impending catastrophe the Interior Department and elsewhere. But it wasnt until the opening in
grants the president broad powers, and those powers are used broadly. 1934 of the Justice Departments current headquarters, an imposing build-
It is through the Justice Department that the administration is likely to ing the size of a large square block, that the department became a strong
advance its nationalist plans to strengthen the grip of law enforcement, institutional presence. Justice Department lawyers exed their muscles
raise barriers to voting and signicantly reduce all forms of immigration, defending the New Deal, and the agency expanded in scope.
promoting what seems to be a longstanding desire to reassert the coun- For all the vast sweep of the Department of Justice as a whole, much of
trys European and Christian heritage. Its not an accident that Sessions, its inuence over the major political conicts of our time, and certainly
who presumably could have chosen from a number of plum assignments, those poised to dominate the next four years, is concentrated within the
opted for the role of attorney general. The Department of Justice is the civil rights division, charged as it is with ensuring equal protection under
most valuable perch from which to transform the country in the way he and the law. With a sta of roughly 700, the division is basically the watchdog
Bannon have wanted. of the government and
With an exaggerat- also a kind of police of
ed threat of disorder the nations police,
looming, the nations because it has the
top law-enforcement power to investigate
agency could become departments for viola-
a machine for try- tions of civil rights law.
ing to fundamentally It can also sue localities
change who gets to be for discrimination in
an American and what housing, education
rights they can enjoy. and employment, on
the basis of sex, nation-
THE DEPARTMENT OF al origin, religion or
Justice employs a sta disability as well as
of 115,000, including race. The division also
more than 10,000 law- protects the rights of
yers. Besides encom- people in prison and
passing the F.B.I. and mental institutions.
the Drug Enforcement When the divi-
Administration, the sion was founded in
department adminis- 1957, it was staed by
ters the federal prison a handful of lawyers
system; prosecutes who largely refrained
nancial fraud, federal from directly chal-
environmental crimes lenging Jim Crow in
and national-secu- the South. But when
rity violations; and Robert F. Kennedy
oversees the coun- A hallway on the fifth floor of the Justice Departments headquarters, leading to the became attorney gen-
attorney generals office. Previous photograph: The buildings interior courtyard.
trys 93 United States eral in 1961, things
attorneys (who pros- changed. He had his
ecute federal crimes own ambitions, Shug-
throughout the country). The department also includes two critical sites erman says. Even as J.F.K. tried to steer the ship down the middle, R.F.K.
for setting legal policy. The Oce of the Solicitor General decides the pulled it toward civil rights. In the 1970s and early 80s, the civil rights
positions the federal government takes in the appeals courts and before divisions ranks grew, attracting top law-school graduates to nonpartisan
the Supreme Court, and the Oce of Legal Counsel advises the president civil-service jobs. Many of them hoped to serve in the tradition of lawyers
about the legality of his actions and executive orders, passing judgment like John Doar, a Republican from Wisconsin who lived in a dorm for
like an internal court. weeks with James Meredith, the rst African-American student to attend
The traditional explanation for the founding of the Department of Justice the University of Mississippi, during his struggle to register for classes
in 1870 has heroic overtones: Congress and President Ulysses S. Grant were in 1962. Most of us were liberals, and we were passionate about ghting
purportedly determined to enforce Reconstruction and protect the civil the countrys long history of racial injustice, says William Yeomans, who
rights of former slaves. But in recent years, a more pragmatic narrative worked in the division for 24 years, beginning in 1981.
has taken hold. As the Fordham law professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman Political battles over the priorities of the division have been escalating
explains it, the story is really about cutting costs, weeding out cronyism and for decades. During Democratic presidencies, the division has moved to
reining in radical Republican lawyers who wanted to aggressively enforce challenge intentional discrimination by individuals (like a landlord who
the policies of Reconstruction. In a 2014 article in The Stanford Law Review, turns away an African-American couple and then rents to a white one) and
Shugerman points out that the creation of the Justice Department reduced has sought to combat policies that disproportionally aect minorities, even
the federal legal sta by one-third. While a handful of determined lawyers if its not easy to prove theyre racially motivated (like a low-income housing

Photograph by Andrew Moore for The New York Times The New York Times Magazine 39
program that funnels African-American recipients into mostly minority CRIME ESPECIALLY URBAN CRIME lies at the heart of the new national-
areas). Republican administrations since the Reagan era, by contrast, have ist message, in part as an argument for why liberal-run cities, with their dense,
tended to bring individual rather than broad suits while also treating civil diverse, polyglot communities, shouldnt serve as a model for the nation as
rights as race-neutral or colorblind and opposing armative action. They a whole. Since the outset of his campaign, Trump has exaggerated the vio-
have also been equally likely to sue on behalf of white and black people lence and poverty of inner cities, painting them as war zones and blaming
who say they face unequal treatment. The Republican view of civil rights Democrats for the destruction. The politics behind this sort of language are
focuses on the protection of the individual, says Robert Driscoll, chief of not new: For 50 years, Republican candidates for president have won by
sta of the civil rights division during George W. Bushs rst term. The stoking fear of crime, promising to restore order and respect for law in this
Republican approach has caused tension with the career sta. Whenever country, as Richard Nixon put it in 1968. But Trump has been xated on the
the G.O.P. is in oce, theres a certain amount of heat on whoever is in issue, ignoring actual crime statistics to inaccurately blame African-Amer-
charge, Driscoll says. The career icans for most white homicides and
people hated us when I was there. falsely claim that the murder rate is
During the Obama administra- at its highest point in 47 years.
tion in particular, the civil rights While many conservative gures
division began to take on a whole kept their distance from Trump
gamut of institutions. Under the during the campaign, one group
leadership of Tom Perez, it went embraced him wholeheartedly:
after banks, arguing that Wells law-enforcement unions. The rank
Fargo and Bank of America system- and le did, too. A survey before
atically steered African-American the election by Police Magazine
and Latino homeowners toward found that 84 percent of ocers
subprime loans, and winning the who planned to vote backed him,
largest settlements in the history of while just 8 percent supported
the Fair Housing Act, totaling about Hillary Clinton. Trumps views on
$570 million. In 2014, Vanita Gupta the Black Lives Matter movement,
arrived from the A.C.L.U. to lead the which many cops have seen as unfair
division, and under her direction, and a danger to policing minority
the department addressed prisons neighborhoods, no doubt played
and schools, working to reduce sol- a part. Last summer, Trump called
itary connement, discouraging the the movement a threat, blaming it
arrest of students for disciplinary for the deaths of ocers and adding,
infractions and instructing schools We are going to have to perhaps talk
across the country to let transgender with the attorney general about it.
students use the bathrooms of their Today the test is how Trumps
choice. (Sessions led the charge in new attorney general will view the
the Trump administration to rescind Justice Departments responsibil-
the order about bathroom access.) ity, conferred by Congress in 1994
Another signicant power Perez after the beating of Rodney King, to
and Gupta exercised was oversight investigate local police departments
of local police forces, investigating for a pattern or practice of civil
25 departments for problems like rights violations. With more than
excessive use of force, unlawful 12,000 police departments across
arrests and racially discriminatory the country, the division couldnt
policing. Twenty of those investi- exercise anything approaching true
gations ended in consent decrees, national oversight even if it wanted
a form of agreement that entails The office previously used by Vanita Gupta, former acting to. (Perez and Guptas total of 25
monitoring by the courts. director of the Justice Departments civil rights division. investigations was equal to that of
In this way, the Justice Depart- the Clinton Justice Department over
ment under Obama used civil rights eight years; the Bush administration
enforcement or the potential for it to check private, local and state initiated 21.) But the Obama Justice Departments willingness to enter cities
entities that otherwise would have escaped federal intervention. But Ses- like Chicago, Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., after high-prole encounters
sions can pull back on such oversight, even to an extent (if he chooses) between the police and African-Americans meant that ocers everywhere
beyond that of his Republican predecessors. Invoking Trumps nightmare had to reckon with the possibility of federal investigation at a time when
vision of America as beset by lawlessness, the department can unbind many of them already felt under siege.
the hands of law-enforcement agencies around the country. On issues Consider Chicago, which throughout the campaign was Trumps exem-
like immigration and voting rights, with public perceptions inuenced plar of a city rife with carnage. Chicago has been reeling from a major
by inated tales of criminality (improper use of benets, voter fraud), a spike in gun violence and killings, but it is also a city with a sordid history
Sessions-led Department of Justice can both feed the narrative of crime of police abuses. Under Gupta, the civil rights division opened an investi-
and react to it, through heightened investigations and prosecutions. A gation into the citys police department in 2015, after the release of a video
civil rights system built up to protect the minority from the majority could of the killing of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by
quickly turn into the reverse. an ocer while the teenager was walking away. After hundreds of hours of

