Complainers
You decide who's got it the worst!
WINE COUNTRY, USA
When you do everything right. When you pay for the best. When you treat people well. You expect a certain level of consideration. That's just basic courtesy.
But apparently…that's too much to ask anymore.
Take our usual table at Bistro Laurent. Been going religiously for three years. Tip well. Order the wine their sommelier suggests. Never complain. Not once.
But last Saturday they gave our table to someone…else. Because supposedly our reservation was only "noted". Not "confirmed".
The hostess suggested we sit by the kitchen. Do you know how close that is to the bathroom?
I said, "Excuse me? Do you know how close that is to the bathroom? Would you like us to dine on the toilet? We requested table twelve. We always sit at table twelve. Have you ever seen us sit anywhere but table twelve?"
She just stared at me like I was being unreasonable.
Come home to find out our housekeeper Guadalupe’s quitting without notice. Something about a brother being detained in Florida. A problem with his papers. I mean he’s an adult. He can figure it out.
After everything we've done for her. Guadalupe. Christmas bonus. Letting her bring her daughter to work when her school closed for that awful shooting. Giving her Madison's old sweaters. Sweater.
You do so much for people, you know.
It’s all going downhill now. Spotted two more homeless druggie crack heads in the Whole Foods parking lot. That makes a total of five druggie crack heads I’ve spotted!
I know they have those tent encampments scattered around downtown. Saw it on FB. Instead of smores they smoke fentanyl. And now they’re migrating here. Into our Whole Foods.
Philip Jr. pulled on my sleeve, whispered, “why does that man smell like that, Mommy?”
Tell me how am I supposed explain that to him? I personally wrote Jeff Bezos a letter.
The whole point I’m making is that you used to be able to count on people. The government. The police. The workers. To perform. Or at the very least do their job. But now that’s simply not true.
If you have money, people just try to take it from you. Act like you don’t have any feelings at all. Or if you do have feelings they certainly don’t matter.
Well let me tell each and every one of you something.
I have money.
And I have feelings.
And I’m sick and tired of being taken advantage of.
RUST BELT, USA
Flag decals on my truck. Flag patch on my work shirt. Flag tattoo fading on my shoulder. Red white and blue insulin in my fridge that costs more than my rent. But I ain’t complaining. Nope. This here is just life. That’s what this here is.
Twenty years at the plant. Relocates itself south of the border. Ok. You know the drill. "Essential skills training" at the community college. Twenty weeks learning to repair the robots that took my job. Robot breaks. Parts only come from China. Corporate hires some kid from India on video call to explain why I’m even more unnecessary than I was before. But hey, what ya gonna do, it’s the way it goes.
Wife says it's the government. Brother says it's the immigrants. Pastor says it's God's plan. Boss says it's just business.
Meanwhile the mall's an Amazon warehouse now. Downtown's all pawn shops and pain clinics. High school football team can't field enough players 'cause half the kids got long COVID and the other half are working DoorDash or OnlyFans to help with rent.
Sunday dinner at Mom's these days, that’s a good time. Fox News screaming. Grandpa wearing his red hat to the table. Ham tastes like plastic. Probably is. Everyone praising the great economy while using Klarna to installment pay their groceries.
Have you noticed that water smells like metal? Or that air smells like chemicals? Rain feels wrong on the skin now. Gets ya sick. Everyone's got a story about some weird cancer. Everyone's got a medical GoFundMe. Everyone's got a theory about which corporation poisoned which river. Which water supply. Nobody's got the means or the energy or the money to actually do something about it. But what else is new, cry me a river.
Church talking resurrection. Politicians talking bull. Commercials showing factories with smoke stacks bringing back good jobs. Only good jobs around here are the prison they’re building two towns over. Migrant detention center they’re calling it.
Buddy says I should apply for the health insurance. They ain’t offering health insurance.
But I ain’t complaining. Truly. That ain’t me. That ain’t my style.
Love it or leave it.
THE HOOD, USA
Malik won't shut up about McDonald's and I'm about to lose it. Talking "I want nuggets!” Boy, we got bologna! Acting all picky when I'm the only one making sure he eat at all.
Then you know Destiny gonna start her shit too. Telling me I'm not her real mama so she don't gotta listen. Girl, I know I ain’t your mama, I’m fourteen, I don’t wanna be nobody’s mama but who else combing your nappy head every morning? Who signed your permission slip with my left hand so it look different?
Baby crying again cause he teething. Destiny supposed to be watching him but she on TikTok looking at hairstyles she know we can't afford. These kids don't listen for nothing these days.
Can't send them outside no more. Not since them 3rd street boys took over the whole playground selling whatever the hell they selling. Acting like they own the block. Which I guess they do since nobody gonna tell ‘em no different.
