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Washington Window
Vol. 73, No. 12, December 2005

One of the biggest stories from Katrina was the huge exaggeration of the violence in New Orleans - babies raped, looters everywhere, multiple murders in the Louisiana Superdome and the Convention Center, black gangs shooting at helicopters come to rescue folk. One would think that once all the civilized restraints disappeared, young black men - "young bucks" racists in the South used to call them - showed their true nature: violent, wild, unredeemable.

Why did it take such a long time for responsible newspapers like The Washington Post to correct the tremendously damaging stories about our city? Why was the national press, to say nothing of our own black mayor and chief of police, so quick to believe those unsubstantiated despicable rumors? For the record, last week the New Orleans coroner reported that there had not been one confirmed murder in our city since Aug. 28 - this in a city that unfortunately averages at least four murders each week. Maybe there were rapes, but to date none has been confirmed.

The easy acceptance of unconfirmed black violence makes me think "there is something rotten" not in the state of Denmark, but in our own racist prone nation.

Last week, back in New Orleans to fix up our own flooded home, I had a chance to drive through the badly flooded Ninth Ward and New Orleans East, both home to the New Orleans working and middle class, most of whom are black. Few people were on the streets, only the National Guard with their sub-machine guns and broken-hearted people trying to save what they could from their homes before the bulldozing.

For block after block after block, each modest house had its own story to tell, each with a family that had saved and saved for years and years and finally bought "a place of our own." One could imagine families at prayer, maybe at Thanksgiving time, blessing the Lord for his goodness and for their homes, or gathered around the TV both cheering and booing the beloved Saints in yet another disappointing season.

As I drove into the business district and then into residential areas not so badly flooded, I was most impressed with everyone's courtesy. There are few stop lights, but everyone gives everyone else the right-of-way! Imagine that. Such courtesy quickly became a metaphor for me for the entire forsaken but hopeful and now grace-filled city. We will honor each other, and we will work for the common good!

Instead of rapes, murders and widespread looting, here is what I found during my week in the Crescent City: The Whole Food Company, a new but thriving store in the older part of the city, left its doors open with a sign that said to take what you need but please no more. A 20-year-old convicted felon, one of those "young bucks," had "commandeered" a school bus and had carried the first poor and black evacuees all the way from Algiers (in the western part of the city) to the Astrodome in Houston, easily beating the rescue efforts of FEMA. Church after church, some in ruins, posted signs that said, 'We are open for services and will help you in any way that we can.'

But what gave me the greatest hope was Malik Rahim, long ago the leader of the New Orleans Black Panthers, now an aging and, might I use the word, "lovely" Muslim. He has turned his shotgun home in Algiers into a center of distribution for his many low-income neighbors, everything from toothpaste to disinfectant spray, from granola bars to toys for the few remaining children.

Crammed into the yard of the still-boarded up home of his neighbor next door are about 20 two-person tents filled at night with volunteers from all over the country and beyond. Some of these volunteers are dispensing supplies, others hope. Six or seven computer nerds have staked out a place in their own tent and are communicating with good-hearted souls all over the place, asking for more supplies, more volunteers. These high-tech saints have even set up their own radio station so that the people of Algiers can tell their story to the world.

But most impressive is Malik's mosque, a few blocks away. Once a place of solemn worship, it now houses the most active medical clinic in the entire region. Stuffed full of medical supplies and volunteer medical workers from off, as we like to say in New Orleans, the clinic, called "Common Ground" has treated more patients since Katrina - now 3,000 - than any of the other properly established clinics in the entire area. Supplying medicine for such conditions as "high blood" and diabetes mellitus, you can imagine just how many lives they have saved.

Whatever happens from this point on, whatever sadness we from New Orleans must bear, it is important to note that we haven't nor will we ever lose our sense of humor, so I close with this story.

As I was about to leave Malik's home, several of us were sitting in his kitchen planning for the future: Orissa from an Episcopal church, Malik's beautiful partner Sharon, also from Algiers, and two chief volunteers, one from Oregon, one from Connecticut, and of course Malik himself.

"Do you still have that snake with you?" Malik asked the volunteer from Oregon.

"Oh yes," she said, "he's right here in my bag." And she pulled out a cobra two or three feet long and began stroking it.

"My Lord, Malik!" I said, "How do you feel about having a cobra in your own kitchen?"

"It's all right for her I guess, Reverend Barnwell," he replied. "But as for me, I like my coffee with chicory."

Orissa, Sharon, and I burst out laughing, but the volunteers from Oregon and Connecticut looked completely perplexed.

Since probably many of you are just as puzzled, let me explain. One of the many things New Orleaneans have in common - black and white, Latino and European-American, rich and poor, what we call not the un-interesting "melting pot" but the great New Orleans tasty "gumbo pot" - is that we like our coffee with chicory, a root that long ago slaves discovered could make, when ground up and added to your coffee, the best beverage in the world. Another thing we all have in common - we don't like snakes - they's too many of them around, especially when the water rises.

We in New Orleans, Malik was saying, have our special ways - coffee with chicory and we don't like cobras. But our God - Muslim, Jew and Christian - is a big God, and if you come to do us good, we love you. You can even bring your strange, strange ways into our own kitchens.

The Rev. William H. Barnwell is now canon missioner at Washington National Cathedral.

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