40 3.5.17 Photograph by Andrew Moore for The New York Times

interviews with police ocers, residents and city ocials, By claiming voter laws. North Carolina also ended same-day registration and
the civil rights division issued an unsparing set of ndings in fraud, Trump out-of-precinct voting and reduced the early-voting period
January, faulting the police department for routinely using to one week from two.
excessive force (especially against African-Americans and and his Justice The Obama Justice Department responded by joining
Latinos), a decient system for investigating police miscon- Department civil rights groups in suing Texas and North Carolina,
duct and a poor structure of supervision, promotion and are creating a claiming the laws had the eect of discriminating against
training. The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police welcomed rationale for minority voters. Matching voter rolls to the records in
the parts of the report about training and promotion. But state and federal databases, experts hired by the Justice
the union objected to the Justice Departments implication restricting voting Department determined that more than 600,000 vot-
that race aects police decision-making, arguing that o- a practice ers in Texas lacked the required ID and that they were
cers are simply targeting criminal behavior in high-crime that tends to hurt disproportionately black and Latino. An appeals court
areas, not African-Americans and Latinos. minority voters. ruled against Texas last July. Nine days later, a second
Now the police have an attorney general who has been appeals court struck down North Carolinas law, saying
unwilling to give credence to their critics. Confronting Gupta the restrictions target African-American voters with
in November 2015 at a Senate hearing called the War on almost surgical precision. Obama urged other states
Police, Sessions suggested that the civil rights division was to heed the lesson in his nal speech as president: We
going beyond fair and balanced treatment of law enforce- should be making it easier, not harder, to vote.
ment. Sessions has also called court-monitored consent decrees, which the Trump and Sessions are poised to do precisely the opposite, creating a
Justice Department has used to settle school desegregation cases in addition rationale for restricting voting instead of expanding it. Over the last few
to police investigations, one of the most dangerous, and rarely discussed, months, the president has claimed that millions of people voted illegally in
exercises of raw power. The problem, in other words, isnt what the police November. In fact, just four cases of in-person voter fraud have been iden-
are doing. Its that the federal government is interfering. tied from the 2016 presidential election, and a Loyola Law School study
In appearing to categorically oppose consent decrees and signaling a in 2014 discovered only 31 credible allegations of fraud in a sample of one
lack of interest in broad new investigations, Sessions appears to be going billion votes. Pressed for evidence by Bill OReilly on Fox, Trump promised
further than even police groups do. No ocer worth his badge would say that Vice President Mike Pence would lead a commission to investigate
no investigations if an investigation is warranted, James Pasco, executive the nations voting rolls. A week later, Stephen Miller falsely insisted on
director of the Fraternal Order of Police, told me. But that doesnt mean the TV that 14 percent of noncitizens are registered to vote portraying
police wouldnt like the Justice Department to back o in Chicago, where the country as vulnerable to shadowy foreign hordes who undermine the
no consent decree was negotiated before Obamas and Guptas departures, very core of American democracy.
and its now up to Sessions to decide what an agreement of any kind should Raising the alarm about illegal voting furthers the Republican Partys
look like, or whether it should exist at all. current strategy for preserving power. For more than a decade, Republican
The question for the country is what happens if local police departments, state legislators have used the myth of widespread fraud to justify tighten-
relieved of the realistic prospect of federal oversight, feel their hands are ing voting and registration rules. This year, 46 new bills to restrict access
untied in tense situations. On an evening in January when Fox News ran a to voting and registration have been introduced in 21 states, according
segment on the recent spike in murders in Chicago, Trump tweeted a few to the Brennan Center for Justice. Making it harder to vote tends to help
minutes later that he could send in the feds! Its hard to know what Trump Republicans win oce, in part because it tends to have a disproportionate
meant, but he was not talking about protecting civil rights. The next time a impact on minority voters, who are less likely to have a required form of ID
disturbing video of a police shooting surfaces, its easy to imagine Trump and and who generally support Democrats. Over the next four election cycles,
Sessions supporting the police without question and directing a crackdown the national share of eligible voters who are minorities is projected to rise
on protesters, especially if theyre mostly black. That would connect the steadily, to about 40 percent from about 30 percent. Bluntly put, Trumps
Trumpist edition of law and order to the apparent project of undermining supporters, who were 90 percent white, can continue to put Republican
the rights of minorities and their claim on the national conscience. candidates over the top only if an increasing number of minority voters
stay away from or are kept away from the polls.
ANOTHER WAY IN WHICH the Department of Justice could move to The Republican hunt for voter fraud has a history. After George W. Bush
advance the Sessions and Bannon agenda is through its approach to voting narrowly beat Al Gore in 2000, his attorney general created an election-
laws. The civil rights divisions powers in this area ow mostly from the Vot- integrity task force, spurring United States attorneys to search for voter
ing Rights Act, which Congress passed in 1965 to help African-Americans fraud. One of them, David Iglesias, a Republican in New Mexico, looked
vote. Section 5 of the act gave the Justice Department unusual authority to into more than 100 complaints but couldnt nd enough evidence for a sin-
review any proposed change to an election practice in a state or county with gle prosecution. He was red in 2006 along with eight other United States
a history of low minority registration, mostly in the South. The divisions attorneys. An investigation by the Justice Department later found that most
voting section has largely seen its role ever since as safeguarding the rights of the dismissals were a serious abuse of executive power, because they were
of minority voters. During both Democratic and Republican administra- a response to the attorneys refusing to bring unsubstantiated voter-fraud
tions, Justice Department lawyers used Section 5 to block localities from charges or politically motivated charges against Democratic ocials, or both
redrawing district lines or closing polling places and to block strict as in Iglesias case. Congressional hearings related to the rings took down
voter-ID laws from taking eect. Alberto Gonzales, Bushs attorney general at the time.
But in 2013, in a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Bush appointees in the civil rights division were also caught trying
Holder, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. argued for the majority that Section to illegally push out career civil rights lawyers and replace them with
5 was no longer necessary because things have changed dramatically conservatives. In an internal email, one Bush appointee, Brad Schlozman,
in the South. After the ruling, however, Southern states rushed to make it wrote to another Republican: My tentative plans are to gerrymander
more dicult for people to vote. Hundreds of polling places were closed all those crazy libs right out of the section. By the end of Bushs term,
throughout the region, and Texas and North Carolina passed strict voter-ID most of the career attorneys had been pushed out (Continued on Page 57)

The New York Times Magazine 41

42
HOW TO STEAL A RIVER
 TO F E E D A N E N O R M O U S B U I L D I N G B O O M , I N D I A S R E L E N T L E S S S A N D M I N E R S H AV E D E VA S TAT E D T H E
WAT E R WAY S T H AT M A K E L I F E T H E R E P O S S I B L E . / BY R O L LO R O M I G / P H O TO G R A P H S BY G E O R G E G E O R G I O U

43
S
everal years ago, I took a journey with my wife
and baby daughter to my mother-in-laws child-
hood home, a forest village in the southwestern
Indian state of Kerala. As any Keralite will tell
you, Kerala is the lushest, most watery corner
of India, a skinny coastal strip where hundreds
of tributaries merge into broad, winding rivers
before nally owing into the Arabian Sea. My
mother-in-laws village is named Manimala, for
the river that provides its reason for being.
My wife spent her childhood summers in
Manimala, and all her stories seemed to center
on the river: the old stone steps called ghats that
villagers descended to board a ferry or take a
bath; the neighbors shing or washing elephants;
the otillas of owers that drifted downstream
after monsoon gales. Id been cultivating a fan-
tasy that our own daughter would spend her
summers on these banks. But when we arrived
in Manimala, I was shocked: The great river had
become a trickle. In a few places it had pooled
into puddles big enough for people to wash their
clothes. Otherwise it was barren, the stone steps
now leading to a gouged-out ravine of pale boul-
ders baking in the sun.
What happened to the river? I asked.
Sand maa, my wifes cousin Thambichan
answered.
The Manimala, Thambichan explained, once
had a sandy riverbed that in some places was 30 ABOVE / SWIMMERS IN NEW DELHI middlemen between the maas and the real
feet deep. The sand acted as an aquifer, regu- O N A G H AT B Y T H E YA M U N A . estate developers; the police and ocials who
lating the rivers ow. But sand is also a crucial PAG E 4 2 / S A N D F O R CO N S T R U C T I O N take bribes from any or all of the above. And
ingredient in concrete, and India is urbanizing I N G R E AT E R N O I D A . the politicians sometimes, its rumored, even
at a speed and scale virtually unmatched by any chief ministers of major states who take their
country in history. Apartment towers, highways, cut and maybe even run sand-mining operations
bridges, skyscrapers, metros, dams: Each of them of their own. The McKinsey Global Institute cal-
swallows unimaginable helpings of sand. It could culated that the hundreds of millions of Indians
line the rivers, or it could form the cities that were running dry, too. The local rice paddies migrating from villages to cities require up to a
were rising everywhere alongside them, but it were long gone. Along the rivers route, several billion square yards of new real estate develop-
could not do both at once. major bridges faced collapse, because the loss ment annually. Current construction, according
No one listened when we warned of the of sand had weakened their foundations. to one estimate, already draws more than 800
dangers of sand mining, my wifes uncle Shaji When Indians use the term sand maa, million tons of sand every year, mostly from
told me. With nearly all the sand removed from theyre talking about the whole range of people Indias waterways. Though no reliable numbers
the river, the water table had dropped for miles who prot from illegal sand mining: the local are available, all the people I spoke to in India
around. When the monsoons came, the water laborers; the budding capitalists who own the assumed that much of it is taken illegally.
whooshed away as quickly as the rain fell. The trucks and earthmovers; the genuine mobsters As I came to know Manimala, it became clear
ordinary wells ran dry, so people drilled tube who, in some places, organize the miners and that the river had mostly been mined by the vil-
wells deep into the earth; now some of those oer extra muscle; the suppliers who act as lagers themselves. You could see the evidence in

44 3.5.17 Photograph by George Georgiou for The New York Times


many of the new houses nestled among the rub-
ber trees and coconut palms. Some were made
of concrete, large and sprawling and brightly col-
ored: pink, neon yellow, re-engine red. A few had
heaps of sand out front to be used for concrete or
plastering for new wings and other renovations.
One evening, I sat with Saji P. Thomas, a slen-
der, energetic former sand miner with a small
mustache, in front of his new house. He told me
he started sand mining around 2002, to raise
money for a new business. (He now runs a small
cosmetics factory.) It was possible then to mine
sand legally, but Thomas, like many others, didnt
bother with hard-to-obtain permits at rst; he
mined only at night to evade the police. They
worked in groups of four or more, he said. Some
would pilot the rowboat and the others would
dive as deep as 15 feet to ll their baskets with
sand. The loads were awkward and heavy. Wed
make a staircase out of tree stumps, he said. But
the danger was wed slip o a step and almost
choke to death underwater.
At the rivers edge, another team would load
the sand into a truck. Sometimes, Thomas said,
the truck driver would get a call that the police
were on their way, and theyd scramble to n-
ish loading the truck and ee; any bribes the
authorities might demand could cut deep into
their margins. There are policemen who have
built beautiful houses thanks to sand mining, he
said. His previous job, at a bank, paid 400 rupees
a day, roughly $5. A good nights work mining
sand earned him 2,000 rupees. So Thomas kept
at it. To distract myself, Id fantasize that I was
a businessman in a nice car.
The work did sound terribly dangerous. But
the most striking detail in Thomass story was not
about the mining itself, but about the attitude of
his neighbors who lived at the rivers edge. Back
when there was plenty of sand, trucks came day
and night to load up at the river. But to get access
they usually had to cut across the property of the
towns riverfront homeowners, most of whom
would collect a toll of 150 rupees from each truck
that passed. Now that sand mining has wiped
out the groundwater, those same homeowners
have to hire dierent trucks tankers to bring
them drinking water, at more than 1,200 rupees
a trip. The sand was gone, and gone with it were
the river, the groundwater and even the tolls.
All that was left was a question, one that haunts
river communities all over India: Why would any
village so willingly accept such paltry gains for
certain catastrophe?
More than half the apartments built during
Indias construction boom can be found in the
New Delhi metropolitan area. One of the highest
concentrations of these apartments is in Greater
Noida, a suburb that lies between the two most
sacred rivers in Hindu lore: the Yamuna to the
west, and the Ganges to the east. Both rivers are
heavily mined, and its easy to see where all that
sand goes.
SAND PITS DUG BY Greater Noida has come to embody the shiny,
NIGHT DOTTED THE walled-o vertical India of the future. Amid
seemingly endless colonies of newly construct-
LAND AS FAR AS ed concrete apartment towers, you can enjoy
THE HORIZON, SOME one of Indias nest golf courses and the coun-
LARGE ENOUGH trys only Formula One racetrack, as well as a
shopping mall that tries to simulate the city of
THAT CHILDREN Venice, complete with gondola rides. Among
COULD USE THEM AS all the well-guarded high-rise clusters, you can
still nd the remnants of 124 agricultural villag-
CRICKET GROUNDS. es, which 40 years ago were the only habitation
in this place: fragmented elds of mustard and
wheat, an odd absent acre picked over by a stum-
bling herd of goats.
Greater Noida was created in 1991 and is
administered not by a mayor but by a chief
executive. The idea was to transform the farm-
land just outside booming New Delhi into an
The New York Times Magazine 45
industrial hub that would attract job-creating thick pompadour who wanted to show me what
factories. (Noida is an acronym for New Okhla had happened to the surrounding rivers. For
Industrial Development Authority.) Instead, long stretches of our trip, the only people we
according to local accounts, the authority sold saw on the roadside were hawkers waving glossy
much of the farmland to private developers for brochures, trying to lure us to open houses.
10 or 30 or even several hundred times what Between the high rises, dust storms whipped
theyd paid the original landowning farmer, the empty elds. Every billboard we passed
and Greater Noida became a reservoir for was an advertisement for a high-end condo-
population overow from New Delhi. The few minium. One featured, alongside the usual list
industries that did come to Greater Noida rare- of perks, a irty photograph of the Bollywood
ly hired villagers, preferring instead to bus in star Deepika Padukone and an unsurpassable
better-educated workers from other northern slogan: Nothing Left to Desire.
cities. Young jobless village men and migrant
THEYRE HAPPY WITH Why dont Indians just shift to other construc-
laborers turned to petty theft, and Greater MINING, THE FARMER tion materials? In part its because concrete is
Noida saw a wave of muggings and carjack- cheap, strong, easy to use and highly versatile. In
ings. Some high-rise residents began to treat
SAID. GROUNDWATER part its cultural: Building a house out of brawny
their complexes as fortresses, driving out only DEPLETES: NO concrete has come to be viewed by many as a mat-
in the daylight. ter of prestige. They feel that beauty is a beast,
Naushad Khan, a 37-year-old former sugar-
PROBLEM. RIVER IS the architect B. R. Ajit told me ruefully. The law
cane farmer with a boyish smile and a boxers DYING: NO PROBLEM. encourages this tendency. One environmental
physique, seized the opportunity presented by
the construction boom to enter the entrepre-
neurial class. As a teenager, he joined and then
expanded his elder brothers digging company,
excavating the foundations for new develop-
ments and selling the sand they removed. Now,
capital in hand, he was starting his own devel-
opment, an eco-friendly luxury condo tower,
on the outskirts of Greater Noida. He had turned
sand into money, and now he would turn that
money right back into something concrete.
Construction, Khan told me, was an extreme-
ly competitive business, which he counted as
a blessing. If you want to succeed, then there
should be a good, strong rival against you, he
said when we met at his freshly built oce. I
asked him if sand mining was ever dangerous. By
way of answering, he asked an assistant to fetch
his pistol. He set it on the table between us as a
kind of conversation piece, next to the tea and
cookies. It was Indian-made, long-barreled and
hefty-looking. He laughed when I asked if hed
ever had to use it. Many times, he said. Tens
of times. Scores of times. He was quick to add a
clarication: Hed red it only for safety, shoot-
ing in the air to ward o suspicious people or if
the atmosphere was wrong. That sort of thing.
The last time I saw Khan was at an overwhelm-
ingly well catered wedding reception he hosted
for his nephew inside a hangar-size tent. Parked
inside the entryway was an immaculate white
Audi Q5, presumably a wedding gift. Great-
er Noida had worked out well for him, Khan
acknowledged. He always took sand legally, he
said he was quite insistent on this point and
now he could help provide a comfortable stan-
dard of living for an extended family with over
40 members. Amid the festivities, Khan seemed
almost giddy with pride for all he had achieved.