My girl Keisha been missing school for two months now. Saw her at the corner store buying pickles and hot chips with that EBT card, belly all big. Second baby and we only in eighth grade. Asked her if she trying to break some kind of record. Her mama don't say nothing no more, just watch her grandbaby while Keisha at the free clinic.
Police rolled through yesterday doing they usual thang. Stopped every kid on the corner, lined them up against the wall, talking some robbery at the OTB nobody heard about.
Took they sweet ass time though when Ms. Washington called about her son Isiah bleeding out on their front lawn last Christmas. Priorities, I guess.
Malik scared to sleep alone ever since Isiah got killed. Been in my bed three weeks straight, kicking me, hogging covers, got me on the floor like a dog by morning. My back hurt so bad I walk like somebody grandma. Try explaining that to my PE teacher.
"Why you not participating?" Cause I'm raising three kids and I got arthritis that's why!
Malik’s teacher keep sending emails about homework. Lady, our mama been gone six days now. I don't know what a denominator is! ChatGPT be teaching both of us math at this point.
Tomorrow I gotta figure out how to get Destiny hair done with no money, help Malik with them fractions and keep the baby from crying all day from hunger pains so them Karen ass neighbors don't call the landlord again and put us on the street.
All while this boy still whining about some damn chicken nuggets Happy Meal type nonsense.
I swear to God if this boy say McDonald's one more time...
KHARKIV, UKRAINE
Four thirty morning and this suka generator already making problems.
Chinese piece of shit, like everything now. Fifty years my German ovens working perfect, but generator from twenty-twenty-three? Dead after six months. Bang it with wrench - starts. This modern technology.
I check phone while ovens heating. WhatsApp. Svetlana. Berlin: "Mama, please, we have room for you here!" Same message every day. What I do in Berlin? Sit in clean apartment waiting to die? Nyet. I die here, where I belong, covered in flour like proper baker. Like mother. Like father.
Mix first batch sourdough. Starter is fifty-two years old. Older than most my customers. Survived three wars, four husbands, and that time Dmitri tried to make vodka in basement and almost burned whole building. Every morning I feed starter before I feed cats.
Customer knocking already.
"We're closed!"
"But I see light!"
"You see me working! Come back seven o'clock like normal person!"
Still knocking. This is what's wrong with young people. No respect for process.
Open door, ready to hit with rolling pin. Is Tanya from third floor. Nine months pregnant, wants black bread.
"My grandmother say if I eat black bread, baby come today."
"Your grandmother was drunk. But OK, I have yesterday bread."
Give her bread, she tries to pay.
"Put money away before I get insulted. Go have baby. Text me photo."
Back to mixing. Electricity supposed to come on five-thirty but who knows? Schedule like Ukrainian promise – nice idea. I work in dark forty years, what's difference? Hands know what to do.
Oy, water from tap this morning color of yellow-brown. I smell - shit from pipes? Who knows. Use bottled water for bread. Customers don't need know.
Then first real customers. Artem with stupid haircut.
"Babushka, you have that bread with seeds?"
"Which seeds? I have fifteen breads with seeds. Be specific or get nothing."
"The... healthy ones?"
"All my bread healthy! You want quinoa chia whatever-the-fuck bread? Twelve hryvnia."
He makes face.
"Was eight last week."
"Last week dollar was thirty-seven. Today forty-one. You want bread or economics lesson?"
Phone rings. Unknown number. I answer because maybe customer.
"Good morning! This is Viktoria from Kharkiv Food Safety Department. We need to schedule inspection-"
I hang up. During war they still want to inspect? Inspect what? My basement where I sleep? Generator that works only when beaten? Plastic windows that whistle Shchedryk when wind blows?
Bozhe moy, now health inspector actually here. Young girl, maybe twenty-five.
"I need to check your refrigeration temperature logs."
"Logs in refrigerator that has no electricity?"
"You need to maintain-"
"Detka, listen. I'm baking bread since before your grandmother was born. Nobody gets sick from my bread. You want to help? Fix electricity. Until then, go bother someone with working lights."
She stands there like lost puppy. I feel little bit bad.
"Here, take this apple pastry. Fresh this morning. Now go away."
Ten o'clock, making batch of pirozhki when lights flicker on. Slava bogu!
Whole bakery suddenly smells alive again - yeast waking up, butter warming, cinnamon from morning batch.
This is what heaven smells like, not clouds and harps bullshit.
Quick, plug in everything - mixer, proofer, coffee machine, phone charger, radio. Work fast before it goes again.
Radio playing news.
"Drone attack intercepted over Kharkiv oblast..."
Same news three years. Like weather report now.
"Today partly cloudy with chance of shahed drones."
Two o'clock, trying to rest five minutes when delivery truck arrives. Sergei jumps out, nervous like rabbit.
"Oksana Mikhailovna, I have your flour but... price went up again.”
