Hello, and happy Friday! If you’re new to this correspondence, welcome. If you’re a returnee, it’s great to have you back.
To the regulars: You might recall receiving the ninth edition of this newsletter in your inbox a couple of weeks ago. So where is the 10th, you’re probably wondering? Well, as it turns out, that was the 10th edition, which makes this one the 11th! Apologies for the confusion (and for my apparent inability to count).
I joined The Bunker podcast this week to chat about President Trump’s COVID diagnosis, a forthcoming documentary about the ties between U.S. evangelical churches and Cambridge Analytica, and the prospects of a second lockdown. Click below to tune in via your favorite podcast app👇
What I’ve written
When a culture is being wiped out, how do you protect it?
This is the question I hoped to answer in my recent feature about the Uighurs fighting to maintain their language, traditions, and identity from the diaspora. The Chinese government’s persecution of the ethnic minority in their native Xinjiang bears heavily on Uighurs living abroad, whose burden is to not only raise awareness about what is happening in their homeland, but to preserve and promote their identity in countries where few people might know who the Uighurs are, let alone what the world stands to lose should their culture be eradicated.
“If in the next several generations Uighur culture is destroyed in its homeland, it will be very difficult for Uighurs in the diaspora to preserve it,” Tahir Hamut Izgil, a Uighur poet and film director, told me. “Even in the diaspora, it may cease to exist.” Keep reading here.
American voters might be surprised to learn that their elections are subject to foreign observation—a practice that is more commonly associated with younger, more fragile democracies than with one of the world’s oldest and largest.
I caught up with the leader of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)’s delegation of international observers, who arrived in Washington, D.C., last week for what will be their ninth election observation mission in the U.S. since 2002. We talked about the role foreign observers play in elections, how this year’s delegation is a fraction of the size they had originally hoped it would be, and why the OSCE anticipates this to be “the most challenging” U.S. election in recent decades. You can read all about it here.
Framing dissent as a product of foreign interference is a well-tested tactic in the autocratic playbook. We’ve seen it deployed as far afield as Russia, Hong Kong, and Iran. The latest example can be found in Belarus, where longtime President Alexander Lukashenko has attributed the months of mass demonstrations against his rule to one thing: Western meddling.
In my latest piece on the Belarus prodemocracy movement, I explore how foreign governments can voice their support for the Belarusian people without feeding into Lukashenko’s narrative. As one Belarusian told me, though, it may not matter how outsiders go about supporting them. “He would invent [the interference] even if nothing happens.” Read more here.
What I’ve read
This important story by my colleagues Elaine Godfrey and Adam Harris on the people President Trump came home to after leaving Walter Reed Medical Center this week:
“Trump and the first lady interact with dozens of White House employees every day, many of them nonpolitical and largely invisible to the American public. Because of his months-long failure to take COVID-19 seriously even inside his own home, Trump continues to place these staff members and their families at considerable risk. Which is to say that the blast radius from the president’s and the first lady’s illness could be a lot larger than many Americans realize.”
This alarming piece by GQ’s Julia Ioffe about getting diagnosed with COVID-19 despite having four negative tests, and what her experience revels about our faith in the testing system:
“About halfway through my third week of being sick, a tightness crept into my chest. It felt like someone had grabbed a hold of my trachea and was steadily strengthening their grip. I went from chills to sweats and back. My mother and sister were convinced it was COVID, but how could that be if I had twice tested negative? Friends checking in on me were growing increasingly certain: Two negative tests meant I did not have COVID. ‘Girl,’ one friend texted, ‘stop telling people you have COVID when you just have a cold!’”
This heartbreaking, but necessary, read about the students left behind by remote learning:
“As the spring went on, I grew increasingly distressed by the lack of public alarm over students like Shemar, who were sitting in countless dark rooms, safe from covid-19, perhaps, but adrift and alone. Society’s attention to them has always been spotty, but they had at least been visible—one saw them on the way to school, in their blue or burgundy uniforms, or in the park and the playground afterward. Now they were behind closed doors, and so were we, with full license to turn inward. While we dutifully stayed home to flatten the curve, children like Shemar were invisible.”
What I’m thinking about
Last week, one of my dearest friends got married! In another universe, I would’ve been there—toasting the happy couple, reconnecting with college friends, and wondering when we’d all be together again. In this universe, I was stuck in London, overcome with FOMO, ruminating on yet another plan foiled by the dumpster fire that is 2020.
I found a lot of comfort in this essay by my friend Rosie Spinks, who makes the compelling case for why we should all be making room for our grief, large or small:
“Beyond that immense trauma, the varying scales and permutations of our grief can feel overwhelming when you stop and think about it … I too have lost a lot this year. But I feel divergent from this collective denial our society seems to be engaged in. As a contrast, I’m sort of obsessed with my grief. Holding space for everything I’ve lost is precisely what has allowed me to create something entirely new with my life this year. In some way, I didn’t have a choice — when you end a relationship and have to move amidst a pandemic, you gotta come up with a plan — but once I started examining what I’d lost, honoring it, and allowing it, I started to see all the other ways my life needed to change in order to adapt to what’s coming. It was one thing after the other.”
To read more of Rosie’s work, subscribe to her fantastic monthly newsletter here.
Until next time,
Yasmeen
P.S. If you’re interested in the Middle East, Los Angeles’ Levantine Cultural Center has reincarnated in the form of The Markaz Review! The online platform’s debut issue is dedicated to Beirut, which you can check out here.