One afternoon I took a drive around Greater

Noida with a local farmer named Vikrant Ton-
gad, a sly young man with pointy shoes and a

46 3.5.17
lawyer explained to me that the Indian building
code recognizes a house as a house only if its
made from specic heavy materials concrete
included. If you use that criterion, he said, the
presidents house is not a house.
Now, as we drove past mile after mile of
unnished apartment towers, a city for ghosts,
all I could think about was the tons of river sand
locked within. Many of the condos in Greater
Noida are bought as investments by Indians
living abroad, and sometimes buildings are left
empty by owners who have no intention of taking
residence. In other cases the developers run out
of money midconstruction or are halted by legal
disputes, leaving bare concrete shells for years
on end. Some buyers who actually do intend to
move in are left waiting helplessly for the keys
to apartments they paid for long ago.
Finally we arrived at the oodplains of the
Yamuna. We stopped to survey the deep pits
and fresh tracks where sand miners with earth-
movers had been working under cover of night.
Similar pits dotted the land as far as the horizon,
some large enough, I later learned, that children we saw something that looked like a river:
used them as cricket grounds. The mining has
shifted the course of the Yamuna, destroyed ani-
mal habitats, damaged crops and threatened
the purity of local groundwater, and it may be
causing buildings to sink. But its especially dif-
cult to single out the eects of sand mining
on the Yamuna because the river is troubled in
so many dierent ways. The truth is that with
the exception of a couple of months during
A S A N D YA R D
N E A R G A R H M U K T E S H WA R ,
ABOUT 40 MILES EAST OF
G R E AT E R N O I D A .
monsoon season, by the time the Yamuna River
reaches Greater Noida, there is no river at all.
Tongad walked me down to the banks, and
There was liquid in the riverbed, and it owed
in a particular direction. But its an illusion. Less
than 150 miles north, nearly every drop of the
Yamuna is rerouted to provide water for the
city. The liquid that ows in the Yamuna river-
bed alongside Greater Noida consists of every
variety of urban waste: factory refuse, slaugh-
terhouse runo, sewage. If you walk right up
to the water, what youll nd are swirls of oil,
clouds of white chemical foam, animal parts,
oating turds. I never spent time next to the
Yamuna without getting a headache for the rest
of the day. And yet old traditions die hard. I
saw the Hindu faithful still dipping their idols
into this supposedly sacred sludge. Families
still cremate their dead on the ghats along the
fetid banks.
Our last stop was a shop that appeared to sell
cellphone chargers. In fact, the chargers were a
ruse; it was really an unlicensed wine shop. In
the back room Tongad introduced me to a sand
miner named Jagbir Nagar. He was a thin man,
around 60, dressed head to toe in white, and with
him were several young men from the village,
all seated around a hookah.
Nagar is the sarpanch, or head man, of his
village in Greater Noida. He also shares an
earthmover with a team of ve or six others
that they use to mine sand from the oodplains.
Together, he said, they can take as many as 100
truckloads of sand a night, some of which is
used for local projects and the rest of which is
mostly picked up by truckers from the desert
state of Rajasthan. (If that sounds like sending
coals to Newcastle, its not; desert sand is too
ne and rounded to make strong concrete.)
I asked Nagar if he was worried that the min-
ing might adversely aect the quality of the local
water. It was a question I had an immediate
interest in, given that we were at that moment
drinking glasses of what theyd told me was
unltered local groundwater. Nagar grunted
in the negative and looked like at me as if I
were an idiot.
Tongad answered for him. Theyre happy
with mining, he said. Groundwater depletes:
No problem. River is dying: No problem.
People are selsh, a younger man agreed.
The miners say, We dig a hole, and the next
year the river comes and lls it again, Tongad
said. So whats the problem?
I had often encountered this attitude in India.
Everything is rigged, the argument goes. How
can you expect us not to seize whatever meager
leavings we can? Its not as if were carjackers
were taking sand! From what used to be our own
land! Its dicult to convince people who for gen-
erations have taken local sand for granted that,
like passenger pigeons a century ago, something
Photograph by George Georgiou for The New York Times 47
they had thought of as innite is now danger-
ously nite. Its dicult to tell people who have
always been able to take sand according to their
needs, and who now have seen outsiders come
in and derive great prot from it, that sand is
in fact a critical natural resource that needs to
be protected.
If the police come, do you ght them? I
asked Nagar.
If there are a lot of police and only a few
men, then we run, he said. If the police are
few and the men are many, then we get into it
with them. We re shot for shot.

Nagendra Prasad Singh, the district magistrate

in charge of enforcing the law in Greater Noida,
is a serious man, built like a pillar, with a push-
broom mustache and a slight twitch in his right
eye. He came from a farming family but earned
a graduate degree in physics before entering
the Civil Service. His previous posting was in
Shamli district, which also lies on the Yamuna,
and it was said that he put a complete stop to
sand mining there the rst I had heard of any
such success anywhere in India.
When he came to the New Delhi suburbs,
Singh quickly began running night raids on
illegal miners, seizing dozens of truckloads of
sand and imposing nes of tens of millions of
rupees on the violators. At his oce in Noidas
Sector 27, I asked him if the raids had posed
any danger for him. Have you read the Gita?
he asked. The soul never dies. The energy may
change shape, but the soul never dies. With that
kind of condence, I dont think anybody can
shoot us.
Singh said he had been ghting the sand maa
since 1999, when he was the city magistrate in
Haridwar, a pilgrimage town that marks the spot
where the Ganges emerges from the Himala-
yas. There he learned all about the sand trade
from a tiny but stubborn community of activist
Hindu monks called Matri Sadan. Their leader,
a dreadlocked former chemistry teacher now
called Swami Shivanand, moved to Haridwar in N AG E N D R A P R A S A D S I N G H , FA R argument is an exasperating fact: There really is
1997 to devote his life to praise of the Ganges, R I G H T, T H E G R E AT E R N O I D A D I S T R I C T enough sand in the rivers and oshore to meet
M A G I S T R AT E , M E E T S W I T H
but his prayers were disrupted by the incessant Indias demand for concrete and plaster, at least
LOCAL VILLAGERS IN AN
work of the sand maa. The swamis objections EFFORT TO DISCOURAGE ILLEGAL
according to many conservationists. In some
to mining in the Ganges were largely religious, SAND MINING. cases sand mining can even be benecial. An
but as a chemist he was also keenly attuned to oversilted river a river with too much sand
the earthly costs. is also prone to ooding and changing course,
Together Singh and Swami Shivanand set their and strategic sand mining can help keep it on
sights on a businessman named Ponty Chadha, Where the River Runs Dry Additional track. The catastrophes occur only when specif-
who ruled the sand trade across the state of Uttar photographs are at nytimes.com/magazine. ic, vulnerable stretches of river are overmined.
Pradesh. He was also the distributor of many Thered be no problem if the construction indus-
Bollywood blockbusters, a real estate magnate, when a real estate dispute with his brother Har- try mined only from river sites with a carefully
the states main liquor baron and a philanthro- deep escalated into a gunght.) identied surplus of sand.
pist focused on special-needs children and had Singh eventually realized that law enforce- Existing laws on sand mining should be ade-
close ties to the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. ment alone would not be enough to stop the quate to regulate the trade, but as is so often
Singh and the monks managed to get Chadhas theft; arresting the leaders of many small- the case in India, the laws are toothless. In 2013,
sand-mining license revoked, which left the trade er maas may be an even greater challenge for example, Indias National Green Tribunal a
to the motley assortment of smaller players that than ousting a big gangster like Chadha. Now special fast-track court for environmental vio-
dominates it to this day. (Chadha died in 2012, his focus is on harm reduction. Central to his lations issued a blanket ban on all river-sand

48 3.5.17 Photograph by George Georgiou for The New York Times


mining without environmental clearance. But
according to the environmental lawyer Rahul
Choudhary, almost all of the applications are
granted clearance. Rejections usually occur only
because of incomplete paperwork.
Singh has a dierent approach. The rst step,
he said, is to secure genuine environmental
clearances, based on eld studies. Next, oer
leases to mine on those cleared sites by public
auction, with strict parameters on the dimen-
sions of the lease and the depth of excavation
permitted. There is no honor system; survey-
ors must map the site and then x posts into
the riverbed to physically block the leasehold-
ers from mining beyond the designated zone.
When the mining begins, the magistrate and his
ocials make frequent unannounced inspec-
tions of the sites and weekly video recordings
to monitor the depth of sand. The magistrate
must also hold regular meetings with towns-
people in maa-prone areas. Most important,
Singh said, is the awareness of the people who
are living along the river, so that they may feel
like a watchdog, that the rivers interest is their
own interest.
It sounded like a smart plan. But it also
seemed to rely almost completely on the pres-
ence of extraordinarily vigilant magistrates. If
a district was unlucky enough to be assigned a
corrupt magistrate, or merely one whose interest
in sand mining were less intense than Singhs,
the system would fall apart. It was going to be a
dicult model to replicate.
I asked Singh if he knew any other magistrates
who were taking a similar approach. I am not in
contact with anybody who is doing this, he said.
Criminality and graft have come to be seen as
such incontrovertible facts of life in India that, in
my experience, people seldom mind discussing
them openly. When I met a young real estate
agent named Girish Kasana in the oce of his
fathers construction company, for instance, he
brought a particularly well-informed perspective
on the realities of how Indian cities are built.
Everything is corrupt, he said.
Construction is the business where criminals
have the best opportunities to launder the most
money, he explained, and a cascade of bribes go
to the topmost levels in the government. Kasa-
na grabbed a copy of a construction tender on
his fathers desk and started furiously scribbling
numbers on the back. To get a typical govern-
ment construction commission, he explained,
you pay 6 percent in bribes up front. Then, after
the rst payment, you pay another 7 percent,
half of which goes to the states top politicians.
The development authoritys junior engineer
gets 3 percent. The associate engineer gets 1.5
percent. The senior manager gets 3 percent, and
so on until the total reached an astonishing
30 percent. When this is given, then almost
anyone can be managed, Kasana said. This is
THE EXISTING the system. This is India.
The thing to do is to get a job in the authority,
SYSTEM PRACTICALLY my translator joked.
FORCES ANYONE This can also be done, Kasana said. To get a
job as a junior engineer, he said, requires a bribe
WHO WANTS TO of 10 million rupees.
BUILD SOMETHING As I talked to developers about sand mining,
I often found myself sympathetic to their expla-
TO COLLUDE IN nations. The existing system practically forces
THE DESTRUCTION anyone who wants to build something to collude
in the destruction of the rivers. The sand trade
OF THE RIVERS. is furthermore sustained by a devilishly inbuilt
chain of plausible deniability. Unlike most other
categories of mining, where large companies
dominate the business, sand mining is executed
by an endless array of small, independent, often
temporary players, largely working at night and
in secret. And each step of the line of production
is separated from the (Continued on Page 59)
The New York Times Magazine 49
50
 The unclassiable narratives

of Emmanuel Carrre.

