Rumi across the Rooftops

Two numbers I simply can’t wrap my head around: 37.5 billion, and 19.

The Department of Defense spent nearly $2 billion dollars a day in the first six days of the Iran war. Since then, the total cost of the war has ballooned to $37.5 billion, according to Defense Secretary Hegseth testifying before Congress July 21. He then asked for an “urgent” additional $88 billion. But apparently that is a dramatically low estimate.

Linda Bilmes, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and an expert on budgeting and public finance, said on “All Things Considered,” NPR, 7/25: “According to my analysis, the very up-front, short-term costs are, to date, about 120 billion.” The $37 billion that Secretary Hegseth cited is just the tip of the iceberg. Beyond that are “hidden costs”: care of veterans, replacement cost of missiles (at least 50% higher than initial cost), interest on the debt to pay these bills. “But that doesn’t include another $250 billion for rebuilding the hundreds of U.S. facilities across the Middle East that have been destroyed or damaged.”  

The mind reels. What could a school or hospital do with $370 billion?

Leaving that unanswerable question unanswered, let’s turn to the second number: 19. That’s the age of Isabella Gonzales, from Carrollton, Texas, an army private killed in Jordan. She had just graduated last year from a high school near Dallas. High school. Let that sink in. That is the truly tragic cost of this war. And how could anyone explain to her family why she died? No satisfactory explanation for the conflict has yet been provided to Congress.

Interestingly, Ari Honarvar wrote a relevant article in Yes! magazine which was first published on the grateful.org website in 2020. She describes her childhood during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, which killed over a million people. “We Iranians had become accustomed to daily funerals, food rations, political oppression, and an ongoing threat of bombs and missiles.” One night, in her home city of Shiraz, Iran, sirens blared and the electricity was shut off, warning of an imminent attack. Her family crept to the rooftop to watch the anti-aircraft missiles shoot. To her seven-year-old eyes, it was a brilliant fireworks display. But beneath hovered the worry: who would be killed next?

“And then someone from another rooftop shouted a verse of Rumi’s poetry into the clear night air:

Even if, from the sky, poison befalls all,
I’m still sweetness
wrapped in sweetness
wrapped in sweetness…

This was a poetic challenge to the bombers, but it was also a gauntlet thrown down to any Persian in hearing range. The verse soon was rejoined from another rooftop. Even as a young child, I could feel the ecstasy of these verses in my heart, radiating to every cell of my being. In an instant, my world not only became sane, but infinite and glorious. And what bomb could ever touch that?”

So this is “the enemy”: people who exchange poetry across rooftops during a bombing. Some consolation comes from Frederick Buechner: “Life even at its most monotonous and backbreaking and heart-numbing has the Kingdom buried in it the way a field has treasure buried in it. …The Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to be born both within ourselves and within the world…” (Secrets in the Dark, pp.148-9) When the numbers stagger, the Iranians remind us of our holy humanity.