Sign papers, help unload because Sergei's back bad and his helper quit last week. Forty kilo bags and I'm eighty-three years old. What choice? Flour don't carry itself.
Later. Putting glaze on wedding bread. That’s when missile comes. EXACTLY when I need steady hand. Now glaze looks like drunk person made it. Fucking Putin.
Mrs. Petrova comes in shaking.
"Did you hear that?"
"Hard to miss."
"Aren't you scared?"
I look at her. This woman survived same things as me.
"Scared of what? Dying? Everybody dies. My Petro died on toilet during gas crisis. My Viktor died from Chernobyl poison. At least missile is quick."
Eight-fifteen, finally alone.
Count money - enough for tomorrow flour, maybe generator repair if Volodya gives friend price.
Feed starter, feed cats. Named after husbands - Mikhail, Viktor, Petro, and Boris. Boris trying to eat before others. Just like real Boris. I push him away with foot.
"Wait your turn, you selfish bastard."
Check tomorrow's orders. Mrs. Yanukovich wants wedding bread for granddaughter. In middle of war, people still getting married. Optimists or idiots, you tell me.
Sit in kitchen with tea and yesterday's bread. Is good bread. Dense, chewy, tastes like wheat supposed to taste. Not like Berlin granddaughters' organic sprouted whatever.
Phone buzzes. Message from Anton:
"Babushka, how are you?"
"Alive. You?"
"Same."
This is our conversation every week. Is enough.
Sleepy. Time for basement. My bed now where mother stored potatoes. I sleep with ghosts of vegetables. Is fitting.
Grab flashlight, pillow, blanket that smells like 1987. Plastic windows rattling from something - wind or explosions, who cares.
Tomorrow do same thing. Four thirty morning, bang generator, mix dough, argue with customers, fight with suppliers, ignore officials, duck missiles, feed cats, sleep in basement.
Some people call this living hell. I call it Thursday.
What else is there to do?
Bread don't bake itself.
GAZA, PALESTINE
Rat ate my crackers again. Same rat. Fat one with half tail. I know is same rat because I bit half his tail off three days ago when I catch him the first time.
Was saving five crackers under concrete block. FIVE. Counted them every night before sleep. Now only crumbs.
"You know these were mine," I tell rat. He just stare at me with black eyes. "What I ever do to you, brother?"
Is not fair. Wait six hours in food line. Six hours for one packet crackers and tin of...something. Not sure. Label gone. Doesn't matter. Eat anyway. And this fat rat - FAT! - he steal from me? While I get more skinny every day?
I catch him with piece of wood. Easy. Too fat to run fast.
"Now what?" I ask him. "Now what, habibi?"
He very quiet now.
Remember when Mama make mahshi. Rice inside zucchini. I tell rat about this while I prepare fire. Tell him how she let me help stuff the zucchini. How my fingers was too big and rice fall out everywhere. Baba laugh.
Getting skinnier now, shway shway. Fingers probably fit perfect in zucchini.
"You would like mahshi," I tell rat. "Better than crackers."
Rat taste like... like rat I guess. Crunchy bones. Fur smell terrible when burning. But meat is meat. First bite, I gag. Second bite, I chew. Third bite, I swallow. Fourth bite, I'm grateful.
Save the bones. Why? Don't know. Just feel like I should save something.
My name is... was...
No. Not important now.
Rat's name Ibrahim. I decide this. Ibrahim was my cousin. Also dead. Also liked crackers.
"Ibrahim," I tell the bones, "you want hear something funny? I find piece of mirror yesterday. Look at myself. You know what I see? Nothing. Just eyes in skull. Like ghost. Like you."
Wallahi, is true. When I see my face, I don't recognize. Who is this boy? Is he seven? Seventeen? Seventy? Eyes too big. Cheeks gone inside.
But you know what make me really angry? Really really angry?
My shoes don't fit anymore.
THESE SHOES. These stupid shoes. Mama buy them two months before... before. New shoes for school. "You growing so fast," she say. "Need bigger size."
Now they fall off when I walk. Have to stuff with paper. But no paper. So stuff with plastic bags. Makes noise. Crunch crunch crunch. Like walking on chips packets.
"You think is funny, Ibrahim?" I ask bones. "I finally got new shoes and now feet too small?"
Sometimes I practice my name so don't forget. But which name? Mama call me hayati. Baba call me ya ibni. Teacher call me... what? Can't remember. Something with M? Maybe?
Wait. Ahmad. No. Not Ahmad. Ahmad sit next to me in class. I sit... where? Window seat? Door seat?
Teacher say "Ya... Ya..." when she angry about homework. "Ya Muhammad, where is homework?" No. Not Muhammad. Muhammad is tall boy. I'm small boy. Was small boy. Am smaller boy now. Shway shway.
Doesn't matter. Nobody to call me anything now.