By Wyatt Mason
Credit by Name Surname

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y G U E O R G U I P I N K H A S S OV
Credit by Name Surname
 last October, as American electoral pande- the idea of what nonction writing can be. Profoundly intimate, histor-
monium was approaching its climax, I was ically and philosophically serious but able to cast compulsive narrative
in a living room in Paris where the 59-year- spells, Carrres books are hybrids, marrying deep reporting to scholarly
old French writer and lmmaker Emmanuel explorations of theology, philosophy, psychology, personal history and
Late Carrre was talking about shame. To write
disagreeable things about the self, dishonor-
historiography. Though formal innovation tends to preoccupy avant-garde
writers and to guarantee a small readership, Carrres books 14 across
able things, Carrre told me, reclining like 36 years, with translations into more than 30 languages have been best
an analysand on a black leather couch, this sellers, as popular as they are praised. If Michel Houellebecq is routinely
doesnt present me with any problems. I have advanced as Frances greatest living writer of ction, Carrre, whose prose
very little shame. There are many things Ive is no less remarkable for its purity and whose vision is no less broad, is
done or thought that I consider bad, but I dont feel shame over them widely understood as Frances greatest writer of nonction.
because I think that everyone feels theyve done bad things. I think it does Carrres priority of frankness has forged, from book to book, new
a reader good to see: Oh, hes the same way. Him too. ways of managing to be truthful, new ways of including the rst person.
Whats dicult, Carrre continued, sitting up, is that when one writes Self-conscious approaches to nonction narration, those that favor the
about oneself, one is obligated to write about other people. And there, as reportorial I in the proceedings, arent new, with examples as old as,
much as one has the right to write absolutely whatever one wants about and not limited to, Daniel Defoe in the 18th century, Thomas De Quincey
the self and once again, for me, thats not very dicult to write about in the 19th and Joan Didion in the 20th. In an era when nonction with
others is an enormous problem. The sincerity that you can exhibit with a vaguely journalistic foundation has been a thing so mutable that it has
yourself, you have no right to inict on anyone else. been rebranded across three generations as new journalism, gonzo jour-
Carrre, who has the silhouette of someone half his age but whose face nalism and creative nonction, Carrres approach still dees category.
is so deeply grooved that its lines seem carved there, wasnt speaking Even to call his recent books, as Carrre sometimes has, nonction nov-
abstractly. In the past 17 years, he has become famous in France for writ- els doesnt do much to clarify what
ing about other people a murderer, a Russian fascist, his mother, her makes them so unusual. Though its
father, the women in his romantic life in each case nding new formal easy to notice the mechanics of a
solutions to the problem of writing about the self and others. But Carrre Carrre book his characteristic
is not without his misgivings about the results. inclusion of himself in the pro-
It makes me think of a sentence, something absolutely horrible, Car- ceedings, his habitual inclusion of
Carrres work
rre continued. It was 15 or 20 years ago, in an interview with General the process by which the book in
Massu of the French Army, who had been accused of torturing men in question is being formed what is suggests that we
Algeria, in the war. During the 50s and 60s, this highest-ranking general, genuinely original in Carrres work might come to
who had enormous power, had been accused, with good reason, of having is the sensibility that animates those nonction not to
tortured many people. In the interview, Massu said, of la ggne torture varied approaches, infused as it is
imagine ourselves
with electric prods from a generator Listen. Dont exaggerate. The with Carrres at-times-skeptical,
prods? I tried them on myself. It hurts, but not worse than that. The non- at-times-maniacal way of thinking, being understood,
sense of that statement! Whats atrocious about torture is that someone his well-stocked intelligence, his not to feel less
else is alicting you, and you dont know when he will stop. I tried it on spare, unfussily lyrical prose, his alone but to
myself to see if it hurts. And I stop when it hurts. Thats the opposite of shameproof feed of uncensored
actively imagine
torture. Thats called an experience. The simultaneous nonsense and moral interiority, his tireless storytelling
ugliness of that sentence! energy and his unstinting attempts understanding and
To write bad things about yourself, Carrre went on, leaning back and, importantly, failures at main- understandings
again, its like Massu using the generator on himself. You decide yourself taining sympathy for his subjects. limits.
when youre going to stop. When you write about others, theres a huge To write a book, Carrre told
responsibility. For my part, I have used the generator on people other than me, youve got to be persuaded that
myself. And that bothers me. I dont like that idea. Im not a good man, youre the only person who could
unfortunately. I would like to be a good man. I admire goodness and virtue write it. Some of his books make
most. But I am not very good. I am, however, very moral. Which is to say I this claim more obviously than oth-
know where goodness is, and badness. I do not believe that literature gives ers. Carrres latest, The Kingdom, which appears in the United States this
you the right to immorality. week, is at once a memoir of his time as a devout Christian and a ctional
account of Luke and Paul as they wrote the rst books of the Christian
story. Or consider his My Life as a Russian Novel, from 2007, which tells,
in part, the story of Carrres mothers father, a brilliant but depressive
Georgian migr who, failing to integrate into French life after the Russian
QUESTIONS OF RIGHT AND WRONG, of kindness and cruelty, of good Revolution, ended up interpreting for the Germans during World War II.
and evil, animate literary history, so much so that it would be dicult to One day, he disappeared, not to be seen or heard from again. Carrres
nd a lasting work of narrative art that doesnt engage, in some essential mother was 15 at the time, and she never spoke of his disappearance or his
way, with how we behave and what makes us behave as we do. Carrres fate. Carrre sought to tell that story as fully as he could, but it wouldnt
case has become notable in that history because of how dierently he has be a Carrre book if, in telling that story, he didnt also tell the story of
posed those questions. Since he began his career, in 1982, with a book- the making of the feature documentary he shot in Russia, in 2002 (Carrre
length essay on Werner Herzog, a lmmaker who has alternated between has a parallel career as a lm and television director and writer), about the
ction and nonction, an alternation that Carrre as a writer admires and town, Kotelnich, a backwater 11 hours from Moscow, where a 75-year-old
through his own body of work exhibits, Carrre has managed to renovate Hungarian soldier from World War II was discovered 53 years after he

52 3.5.17
fought against the Soviets and, having been taken prisoner, conned to a
tiny mental hospital. But in telling that story, the story of the making of the
documentary, Carrre also told the story of the relationship he was in at
the time he was making that movie, a troubled relationship with a woman
of a dierent social class, a woman to whom he wrote a pornographic
letter, one he published in Le Monde, a leading French newspaper, a letter
that he didnt tell her about and that was meant to be an erotic surprise
a surprise that went catastrophically awry, taking with it Carrres psy-
chological balance. His unraveling, as documented in the book, is one of
the most compelling conjurings of mania a reader is likely to encounter.
As improbable as this conuence of elements might seem, they marry
into something remarkable, especially given that My Life as a Russian
Novel ends with yet another open letter, one to Carrres mother, about
the fact that they had never talked about the darkness that hovered over
their family, a darkness that he hoped might be lifted by his telling of this
story in the most open way possible: a public way. Given that Carrres
mother, Hlne Carrre dEncausse, is arguably the most famous Russian
historian in France, a constant presence on French television not merely
for her expertise but also in her capacity as the permanent secretary of the
Acadmie Franaise, the 382-year-old institution founded by Richelieu to
safeguard the sanctity and purity of the French language, Carrres claim
of ambivalence over having used la ggne on other people
seems not at all overstated.
While I cannot imagine what it might be like to read the Carrre in
book as his mother, I can imagine, now, what it might be like Paris, in
January.
to live with such a story, and why one way of living with it
might be to not want to live with it at all. It is in this way this
way of being supremely frank; this way of combining elements
that at rst seem cumbersomely heterogeneous but that turn
out to be meaningfully conjoined that Carrre has managed
to write one masterpiece after another, books preoccupied
with the violence that can invade our lives without warning or
appeal, books that are, themselves, at times, acts of violence
against that violence.
third person from which nothing can be removed. For, when discussing
the writing he admires, though he mentions Rousseaus Confessions
and Montaignes Essays he cant resist rising from the couch to look
up Montaignes introductory To the reader on his iPad and then to read
it aloud with a kind of wonder as if hed just discovered it he mostly
talks about the ction he loves: Dostoyevskys The Idiot (The narrative
propulsion in those rst 300 pages is absolutely incredible); Whartons
Ethan Frome and Jamess The Turn of the Screw, favorites for their
compression; War and Peace (Fictions largest vision of the world); the
ending of Anna Karenina (Habitually we say that the end isnt very good.
It touches me a great deal, the life of Kitty and Levin. I nd it magnicent.
A happiness like that is one I aspire to in life); and, most of all, how The
Death of Ivan Ilyich remains a perpetual goad to him as a writer (In the
dream of books one would like to imitate, it is one). That Carrre stopped
writing novels, then, has nothing to do with his preferences as a reader or
a writer. Carrre would still like to write pure ction.
Since that rst half of his writing life ended, Carrre has published ve
works of book-length narrative nonction, all written in the rst person,
each of which is unlike the other. How the rst and second parts of this
career t together or, if you like, break apart, helps to explain how Car-
rre has managed to nd his way to his uniqueness. The pivot point in

