Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(23)
> Like in the sky, or with their hands in wet sidewalk?
> My phone’s flash makes everything white. I turned it off, but the shutter stays open for so long my tiny movements blur everything. I tried bracing my arm with my other hand, but it was still a blur.
> Phones are useless at night.
> Unless you need to go down a dark hallway.
> My phone is dying.
> Or call someone.
> Just try to make it comfortable.
> Samanta, this place is f*cking lit!
> Insane.
> Where are you that there are stars out?
> The guy told me there was nothing wrong with it. I said, “If there’s nothing wrong with it, why is it broken?” And he said, “Why is it broken if there’s nothing wrong with it?” And I tried, again, to show him, but of course it worked again. I almost cried, or killed him.
> What happens at a bat mitzvah, anyway?
At any given time, there are forty times in the world. Another interesting fact: China used to have five time zones, but now it has only one, and for some Chinese people the sun doesn’t rise until after ten. Another: long before man traveled into space, rabbis debated how one would observe Shabbat there—not because they anticipated space travel but because Buddhists strive to live with questions and Jews would rather die. On Earth, the sun rises and sets once each day. A spaceship orbits Earth once every ninety minutes, which would require a Shabbat every nine hours. One line of thinking held that Jews simply shouldn’t be in a place that raises doubts about prayer and observance. Another, that one’s earthly obligations are earthbound—what happens in space stays in space. Some argued that a Jewish astronaut should observe the same routine he would on Earth. Others, that Shabbat should be observed by the time set on his instruments, despite the city of Houston being about as Jewish as the Rockets’ locker room. Two Jewish astronauts have died in space. No Jewish astronaut has observed Shabbat.
Sam’s dad gave him an article about Ilan Ramon, the only Israeli ever to go into space. Before leaving, Ramon went to the Holocaust Museum, to find an artifact to take with him. He chose a drawing of Earth by a young, anonymous boy who died in the war.
“Imagine that sweet child scribbling away,” Sam’s dad said. “If an angel had landed on his shoulder and told him, ‘You’re going to be killed before your next birthday, and in sixty years a representative of the Jewish state is going to carry your drawing of Earth as seen from space into space—”
“If there were angels,” Sam said, “he wouldn’t have been killed.”
“If the angels were good angels.”
“Do we believe in bad angels?”
“We probably don’t believe in any angels.”
Sam enjoyed knowledge. The accumulation and distribution of facts gave him a feeling of control, of utility, of the opposite of the powerlessness that comes with having a smallish, underdeveloped body that doesn’t dependably respond to the mental commands of a largish, overstimulated brain.
It was always dusk in Other Life, so once every day the “other time” corresponded to the “real time” of its citizens. Some referred to that moment as “The Harmony.” Some wouldn’t miss it. Some didn’t like to be at their screens when it happened. Sam’s bar mitzvah was still a ways off. Samanta’s bat mitzvah was today. Did the drawing simply immolate when the space shuttle exploded? Are any small pieces of it still orbiting? Did they fall to the water, descend, over hours, to the ocean floor, and veil one of those deep-sea creatures that are so alien they look like they came from outer space?
The pews were filled with everyone Samanta knew, people Sam had never met. They came from Kyoto, Lisbon, Sacramento, Lagos, Toronto, Oklahoma City, and Beirut. Twenty-seven dusks. They were sitting together in the virtual sanctuary of Sam’s creation—they saw the beauty; Sam saw all that was wrong with it, all that was wrong with him. They came for Samanta, a community of her communities. As far as they knew, it was a happy occasion.
> Just take it to someone else. Insist that they open it up.
> Just f*cking throw your phone from a bridge.
> Can someone explain to me what’s going to happen here?
> Funnily enough, I’m crossing a bridge right now, but I’m on an Amtrak and you can’t open the windows.
> Send us a picture of the water.
> Today Samanta becomes a woman.
> There’s more than one way to open a window.
> She’s having her period?
> Imagine thousands of phones washed up on the beach.
> Love letters in digital bottles.
> Why imagine? Go to India.
> Today she’s becoming a Jewish woman.
> I’m on an Amtrak, too!
> A Jewish woman how?
> More like hate mail.
> Let’s not figure out if we’re on the same train, OK?
> Israel is the f*cking worst.
> Wiki: “When a girl reaches 12 years old she becomes ‘bat mitzvah’—daughter of commandment—and is recognized by Jewish tradition as having the same rights as an adult. She is now morally and ethically responsible for her decisions and actions.”
> Set your camera’s phone on timer and then rest it on the ground, facing up.
> Jewish people are the worst.