Find place to sleep tonight. Good place - three walls still standing. Roof half there. Can see stars through hole. Count them like crackers.
Man came yesterday. Tried to take my blanket.
MY blanket.
Found it in bombed apartment. Still smell like someone's grandmother. Jasmine and bread. He big man. Hungry but still bigger than me.
"Please," he say. "My daughter cold."
I look at him. Look good. No daughter with him.
"Where is she?"
He point somewhere. Could be anywhere. Could be nowhere.
I give him half. Tear it down middle. Now I have half blanket. He have half blanket. Both cold but half cold better than all cold. Haram to let child freeze. He younger than me.
"Shukran," he say.
"Is nothing," I say. But is not nothing. Is half my blanket. Is half my warmth. Is half my grandmother smell.
Morning comes. Always surprised when morning comes. Check crackers - no, wait. No crackers. Ibrahim ate them. Check bones. Still there. Good.
"Ibrahim," I tell bones, "today we find water."
Water truck supposed to come. Supposed to. Like food supposed to come. Like war supposed to end. Like Mama supposed to wake up.
I practice walking without shoes making sound. Impossible. Crunch crunch crunch.
Find dead phone in rubble. My phone? Don't think so. But take anyway. Press button. Nothing. Press again. Nothing.
"Is broken," I tell Ibrahim.
Keep pressing anyway. Maybe one day it work. Maybe one day battery magical appear. Maybe one day I remember my phone number.
You know what I miss most?
Toothbrush.
Stupid, yes? People dying everywhere and I want toothbrush. But teeth feel like... like wearing sweater. Fuzzy. Wrong. I rub with finger. I rub with stick. Not same.
Ibrahim don't care about teeth. Ibrahim beyond caring.
Today I see boy from school. Don't remember his name. He don't remember mine. We just look at each other. He carrying baby.
"Is yours?" I ask.
"Found her," he say.
Baby not crying. Bad sign when baby not cry.
"You have food?" he ask.
I shake head. He nod. Walk away. Crunch crunch crunch. He got plastic bags in shoes too.
I should follow. Two better than one. But one also better than two when no food.
Math different now.
One blanket divided by two people equals two cold people.
One cracker divided by two people equals two hungry people.
One person plus little food equals maybe tomorrow.
Two people plus little food equals maybe not.
"Right, Ibrahim?"
Sun going down. Find new place to sleep. Old place got someone already. Big family. All women. They look at me like wolf. I look at them like wolf. Everyone wolf now.
Find collapsed school. My school? Maybe. All schools look same when collapsed.
Classroom with one wall standing. Blackboard still there. Empty. Good. I write too. But what? Don't know how spell my name. So draw picture.
Rat. Boy. Question mark.
Mark corner with pile of stones. Three stones high. My place now. Until someone stronger comes.
That's me now. Boy question mark.
Lie down with half blanket. Ibrahim bones in pocket. Tomorrow need find food. Water. New shoes that fit.
But tonight just lie here. Count stars through missing roof. Wonder if dead people become stars. If yes, sky must be very crowded now.
"Mama," I whisper to biggest star. "Mama, guess what? I ate rat today. You always say try new things."
Star twinkle. Maybe that's her laughing. Maybe just my eyes too tired.
Close them. Dream about mahshi. Dream about time when had name.
What was it? Khalid? Omar? Tariq?
Maybe tomorrow I remember.
MAASAI TERRITORY
Complain?
What should I complain about?
Today my son shot his first dik-dik. We shared the meat with our neighbors.
His grandfather told the story of his first hunt. The boy listened with respect.
The rains came when they should come.
The grass grows green.
The cattle are fat and healthy.
The children laugh and play in the dust.
My wife knows every plant that heals, every root that feeds. Her mother taught her, her grandmother taught her mother.
We wake when the sun wakes.
We sleep when the darkness comes.
We eat when we are hungry.
We rest when we are tired.
The sky is wide and full of stars.
The earth gives us everything we need.
Our ancestors' bones rest peacefully in the soil that feeds us.
What more could we want?
What more do we need?
Sometimes there is smoke from the cities on the horizon.
When we see it we stop and look just for a moment.
We pray for those people.
We pray they remember.
We pray they forget.
Friend, some voices here mistake inconvenience for injury while others swallow blood and call it supper. The diner tantrum reeks of worshipping status; the rust-belt prayer wears denial like armor; the girl in the hood is doing the state’s job with a child’s spine; the baker in Kharkiv keeps the covenant of bread under sirens; the boy in Gaza eats a rat and still shares a blanket, he is the only authority I recognize today.
And that last hymn to Maasai life reads like a postcard, beauty without history turns into a lullaby for the comfortable. My measure is simple: who protects the fragile, who buries the dead, who feeds the living, every other complaint is theater.
Amazingly powerful piece.
Beautifully haunting story.