Vladimir
T H E B E S T PA R T O F A W R I T E R S B I O G R A P H Y,
Nabokov told Vogue magazine, in 1969, is not the record of
his adventures but the story of his style. Though Nabokovs
own story was not without its dramatic plot points, how he
went from writing a negligible rst novel called Mary to, 30
years later, a classic of world literature, Lolita, is the richer
part of his story because its a story that can be told only
about him.
The same is true of Carrre. To date, you can divide his career
into neat halves, the rst preoccupied with ction and the second devoted to that evolution was Carrres writing of The Adversary, his book about
nonction. He published ve novels before his 40th birthday (four of them in Jean-Claude Romand, a Frenchman who for 18 years pretended rst to be
his 20s), to increasing acclaim, all written in the third person. Though Carrre a medical student and then a doctor at the World Health Organization.
speaks ruefully of most of them the autobiographical rst novel that drew In an eort to hide his secret as it began to unravel he was embezzling
heavily if surreally on his French military-service experience in Indonesia large sums to enable his deceit Romand murdered his immediate fam-
where he taught old Chinese ladies to speak French and took every drug he ily: wife, two children, his parents, even their dog. Carrre, like everyone
could nd; the second, which, set around the famous night in the summer else in France in 1993, was horried by this crime, and, having enjoyed a
of 1816 when Mary Shelley came up with the Frankenstein story, he nds thriving journalistic career in parallel to his novelistic one, he produced
as overdone as the rst; and the fourth, which he just says he doesnt like at a taut, third-person report of the trial and the circus around it. Despite
all two retain his aection: The Mustache (1986) and Class Trip (1995). feeling steadily worse that as a father of two young sons, he would spend so
Each is a short, sharp shock of a book, running about 150 pages and building much time writing about a man who murdered his children, Carrre tried
to a dreadful end involving violence, physical and psychological. to make a book of it. His model was In Cold Blood, a book he admires,
Carrres appreciation of these two short books is somewhat melan- a book written in the third person, a book he takes issue with too. As he
choly, however, in that he loves his work in this mode: short novels in the told The Paris Review, in 2013:
Photograph by Gueorgui Pinkhassov/Magnum, for The New York Times
The New York Times Magazine 53
 The book, which is a masterpiece, rests on a lie by omission that seems
to me morally hideous. The whole last part of the book is about the
years the two criminals spent in prison, and during those years, the
one main person in their lives was Capote. Nevertheless, he erased
himself from the book. And he did so for a simple reason, which was
that what he had to say was completely unsayable he had developed
a friendship with the two men. He spent his time telling them that
he was going to get them the best lawyers, that he was working to
get them a stay of execution, when in fact he was lighting candles in
the church in the hopes that they would be hanged because he knew
that was the only satisfactory ending to his book. Its a level of moral
discomfort almost without equal in literature, and I dont think it is
too psychologically far-fetched to say that the reason he never really
wrote much else is related to the monstrous and justied guilt that
his masterpiece inspired in him.
Carrre spent six years trying to manage the task of writing a French In
Cold Blood, to write the story of this hideous crime from multiple points of
view, to try to get into everyones head the way a novelist would, to imagina-
tively identify. And he failed, generating, he says, many hundreds of pages
he was unable to use. Two years into that time, Carrre wrote his nal short
novel, Class Trip, one obliquely related, in its abject theme, to Romands
violence. But six years passed, six years, Carrre has said, of my life circling
this story like a hyena, six years during which this very productive writer
published only 150 pages. He just couldnt gure out how to nish the Romand
story. Before he put it aside, he wrote himself what he calls a memo about
what he tried to do, as a way of getting some closure on the wreck that the
project had made of his life and his career. The memo began:
On the Saturday morning of January 9, 1993, while Jean-Claude
Romand was killing his wife and children, I was with mine in a parent-
teacher meeting at the school attended by Gabriel, our eldest son.
He was 5 years old, the same age as Antoine Romand. Then we went
to have lunch with my parents, as Jean-Claude Romand did with his,
whom he killed after their meal.
Im not an idiot, Carrre has said about the moment after he wrote
those lines. I very quickly realized that this impossible book to write was
now becoming possible, that it was practically writing itself, now that
I had accepted writing it in the rst person. . . . Others are a black box,
especially someone as enigmatic as Romand. I understood that the only
way to approach it was to consent to go into the only black box I do have
access to, which is me.
The Adversary, Carrre has contin-
I N T H E W O R K T H AT F O L L O W E D
ued to present himself presenting the lives of others. Though that might
sound narcissistic, it has the upending feeling, for the reader, of humility
in action. Theres a reason for this. Carrre told a great story to The Paris
Review about the source of that humility:
A little girl once said something in front of me that I just loved. She had
misbehaved and her mother was scolding her, saying, But put yourself
in other peoples position! And the little girl answered, But if I put
myself in their position, where do they go? I have often thought of
that since I started writing these kinds of nonction books, the rules
and moral imperatives of which I was starting to become acquainted
with. I dont think you can put yourself in other peoples positions. Nor
should you. All you can do is occupy your own, as fully as possible,
54 3.5.17
and say that you are trying to imagine what its like to be someone
else, but say its you whos imagining it, and thats all.
So this is Carrres idea of nonction: to occupy your own position
as fully as possible. His quotes around nonction are interesting. They
suggest a certain level of suspicion over the suciency of the label, and I
see Carrre-the-novelist as having inserted them. Carrres thinking here
about what nonction does is in useful opposition to a prevailing idea
about ction, of which David Foster Wallace gave perhaps the most widely
circulated explanation. As Wallace said in a 1993 interview:
I guess a big part of serious ctions purpose is to give the reader,
who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her
imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being
a human self is suering, part of what we humans come to art for is an
experience of suering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like
a sort of generalization of suering. . . . We all suer alone in the real
world; true empathys impossible. But if a piece of ction can allow us
imaginatively to identify with a characters pain, we might then also more
easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing,
redemptive; we become less alone inside.
Fiction, in Wallaces view, provides the reader with consolation
because of its performance of empathy of what it would be like to be
understood. Carrres work suggests that we might come to nonfiction
not to imagine ourselves being understood, not to feel less alone but
to actively imagine understanding and understandings limits. It is in
this way that his books display how thinking about other people feels:
lonely, but nourishingly so.
Carrres most profound exploration of that kind of nourishing alone-
ness came, in part, out of a 2004 vacation in Sri Lanka with his son, his
girlfriend and her son. One morning after Carrre had petitioned them
all to move from their bungalow on a cli down to a guesthouse on the
beach but was outvoted, a decision that saved their lives; a morning when
they had planned to go snorkeling but Carrres son decided he didnt
want to, which also saved their lives the tsunami struck, killing at least
a quarter million people in more than ve countries. After the wave hit, as
emergency services worked, Carrre met many people who had lost loved
ones and became close to a family whose 4-year-old daughter, Juliette, had
been lost in the disaster. Lives Other Than My Own details, in part, the
harrowing search by his new friends for their daughters body. But it also
pursues the story of his girlfriends sister, also named Juliette, a regional
debt-court judge, after she nds out she has cancer. And the pursuit of
that story, in turn, tells the story of Juliettes friendship with her fellow
judge, tienne, and his regard for Juliette, who, like tienne, was crippled
in adolescence by cancer. Through these twinnings, of names, of fates,
Carrre pursues a story about loss loss of children, loss of mothers, of
the way fate vandalizes our lives that ends up being a story about what
it means to have something truly dear in your hands.
Theres an amazing little moment in the book that gets at what Car-
rre is able to do. Carrre is just awaking to the devastation of the
tsunami in Sri Lanka, and he is walking around meeting people who
are seeking their loved ones in vain. He comes upon an English tourist,
an overweight middle-aged Englishwoman with short hair who had
lost her girlfriend:
I imagined the two of them getting on in years, living in a lovingly
tended house in an English town, taking part in its social life, going
on a yearly trip to some distant country, putting together their photo
albums. . . . All that shattered. The survivors return; the empty house.
Each womans mug with her name on it, one of them forever forlorn.
 And this heavy woman, sitting slumped at the kitchen table with her
head in her hands, weeping, telling herself that shes all alone now
and will be until she dies.
Among the many astonishing passages that stand out in Lives Other Than
My Own, Michel Houellebecq says, in a forthcoming essay of his on Carrre
that was provided to The Times by his agent, the most heartbreaking for
me is about the old English lesbian who has just lost her companion in the
catastrophe. Carrre did in fact meet this woman during the holidays in Sri
Lanka that ended so terribly; but he imagined the mugs. This seems to me
the margin of invention Carrre nds in this book where everything is true.
Its not insignicant. Because theyre not nothing, these mugs. It was exactly
at the moment of the mugs, I remember, that I burst into tears, and that I
had to put the book down, unable, for a few minutes, to continue reading.
The role of the witness to catastrophe is a central one in our lives: How
are we to imagine the pain of others? In religion, theodicy is the branch
of writing that tries to explain how a perfect god would nonetheless make
our lives so painful. One way of seeing Carrres body of work is to present
that problem of evil. But Houellebecq sees Carrre doing something very
dierent and very radical.
Good exists, it exists absolutely, just as much as evil, Houellebecq
explained. And its this existence absolutely against every natural law, this
counterproductive existence from a biological point of view which poses
the real problem. And it is this problem of goodness, the only real problem,
that Emmanuel Carrre poses in the most beautiful pages of his books.
the story of the founding
C A R R R E S T H E K I N G D O M , W H I C H T E L L S
of Christianity, pushes deeply into this problem of goodness, the hunger of
the human animal to nd connection to others and, through connection,
communion. At 630 pages in its French edition, it is driven by the story
of Carrres earlier pursuit of Christianity more than two decades ago,
when, during a period of personal
anguish unable to write, mired
in a failing marriage and seeking
relief from depression he became
a devout Christian, one who went
I am not very to church daily, wrote dozens of
good. I am, journals devoted to his verse-by-
however, very verse study of the Gospel of John,
moral. Which is prayed fervently and, after three or
four years, lost his way again, his
to say I know belief fading. In telling that story,
where goodness is, Carrre also narrates a study of the
and badness. written histories of the early Chris-
I do not believe tian church in the years following
the death of Jesus Christ, these con-
that literature gives tradictory early records with more
you the right gaps in the narrative than narrative.
to immorality. And, to make sense of what doesnt
make sense how four narratives
of the death of a man who spoke in
riddles and, 2,000 years later, is wor-
shiped as God by two billion people
Carrre also writes a ctional account of the Apostles Luke and Paul as
they began their missionary work, an account whose ctionality lls in the
huge gaps in the record, to the end of trying to understand how one could
tell such a story in such a way that it would captivate all of humanity for
all time. Thus The Kingdom becomes a story of the telling of the worlds
most famous story and an inquiry into how storytelling works that pushes,
not infrequently, against the limits of what can be said.
Carrre himself sees the book as a kind of masterpiece, not in an arrogant
way but in the manner of a ne carpenter who, for ve years, after compul-
sively rubbing coat after coat of mineral oil into a long-completed cherry
table, recognizes, not without some surprise, that it glows with inner light.
Carrre told me that The Kingdom was a book he loved working on, a
book he didnt want to stop writing, a book that, he hoped, would mark the
end of that second part of his creative life and usher in a third. The problem
now was that, three years having passed since he nished writing it, no new
era had been ushered in, and The Kingdom had come to feel, to Carrre,
like a capstone to a writing life that he was desperate and in anguish at
being unable to continue. He has once again been unable to write a book
that works, whether ction or nonction. He has taken on some journalistic
assignments, journalism always having been a useful and meaningful way
for Carrre, when blocked, to engage with the world. But when I saw him,
he was in a kind of agony. Once again, he was mired in depression.
Ive lived a mostly privileged life, Carrre told me. For the most part
Im lucky: I never had any real money problems, professionally I knew some
success fairly quickly, Im in good health. At the same time, the thing Ive
carried in my life thats a little heavy is a tendency to depression. Occa-
sionally, there are years that arent exposed to it. Then it comes back. The
best remedy to it is work, and when work isnt there and when my sense
is that work isnt possible theres great fragility as a result.
Carrre was very much in that fragile state when we spoke. His writerly
purgatory was also a domestic one: Of late, he said, he has had the impression
that he has no idea where hes living. He has not been living at home, he and
his wife having recently sold their apartment and bought a new one that isnt
yet habitable and that left him occupying an absent friends place, one in
which there wasnt the least trace of life, anyones life no books, no pictures,
no chosen anything: no nothing and that had, therefore, a sinister air of
vacancy. The vaguely creepy ambience of that objectively pleasant apartment
into which Carrre welcomed me large windows facing a leafy courtyard;
two oors was further amplied by the presence of a huge leather couch
at its center, a couch that seemed somehow forlorn, abandoned, a huge dog
of a couch waiting miserably for its owner to return.
The reason I belabor this point of feeling is to try to get across the atmo-
sphere of spending time with Carrre that day and the next. Others are
a black box, Carrre said, and yet that black box does sometimes give o
a black light that, in certain moments, though it cant be seen, can be felt.
Carrre, who is nothing if not exquisitely polite and who tries at every turn
to express himself with precision and care and frankness and good cheer,
did his best to be a good host, oering tea, oering himself as much as he
could. But in retrospect, that rst day of conversation was heartbreaking:
During those rst hours when he presented as a very cheerful guy, he was,
in fact, suering terribly.
After two hours of talk in that strangely grim-cheerful apartment, talk
that centered on the various kinds of art Carrre admires in sculpture
(Michelangelos Piet Rondanini: Its a thing thats utterly stupefying
because of the abandon, as if the body of Christ were falling. You sense the
weight. Its staggering) and music (Dylan and Leonard Cohen are import-
