The New York Times just published a very personal essay I wrote.
After seeing a video from Gaza of Dr. Ali Alhaj Salem, standing over incubators without electricity, without formula, without breast milk, I’ve thought a lot about NICUs, how they differ, and how they reflect on humanity.
Fourteen years ago, my son was born three months early. He spent the first stretch of his life inside a plastic box, kept alive by machines, wires, and a team of people, backed by a society that imagined him as a part of its own. It was terrifying. And miraculous.
The babies in Gaza are just as premature. Just as fragile. Just as worthy of care.
This week, The New York Times published an essay I wrote about that unbearable contrast:
A Tale of Two NICUs
It’s about my son, and it’s about Dr. Salem’s patients. It’s about who we see as “ours,” and who we learn to see as expendable. It’s about what happens when societies imagine themselves narrowly—and what it takes to imagine something else.
If you read it, thank you. If you feel something from it, I hope you’ll share it.
We don’t get to choose where babies are born. But we can do something about the kind of world they’re born into.
—Mushon
Illustration by Vartika Sharma
