Courage is the most potent contagion

Omar El Akkad's beautiful, powerful words reveal and explain horrors.

Welcome back to The Ink Book Club. We’ll meet next on Wednesday, June 18, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, live on Substack, with the brilliant Omar El Akkad, whose profound and eye-opening One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This we’ve been discussing for the last three weeks. Let us know if you have any questions for him in the comments below.

The Book Club is open to all supporting subscribers of The Ink, so join us now to take part!

So far, we’ve focused mainly on the themes of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This — the legacy of empire, the political uses of language, and questions of complicity.

But let’s take a moment today to acknowledge and think about the beauty and clarity of El Akkad’s words. It must be said that a primary reason—perhaps the primary reason this work has had such an illuminating, mind-shifting effect is that he’s such a great writer. During these last weeks, I’ve dog-eared my copy of the book and furiously taken notes, jotting down so many luminous sentences that I’ve nearly used up an entire legal pad. (Yeah, I still take notes by hand.)

“There’s no such thing as someone else’s children.”

“How does one finish the sentence: ‘It is unfortunate that tens of thousands of children are dead, but…’”?

“Every small act of resistance trains the muscle used to do it, in much the same way that turning one’s eyes from the horror strengthens that particular muscle.”

“A world that shrugs at one kind of slaughter has developed a terrible immunity."

We’re grateful that amid these harsh realities, Omar El Akkad gives us reason to hope: “Courage is the more potent contagion…there are more invested in solidarity than in annihilation.”

We look forward to seeing you this coming Wednesday, June 18, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, for our conversation with El Akkad. In the meantime, we offer some questions to reflect on below — and please pose your own for the author in the comments.

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