ant to him) we had lunch and we talked about painted portraits. As there
was a Rembrandt show on and as Carrre said he loved Rembrandt (Its a
bit tired to say this but if there is a painting where you have the impression
that youre seeing the soul of the person painted, its really Rembrandt),
we decided to go to the show after lunch. Carrre asked me if it would be
O.K. if we went there on his scooter and gave me a helmet and o we went.
It was a pretty, sunny day in Paris, and as we putted forward through the
busy streets, Carrre drove carefully, perhaps a little too carefully, in that
there was a tremendous amount of unexpected braking, and I found, as I
clutched the bar on the back of the bike with both hands, that my hugely
The New York Times Magazine 55
helmeted head kept colliding with
the rear of Carrres helmet. I tried
very hard not to let my helmet col-
lide with his, and whether through
a decit of core strength or passen-
gerial inexperience, it kept happen-
ing. Bonk; putt-putt-putt bonk; bonk;
putt-putt-putt-putt bonk. And the
thought I had was: This would be a
lot easier if we were close friends,
brothers, and it were natural to rest
against him. And of course, I didnt
do this, because it would have been
awkward for an American reporter
to embrace his just-met subject on
the back of scooter as we bumbled
down a Paris boulevard. But the feel-
ing that seized me, and it was oddly
powerful, was that I should, that it
wouldnt be weird to hold onto this
stranger. That everything would be
a lot better if I did, if I just reached
out and held on.
The Rembrandt show was at the
Muse Jacquemart-Andr, a little
museum with a big line through
which Carrre and I made our way,
several people we passed discrete-
ly doing the head nod and anoth-
er unselfconsciously pointing. On
the second oor of the not-so-little
ornate mansion with its mirrored
and gilded vaulted spaces, its grand
proportions and delicate details, we
found the show, which was billed
as Rembrandt: Intime. We passed
some of his student works, outdoor
scenes of knights standing around,
terrible paintings, done when he
was 20 (Its good to tell yourself,
Carrre said, when you begin to
learn a skill you do things like this
and afterward, later, you might be
able to do something); another
painting, so vague, Carrre said,
you cant even tell what hes try-
ing to paint; and a self-portrait,
one of two in the show (Funny
that Rembrandt made some of the
loveliest portraits in the world and
hes not a very attractive man); and
then we came upon a portrait of a
white-bearded St. Paul sitting at his
desk, aglow with light as if from an
unseen candle (Older than in my
imagination. Late 50s in mine and
more like early 80s here). And then
we were before two dierent states
of Rembrandts famous etching of
Christ on the cross, surrounded by
thieves. The ur-image of the Passion,
passion from the Latin, pati, to suf-
fer. The two etchings were side by
56 3.5.17
side, the one on the left bright and
full of detail, as though bathed in
sunlight. The one on the right was
dark, as though the crucixion had
taken place not on a hill but in a
cave, the light streaming in from
a crack in the surface of the earth.
Neither was truly nished, and each
varied in the details that Rembrandt
worked into the print. I asked which
Carrre preferred.
I prefer this one, he said, point-
ing to the one on the left. This is
too dark.
MANY SHELVES OF BOOKS HAVE
explored the route from darkness
to light, faithlessness to faith. Its
a whole genre, and it begins with
one of Carrres favorite books,
Augustines Confessions. Car-
rres own is the only one I know
in the tradition that convincingly
sketches a state of faithlessness that
becomes one of devotion and then
just as plausibly explains the way
that devotion degrades into doubt.
Much of this is metaphysically
heady, but what is most striking
in Carrres account is how palpa-
ble and physical it is too, particu-
larly in those sections the meat
of Carrres book that describe
his attempts to tell the stories of
Luke and Paul. If this sounds like
historical ction, I cant really say
that it feels that way. It feels like
reportage, with a reporters keen
attention to fact, to what happened
and what it looked like. And Car-
rre has no ambition to write his-
torical ction. As he notes in The
Kingdom: While some people are the child in each of us. And
fully able to put on a straight face
and get characters from Antiquity
dressed in togas and skirts to say
things like Salve Paulus, come with
me to the atrium, I cant. Thats the
problem with historical novels, and
even more with those set in Ancient
Rome: I cant help being reminded
of A Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to the Forum. Carrres tell-
ing of these moments from the past
feels, instead, like a bearing witness.
As a former believer and now
a nonbeliever, Carrre, seeking
answers, sets out, in The Kingdom,
to tell the story of the storytellers.
He is trying to understand what it
takes to be able to tell a story, any cravenness in using this retreat as a
story. And what he nds, once again, way to reconnect with his past life.
is that you have to nd your role in And then something happens,
it. That need to understand the role something I wont describe here,
you have in the larger human story not because I think that doing so
is at the heart of this beautiful, dif- spoils the plot but rather because
cult book. Dicult not in form but it is so typical of the way that Car-
in feeling, The Kingdom manages rres books defy expectation and
to get at the contradictions of what precisely the thing that Carrres
we call intimacy. gift for frankness grants, to him
The Kingdom doesnt have a and to us. Suddenly at the end of
plot; it has an emotional shuttle that an exploration of a kind of darkness,
takes the reader through stations of the darkness of a lived life and its
feeling. Late in the book, Carrre struggles, a moment of revelation
decides to go to a Christian retreat, occurs in which those struggles are
one based around a story of the Last revealed to be not at all what we
Supper in Luke, that of Jesus wash- supposed they were. Like the end-
ing the feet of his disciples, men ing of Anna Karenina that Carrre
shocked that he is debasing him- so loves, in which the wrong choices
self in this way. He kneels before lead to depression and death, a cou-
Peter, who protests: Master, are ple make their own choices that lead
you going to wash my feet? Jesus to new life, to the birth of a child,
answers: What I am doing, you do a birth about which Levin feels
not understand now, but you will conicted and about which he has
understand later. So Carrre goes thoughts that he does not, and will
to a retreat where everyone will do not, share with his wife, only with
as Jesus did, washing one anothers us via the novelists ability to unveil
feet, where some of the participants them. This sort of revelation small
are adults with various degrees of but in a life, huge is one of the
mental impairment. Carrre washes very special things about Carrres
one mans feet: work: how his books, at their ends,
document what, hitherto in litera-
I look at these feet, dont ture as in life, remains hidden. This
know what to think. Its really consistent shift to small, hard reve-
very strange to wash the feet lation at the end of his books, is the
of a perfect stranger. Im most dicult thing to characterize,
reminded of a sentence by because the eect of these endings
the philosopher Emmanuel is produced through the accumula-
Levinas . . . about the human tion of what precedes them, the tens
face which, the moment you of thousands of choices that lead the
see it, forbids killing. [B]ut reader to them.
its even more true for peoples Its much easier to say that Car-
feet. Feet are even poorer, rre writes about darkness, about
even more vulnerable, theres tragedy, about villainy, murder, sor-
nothing more vulnerable: row and loss, about tortured peo-
ple and torturers, with the torturer
all the while nding it all a sometimes himself. But to leave it
bit embarrassing, I find it there would be perfectly wrong.
beautiful that people get Carrres true subject isnt evil, but
together to do just that, to rapture, its precarious presence in
get as close as possible to the our lives; how it disappears, how we
poorest thing in the world become blind to it, how we seek it,
and in them. I think that that how we become its prey and how,
is Christianity. if we are fortunate, it at last catches
up to us. However preoccupied Car-
Which, Carrre admits, is a nice rre is with loss and violence and
intellectual response to a physical pain, his books move to endings
experience, but hardly a matter that earn a space of joy. They are, for
of being swept away by faith and lack of a better term, happy endings,
love. And so when the guitar playing but happy endings that feel not like
starts, and the dancing, Carrre is tricks but truths. They are written
pretty much done with the experi- by someone who knows precisely
ence and a little embarrassed at his what they cost. 
Justice
(Continued from Page 41)
or had left. They attacked every-
thing we were supposed to stand
for, says Joe Rich, who spent 36
years in the division.
During Obamas presidency,
new career lawyers were hired, but
Sessions could try to transfer them
or lay them o. The Heritage Foun-
dation has called for reducing the
civil rights divisions budget by $58
million, or about one-third.
Its not clear yet who will lead
Sessionss civil rights division. In
the short term, Sessions has put the
division in the hands of conserva-
tives who have a record of defend-
ing voting restrictions. Tom Wheel-
er, the acting head, advised Texas
Republicans when they wrote their
voter-ID law. John Gore, the No. 2,
has defended jurisdictions against
voting rights challenges at the law
firm Jones Day in Washington,
working frequently with Michael
Carvin, a founder of the conserva-
tive legal movement in the Reagan
Justice Department. (Sessions also
worked for that Justice Department
as a United States attorney in west
Alabama, and in 1985 he prosecut-
ed three black civil rights activists
for voter fraud. The case, which
collapsed at trial, was one reason
he was not conrmed for a federal
judgeship the following year.)
In 2012, Gore and Carvin defend-
ed Florida when it was sued by
the Justice Department as well as
civil rights groups over an eort
to purge the rolls of noncitizens.
Florida was implementing the 1993
Motor Voter law, which, in addition
to improving access to registration,
instructed states to remove people,
within limits, from the rolls if they
had moved away or died. The state
wrongly agged thousands of Amer-
ican citizens, most of them Latino.
Florida lost the suit on appeal and
stopped the purge. Now Gore will
help decide the Justice Depart-
ments position if another state
is suspected of expunging voters
unlawfully. And he or other Sessions
appointees could shift the work of
the career lawyers in the voting
section to push states to go through
their voter rolls. Though keeping
the rolls up to date is a good idea in
theory, when states ag voters who
have a Latino name or are natural-
ized citizens, the burden is on the
voters to prove the state has erred.
Otherwise they cant vote.
To turn back the clock on immigra-
tion, Sessions, Bannon and Trump
would have to prevent more immi-
grants from coming in and remove
those who are here. Trumps Jan. 27
executive order banning refugees
and travelers from seven major-
ity-Muslim countries, reportedly
overseen by Bannon and Miller, was
the initial bid to shut the door. On
Feb. 20, the Department of Home-
land Security announced the new
guidance that vastly broadened the
denition of who is considered a
priority for deportation.
It falls to immigration agents at
the Department of Homeland Secu-
rity, not the Department of Justice,
to pick people up. But Sessions has a
major role to play. To begin with, he
oversees the nations immigration
courts. The Feb. 20 guidelines call
for the Justice Department to send
a surge of judges to the border to
turn people around with a type of
speedy removal, entailing only the
barest form of legal process a
practice that Trump just expanded
far beyond what any president has
authorized (and which now applies
in the interior of the country as
well). Sessions also has the authority
to streamline appeals, by expand-
ing a cursory form of review used
during the Bush years, and to over-
turn Obama-era decisions that have
made it easier to receive asylum or
get legal counsel.
Democratic mayors and gover-
nors have vowed not to cooper-
ate with a federal crackdown, and
Trump has responded with an order
asking the Departments of Justice
and Homeland Security to withhold
federal funds from them. It will be
up to Sessions to decide how far to
go in trying to cancel grants that
cities receive from his department
(for drug treatment and crime pre-
vention, for example).
Detention and deportation on a
mass scale would be a gargantuan
task divisive, enormously costly
and legally fraught. The only feasi-
ble way to get millions of undoc-
umented immigrants out of the
country, as Trump has promised,
is to create a climate that induces
immigrants to leave on their own.
You basically would have [to]
self-deport, Sessions said on CNN
last fall. That means leveraging
fear, as Kamal Essaheb, policy
director for the National Immigra-
tion Law Center, puts it. The Feb.
20 guidelines direct immigration
agents to refer appropriate cases
for criminal prosecution. Those
cases would go to federal prose-
cutors and could lead to yearslong
prison terms. An estimated eight
million people go to work in this
country every day without papers.
Sending a rash of them to prison
could do more than the threat of
deportation to send laborers across
the country packing.
Sessions has supported an exper-
iment in self-deportation before.
In June 2011, when he was a sen-
ator, Alabama enacted the most
restrictive immigration law in the
country. Called H.B. 56, it gave law
enforcement the authority to ask
for a drivers papers, mandated the
arrest of people who lacked prop-
er documents and required people
to show proof of citizenship when
they interacted with a government
agency. Residents were required to
provide identication to renew a
mobile-home license or register a
child for school.
Immigrants left Alabama for fear
of being arrested; others were afraid
to send their children to school.
Laura Ingraham, the conservative
radio host, invited Sessions on her
show to discuss H.B. 56 that fall. Do
you think its bad that all these
Hispanic kids have disappeared
from schools? she asked.
All I would just say to you is its a
sad thing that weve allowed a situ-
ation to occur for decades in which
large numbers of people are in the
country illegally, Sessions answered.
Many business leaders opposed
H.B. 56 for taking away their work-
ers and customers. The law was
projected to cost the state between
$2 billion and $11 billion in lost
G.D.P. in its rst year, according
to an estimate by a University of
Alabama economist. One farm-
er challenged a state legislator to
pick his tomatoes for him. But in an
interview in The Daily Caller, Ses-
sions claimed that the opposition
to H.B. 56 was an eort by leftist,
activist immigration advocates.
He continued: Incredibly, the
Department of Justice has joined
in on that aggressively.
At the time, the Obama Justice
Department was suing Alabama in
federal court over the immigration
restrictions alongside a coalition of
churches and civil rights groups.
Concerned about the impact on
families, Obamas lawyers argued
that Alabama was going further than
federal law allowed. Our visions of
immigrant rights and civil rights
were inextricably intertwined, Tom
Perez, then head of the civil rights
division, told me. In court, the plain-
tis invoked a 1982 Supreme Court
decision, Plyler v. Doe, which found
that undocumented children have a
constitutional right to an education.
In November 2013, the Justice
Department succeeded in perma-
nently blocking most of H.B. 56. The
civil rights divisions of the Depart-
ment of Justice and the Department
of Education followed with a letter
in 2014 to every school district in
the country, warning against any
policy that could dissuade students
from enrolling because of their
families immigration status. The
Justice Department also defended
Obamas actions to allow young
people brought to the United States
as children, called Dreamers, and
their close relatives to work or go
to school without fear of deporta-
tion. Sessions could review that
directive and call for withdrawing
it, perhaps as a misuse of prosecu-
torial discretion. In other words,
the Justice Department, especially
in the last few years, has operated in
several ways to make undocument-
ed families more secure. Sessions
can repurpose the machinery to do
something else entirely.
Before Sessions was conrmed
as attorney (Continued on Page 59)
The New York Times Magazine 57
Puzzles

