Field Guide Vol. 254
According to research, American men are stuck in a so-called “friendship recession.” In one survey, more than half of all men in the US reported feeling unsatisfied with the size of their friend groups. Yet whether through blood or chosen family, the bonds of brotherhood is a theme that crosses borders and cultures. This week we’re celebrating these relationships, from the unexpected bond between two boys in a hospital to a transatlantic literary friendship and more. Join us and dive into stories of brotherhood across time and place.
Empty beds in an empty ward at Walsgrave Hospital. 1979. (Getty Images).
Khalid
By Salar Abdoh
This piece is published in collaboration with Coda Story as part of our Complicating Colonialism issue.
How Khalid and I came together is something I’ve thought about for decades. That first day the administration of the hospital gave us a tour of the floor I was to stay at. As we were passing the corridor where Khalid lay in bed, alone, with a longing and a fear that I was fast coming to identify as my own in that place of sickness, our eyes met. I didn’t know then that we could not speak each other’s languages. But the language of fear is universal and something snapped in me as we moved on from Khalid and the corridor into an overly large room where there must have been twelve or more beds. On each bed lay a British boy, staring dead-eyed at us. My color of skin was far closer to theirs than it was to Khalid’s; nevertheless, something in the avalanche of that paleness of theirs seemed threatening to me.
And, also, I had a question which I never asked. Why was I being offered the possibility of a bed in this room while Khalid had to sleep in the corridor? It seemed unfair. What was even more odd was that I, a mere kid, was being allowed to choose where I’d stay, with the British boys or with Khalid.
My grandmother said, “Do you want to stay in this room or stay with that boy back there?”
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