SPELLING BEE FOR STARTERS CAPSULES

By Frank Longo By Patrick Berry By Wei-Hwa Huang

How many common words of 5 or more letters can The answers in this puzzle are all 6-letter words Place numbers in the grid so that each outlined region
you spell using the letters in the hive? Every answer reading across or down. Clues are given in contains the numbers 1 to n, where n is the number
must use the center letter at least once. Letters may random order. Use the answers unique starting of squares in the region. The same number can never
be reused in a word. At least 1 word will use all letters (shown in the grid) to determine which touch itself, not even diagonally.
7 letters. Proper names and hyphenated words are answers go where.
not allowed. Score 1 point for each answer, and 3
points for a word that uses all 7 letters. Ex.
1 2 1 2 1
Rating: 7 = good; 11 = excellent; 15 = genius H O J G C 4 1
> 3 5 3 4 3
4 2 1 2 1
T
A B
X I S E
2 F F F C
2 C C1
L E E F F
4 C C D
C
D E
4 E J J J D D
T M B B
3 I I J D
3 D
O CLUES
Slender and graceful Chronobiological affliction
B B I I I G G
4
(2 wds.) Follow me! (2 wds.) Smoothly, to Salieri
First Quaker to become U.S. president Bullring
B A A H
2 H G G
Our list of words, worth 20 points, appears with last weeks answers.
performer Underside Salsa brand Beast on the
flag of Wales Seashore cave
A
1 A A
3 H H H G
3

ACROSTIC
1 T 2 N 3 F 4 I 5 R 6 P 7 O 8 W 9 E 10 U 11 B 12 L 13 V 14 H 15 D 16 G 17 A 18 C 19 J 20 O 21 P 22 Q 23 K

24 T 25 R 26 N 27 E 28 S 29 I 30 L 31 M 32 U 33 A 34 O 35 K 36 P 37 C 38 G 39 J 40 E 41 F 42 H 43 V 44 T 45 I

By Emily Cox & Henry Rathvon 46 M 47 D 48 N 49 R 50 B 51 L 52 U 53 S 54 P 55 G 56 O 57 Q 58 K 59 H 60 T 61 E 62 A 63 D 64 N 65 F 66 R 67 U 68 C

Guess the words defined below and 69 P 70 I 71 L 72 Q 73 K 74 V 75 B 76 O 77 N 78 H 79 T 80 F 81 M 82 S 83 I 84 E 85 L 86 U 87 G 88 V 89 C 90 D

write them over their numbered
dashes. Then transfer each letter to 91 Q 92 B 93 F 94 A 95 H 96 J 97 P 98 O 99 K 100 M 101 S 102 I 103 W 104 N 105 D 106 C 107 E 108 R 109 L 110 U 111 T 112 J 113 F 114 A 115 V
the correspondingly numbered square
in the pattern. Black squares indicate 116 Q 117 S 118 H 119 K 120 G 121 D 122 I 123 B 124 W 125 C 126 N 127 M 128 J 129 E 130 T 131 V 132 F 133 A 134 K 135 R 136 O 137 Q 138 L

word endings. The filled pattern will

139 H 140 U 141 B 142 P 143 N 144 M 145 C 146 E 147 F 148 W 149 R 150 T 151 A 152 U 153 O 154 G 155 Q 156 P 157 M 158 S 159 V 160 N
contain a quotation reading from left
to right. The first letters of the guessed
161 L 162 F 163 I 164 R 165 T 166 A 167 H 168 D 169 K 170 E 171 C 172 P 173 B 174 M 175 S 176 J 177 Q 178 W 179 L 180 O 181 I 182 N
words will form an acrostic giving the
authors name and the title of the work.

A. Graph called a camembert in F. Mount Katahdin trail with steep L. Relative of a ruler R. What killed Aeschylus, in legend,
France (2 wds.) drop-offs on both sides (2 wds.) ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ when it was dropped by an eagle on
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ his head
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 138 179 71 161 85 51 30 12 109
33 114 17 94 151 62 133 166 80 65 93 162 132 41 113 3 147 ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
M. Shine like an oil slick or CD 66 164 149 5 49 108 25 135
B. Parenthood remains the G. Aha moment cry
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ S. Had charge of; kept an eye on
greatest single preserve of the ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 46 100 174 127 144 81 31 157
(Alvin Toffler) ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
154 120 16 38 55 87
N. Slender swimmer with long, 82 175 53 158 101 117 28
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ H. Passing comment (2 wds.) sharp jaws T. Common twist in a James Bond
11 141 75 173 123 50 92
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ film (2 wds.)
C. Manipulate into questioning his 118 78 59 167 42 139 95 14 126 2 160 143 104 64 77 26 182 48 ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
or her own sanity I. Pajamas and such O. The other way around (2 wds.) 79 44 165 60 1 111 150 24 130

____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ U. Late learner, like Grandma Moses
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
171 125 106 37 89 145 68 18
83 70 122 29 102 45 181 4 163 153 56 180 20 7 34 136 76 98 ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
140 10 52 110 86 152 67 32
D. Predigital cel material J. Drawing Hands artist P. Stress, play up, underscore
V. Support for a drop leaf (2 wds.)
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
15 90 105 47 121 63 168
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
176 96 39 19 112 128 69 156 36 97 172 142 6 21 54 88 115 43 74 131 13 159
E. Social-network forerunner K. Muttonhead, moron, dunce (hyph.) Q. Beneficiary of a dynamite fortune? W. Flemish town in World War I fighting
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
27 170 107 9 84 40 129 146 61 73 99 23 58 134 35 169 119 57 22 137 155 116 72 177 91 103 178 148 8 124

58
Justice Sand Answers to puzzles of 2.26.17
(Continued from Page 57) (Continued from Page 49)
MIXED FEELINGS
M A M A S A W A B B O T C A D S
general, Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama rest: The sand moves from diggers to truckers
O V E N V A L E L A U R A M A R A T
administration, was serving in that role. When to dealers to builders with each link in the chain R O A D B I K E S S T R U T W O R T H Y
Trump issued his refugee and travel ban on Jan. knowing as little as possible about where the T I N Y A X E A T T A C K O N E I L L
27, she refused to defend the order in court, sand theyre buying comes from or who mines A D D D E B T A C H E T O O T S I E
R E E F N O O D G E P A L T A D
saying she was not convinced that his order was it for obvious reasons, they dont want to D R I P M R I S M E D I C S
lawful or consistent with the Justice Depart- know. Nameable sand dons like Ponty Chadha C U R B Y O U R S U N A T H E I S M
ments obligation to stand for what is right. are rare. The fragmentation and anonymity of D O S A G E P O U R S E A R T H Y
O R O P U T S M C R I B R I S E S
Trump quickly red Yates amid a predictably the chain is exactly what allows it to continue T A L E S O F O W E H A V E N O F A R E
partisan debate over whether she was acting on with so much impunity. C L I N T O P E R A Y E T I G I L
an important principle or failing to do her job. I believe in the power of the people, Singh O L D D O G F R I T O N O D O F F
M Y S I R E L O V E S C O M P A N Y
In almost all circumstances, the top law-en- told me on my last day in the New Delhi sub-
T E N U R E T H O R S E C T
forcement ocial in the executive branch is urbs, just before we got into his pristine white S U B T I M C O M M I T S H E D
expected to side with the chief of that branch Hindustan Ambassador to go talk to the villagers A N I M A L S H O O P J O E S A A A
the president. Yet we want the attorney general of Jhatta about sand mining. To stop an illegal I M G A M E U P R I S E R S P A R T Y
D O W N E R W O M A N W A I T F O R I T
to exercise his or her own judgment when we thing, rst show your intention. If you are a man S O I L S W H O L E A N T S N E M O
fear presidential wrongdoing. Nixons attorney of integrity, you have to show it, because people O R G Y W O R S T P S Y E D E N
general, Elliot Richardson, and then the acting never believe you at rst. But gradually, gradual-
attorney general who was next in line, William ly, if you succeed in showing them that you have KENKEN
Ruckelshaus, are celebrated for resigning when no personal motive, that you are just trying to
Nixon ordered them to re the special prosecutor motivate them in the larger public interest, that
who was investigating his role in the Watergate you are just doing your duty, then the people
break-in. Sessions is already facing questions become convinced. Thats my experience.
about his independence for not recusing him- In Jhatta, more than 100 villagers, all men, all
self from any F.B.I. investigation of the Trump wearing their best starched whites, gathered in
campaigns ties to Russia. Because Sessions was a courtyard next to the village temple to hear
an architect of the particular nationalist vision Singhs speech. They had covered their chairs
that drives Trumps approach to policing, vot- with silky white slipcovers and presented the
ing and immigration, its hard to imagine what magistrate with a bursting bouquet of owers.
CRYPTIC
the president (or Bannon) would want to do in His oration on sand mining drew on every appeal M A I N C L A U S ACROSS: 1. homophone
E P E R M
those arenas that Sessions would not be ready to at his disposal, rhapsodizing about rivers, spell- E D O S N A
mane & claws 6. hidden
I
M E L A N E S I A N A S I S
defend. Unlike Yates, he is in accord with their ing out the science, quoting scripture. When he E E N A R S Y T Superman 9. anag.
F I D D L E D E E D E E
aims. He can simply perform the attorney gener- nished, his deputy led the villagers in a chant: A E N D C O R
animal seen 10. a sis
12. anag. with repeated
als ordinary duties, by doing his utmost to ensure Illegal mining: We wont do it, and we wont let N A V I G A T O R
H
O D E U M
S
E E T U N I letters filed 15. anag.
Trumps orders survive legal scrutiny. it happen! (Its catchier in Hindi.) S A N Y O R A M A D A I N N
raving to a 17. ode + um
T N W E P T G
What can stop Trump, Bannon and Sessions It was a compelling speech, and I could see H O U S E P A I N T E R 18. s(any)o 19. Ramada
E M R D A R G W
from using the Justice Department to achieve how Singh might convince the villagers of Jhat- T U B A N I G H T S H A D E
(in)n 20. anag. this
European 24. rev. abut
their goals? So far, judges across the country have ta, person by person, moment by moment. But I E
C A R P
N U O G T
E G O M A N I A C S
25. anag. tends a high
prevented Trump from carrying out his refugee of course his adversary is not each villager one 26. two meanings 27. anag. casino game
and travel ban, and theyve accepted lawsuits by one. It is the systems and values many of DOWN: 1. me me 2. homophone idol 3. conning + tower
against him for review. us hold in common the competitive lure of 4. as sad 5. anag. underarms 7. anag. seaside toy 8.
Over time, however, more federal judges will conspicuous consumption, the insatiable engine Mister Ming 11. anag. nonprocessed 13. hidden airplanes
the tickets 14. two meanings 16. that at + Reading 21.
be Trump appointees. Its not just Neil Gorsuchs of development, the universal corruption that N/A + hum 22. gag + a 23. rev. stew
nomination to the Supreme Court thats import- fuels it all of them obstructing any eort to
ant for determining the legal fate of Trumpism. reckon with environmental catastrophe, which HEX NUTS CAPSULES
Rulings by lower court judges set expectations has a confounding tendency to manifest itself
and establish rationales. Because of the high long after the original gains have accrued. A
3 A1 A
4 B
2 B
4 B1 B
5
T
number of vacancies and older judges, Trump After the speech, a farmer named Sohan Pal S U A
2 A
5 C
3 C1 C
5 C
2 B
3
may be able to appoint a greater share of federal Singh approached me to say that the district L
I
V
E
R
P
O
O
L E
3 D1 D
2 D
4 D
3 C
4 F1
judges than any rst-term president in 40 years. magistrate was making too much of sand min- W E E T R E
2 E
4 G
5 H1 D
5 F
2 F
3
E D A E
Judges are supposed to be entirely indepen- ing. For us, its a normal activity, he said. Its A N R S E1 3I 2
G G
3 G
4 G1 F
5
dent of the president even if he appoints them. not such a big deal. He wanted to show me M N E I M J
4 5I 4I 1I 2I K
3 F
4
A T T D O
The Constitution depends on it. And there are something outside: Piled against the wall of the R S U I J
3 J1 J
2 J
5 K
4 K1 K
2
other constraints. The Justice Departments courtyard where the meeting was just held was
career sta exerts a strong pull toward the cen- a heap of sand that he himself had helped mine. Answers to puzzle on Page 58
ter. The publics restive mood and high level of I asked him if he planned to stop mining after
SPELLING BEE
engagement so far matter, too. Its no sure thing hearing what the district magistrate had to say.
that Sessions, Bannon and Trump will succeed in He scowled. Axiomatic (3 points). Also: Acacia, atomic, attic, cacao,
cacti, coati, cocoa, comic, comma, commit, commix,
carrying out their shared vision. But theyre likely If the district magistrate told me to stop mimic, tacit, tactic, toccata, tomcat, toxic. If you found
to work together, as long as theyre each in oce, wearing clothes, he asked, should I take o other legitimate dictionary words in the beehive, feel
to test how far the country will let them go. my shirt? free to include them in your score.

The New York Times Magazine 59

Puzzles Edited by Will Shortz

ITS ELEMENTARY 1

18
2 3 4

19
5

20
6 7 8 9 10 11 12

21
13 14 15 16 17

By Timothy Polin
22 23 24

ACROSS 58 College party 99 Sports implement

25 26 27 28 29
1 Big hits epicenter, often often made from
5 Something 59 Homeland [circled letters] 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
repeatedly hit of Spartacus 105 Smokers should
with a thumb 60 [Circled letters]- knock it o 38 39 40 41

13 Flat bread advertised 106 Soldiers

establishment assignments 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
18 Zeitgeist
63 What did I 108 Betray surprise
20 Recurring 51 52 53 54
theme in Philip tell you? 109 Be behind
K. Dick novels 64 Berried conifer 110 Evergreen State 55 56 57 58 59
65 Existentialist
airport
21 Cousin of a
mandrill Kierkegaard 113 [Circled letter]- 60 61 62 63 64
fueled device
22 [Circled letters]- 66 Language heard 65 66 67 68
118 One given a
lled contraption along the Mekong
citation
24 Cry for more 67 Banana-liqueur 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77
119 Not so awkward
25 Arm ones cocktail
120 Hair 78 79 80 81 82
humanity? 69 Poorly
121 Certain navel
26 Tangible 72 Letter on a dreidel 83 84 85 86 87
122 Au courant
27 Swell 73 Picture displayed
123 What fun!
29 Capote, informally on a [circled 88 89 90 91

30 World landmark letters] surface

DOWN 92 93 94
built with 78 Fails to
1 North American
[circled letters] 80 Kind of developer
ycatcher 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104
35 Being repaired, 81 Conservative
2 S.N.L. alum Cheri
as a car portfolio asset, 105 106 107 108 109
3 Unloading zone
38 Spots for short
4 Happy hour 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117
39 Its hard to bear 82 Convinced
habitu
41 Halfhearted, 83 Worthless
5 Jack ____ 118 119 120
as support 84 Now hear this! 6 Guerrilla leader

3/5/17
42 Cant wait to nd 86 Obsolescent in For Whom the 121 122 123
out, in a way players Bell Tolls
45 [Circled letters]- 87 Put a stop to? 7 Constellation near
based drugs 88 [Circled letter]- Scorpius 15 Condition 23 Ingredients in 59 Homes 90 KPMG hiree
51 Check out consuming activity 8 Low-____ contributed to some London pies on the range 91 Certain platonic
52 Unvarnished 91 Thats great! 9 8 x 10, e.g.: Abbr. by a lack of 28 Top story 61 Lad friend
10 Fool [circled letters] 31 Things bouncers 62 Ride hard 94 Shock, in a way
53 Great confusion 92 Strain to avoid?
16 Rider of the are supposed 63 Who wrote, I
54 Sea serpent of 93 Stinky 11 Garlicky spread 95 Yogurt-based
horse Tornado to catch exist, that is all, and
old cartoons 94 Underlying cosmic 12 Wouldnt shut up Indian drink
32 Sylvan I nd it nauseating
55 Citrus hybrid principle 13 Geez! 17 Outdo 96 Employ against
33 Denouement 67 Branded footwear
56 Bomb developed 95 Ones getting all 14 Epitome 19 Turns into confetti 97 Brand with
34 A.S.A.P.! with open backs
in the 1950s the breaks of simplicity 21 Seamans chapel classic But wait,
36 Beowulf 68 Everythings ne
or Gilgamesh 69 Think piece?
theres more !
infomercials
37 Jewelry-store 70 Capital of Togo

KENKEN
Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each
gadget
40 Watch, as a
criminals
71 Fabled [circled
letters]-hiding
trickster
98 Leave at a loss
100 Everglades wader
101 Ballet-school
heavily outlined box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication hiding spot 73 Quatre halved supporter
or division, as indicated in the box. A 5x5 grid will use the digits 15. A 7x7 grid will use 17. 42 Do a wine 74 Exhibits one of the 102 Mu
stewards job seven deadly sins 103 Came to
43 Wale brand 75 Modern acronym 104 To the point
44 She, in Salerno for Seize the day!
107 Tartan wearer
45 Incense 76 Trudge
111 Numerical prex
46 ____ twins of 77 Eliciting nervous
1980s-90s TV laughter, say 112 Big heart?
47 State condently 79 Market share? 114 British can
48 Mire 80 Poverty, e.g. 115 Itinerary abbr.
49 Minute ____ 84 Issue for 116 Now Ive got it!
50 Dispatched, as a noble family? 117 Image on a
a dragon 85 Tiny amount Wisconsin
52 Foreign capital 89 W.W. II moniker state quarter
whose name
sounds like a water
passage to San Puzzles Online: Todays puzzle and more
Francisco than 9,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords
57 He married Daisy ($39.95 a year). For the daily puzzle commentary:
Mae in 1952 nytimes.com/wordplay.
KenKen is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. 2017 www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved.

60
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Talk

do this sort of thing to other nations,

Evan McMullin right? Lets unpack that. Yes, there were

times when the United States government
would be on the side of a nondemocratic
Is Very government overseas, and there are still
examples of this. But in the past we were

Concerned a little more willing to turn a blind eye to

benign nondemocratic regimes than we
are now. Im a huge pro-democracy guy.
But it does seem as if our intelligence
Interview by Ana Marie Cox
operations are part of a power struggle
within the government, which is trou-
bling. What you see happening is that
you have individuals who are deciding
to leak information because, I believe,
they think Donald Trump is a threat to
the country. I dont know who they are;
I just learned yesterday that I am con-
You are a lifelong conservative who ran sidered part of the deep state by the
for president in 2016 as an independent. unhinged Alex-Jones-and-Breitbart types.
Do you have a parallel timeline in your These arent organizational decisions
head as to what would be happening now these are individuals acting because they
in a McMullin administration? There believe that its the right thing to do. They
would be domestic peace and tranquil- might not have found it so necessary to
lity, certainly compared with what were leak if they saw a credible investigation
experiencing now. happening in Congress.
As a former C.I.A. operative who special- Why do you think the Republicans
ized in undercover counterterrorism, arent leading an investigation? Repub-
what do you think life is like for your lican primary voters are still supporting
average nonpolitical national-security Trump in large numbers, and as long as
employee right now? In the 11 years that thats the case, congressional Repub-
I was employed by the C.I.A., I never licans will have a hard time opposing
got out of bed and wondered if what I him. When youre an elected leader, you
was doing wasnt important. I was stop- constantly face the decision to lead or
ping terrorists from carrying out attacks to represent. Representing is easy: You
against the United States and our inter- just look at the polls and gure out where
ests and allies overseas. There was just no your people are. Leading is saying and
doubt about whether what I was doing doing things that may not be popular in
was right. I worked under Republican and the moment but that you know are right
Democratic administrations, and I always and are important for your people. Its
believed that our leaders were doing what a great political risk, and the problem
they thought was best for the country, and now is that we have leaders who lack the
I valued that. courage to do that.
Is that one long subtweet? Exactly. If Its easy to talk in generalities about
only we could lift the character limit. working together or being brave, but
But now Im going to be explicit and say lets say that in a 2018 congressional
that if I were doing my job under Donald race, a pro-Trump person wins the pri-
Trump, I would have serious concerns mary. Do you campaign for the Dem-
about whether he was committed to ocrat? As a conservative, how far are
Interview has been condensed and edited.

acting in the best interests of the Ameri- you willing to go in building a coalition
can people. Age: McMullin was a His Top 5 Spies: against Trump? If Donald Trump contin-
Considering the number of leaks weve 40 2016 presidential 1. William Donovan ues to threaten the health of our republic,
seen thus far in the administration, it candidate who 2. James Armistead our system of government and our nation-
Occupation:
received 0.53 Lafayette
seems that there is a ght for control Co-founder of Stand
percent of the 3. Harriet Tubman al security, and there were some sort of
Up Republic
going on behind the scenes between national vote. 4. Virginia Hall congressional race in which a Republican
the intelligence community and the Hometown: Stand Up Republic 5. Robert De Niro Trump disciple faced a Democrat who I
Provo, Utah is a nonprofit in Ronin
administration. Shouldnt that concern believed would hold Trump accountable,
group defending
us a little bit even though, lets face democracy yes, I would support the Democrat. Its
it, the history of the C.I.A. is that they in America. that important. 

62 3.5.17 Photograph by Stephen Voss

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