I believe that it was the Prussian military theoretician Clausewitz who introduced the idea of “the fog of war,” a really fine phrase that denotes the uncertainties, confusions, and marked limitations of vision that characterize most soldiers’ experience of war, especially on the battlefield itself. When we speak of a person’s “viewpoint” or “point of view” we are acknowledging that the reliability of what one sees depends in large measure on the physical location from which one sees it. Paintings of the great battles of the Napoleonic era generally show the general officers viewing the action from some fairly distant elevation. I think the only time anybody uses the old word fray is in saying that somebody is above it.
I
count myself very fortunate indeed that I have never had to experience warfare. Hence my conception of war’s fog comes mostly
from books or imagination, and to some degree from drawing analogies from
participation in crowded events at athletic venues or political marches. In such circumstances one may be
theoretically aware of some larger context to be taken on faith, since what one is actually experiencing, sometimes a little scarily, is lots of people
bumping into each other and asking each other what is going on—as though it were
rational to assume that somebody knew.
For
many years I was the Chief Marshal of Princeton University. Each year at Commencement I led a
procession of upwards of two thousand people—graduates, faculty,
administrators, trustees, and so forth—around and into an open-air arena
crammed with some thousands more of spectators. The composition of the line of march was really quite
complicated, and the timing, while not quite split-second, was a serious
consideration. Most academic
ceremonies are borderline Monty Python burlesque to begin with, and the
potential for serious disaster was always with me. It was sort of like directing a production of Aida with a blindfold on. You hoped that the heavy clumping you
heard was the elephants, but you couldn’t be sure. Or, shifting operas, I was like Orpheus marching out of
hell. I couldn’t look back. My recurrent nightmare was that one
sunny morning I would pompously march through the arena—just me, Mr. Elgar, and
a few thousand bemused onlookers—without realizing that nobody was following
me.
As
close as I have come to the fog of war is the blur of travel. That is close enough. On Monday morning I was washing down a
delicious, marmeladed croissant with café
au lait in our apartment in Paris.
I would be lying if I said I was totally carefree, as I always
experience some slight travel jitters, even without the uncertainty of a
threatened strike of the air traffic controllers at Charles de Gaulle
Airport. But still, I was living
the life. Twelve hours later we
were eating again, this time south Indian take-out with Luke, Melanie, John
Henry, and Hazel in their house in Montreal. Hazel didn’t quite finish her utthappam, but then she’s only
six weeks old.
I
used to think that exhaustion could be measured according to an objective
constant, but it turns out that the older you get the more exhausting
exhaustion is. Nonetheless by
three-thirty in the Canadian morning my now Parisian biological clock had me
wide-eyed (though still exhausted, of course) and fumbling in the darkness over
my computer, trying to work on an article due at the end of the week. Twelve hours after that my little Air
Canada flight was touching down at Newark where, the pilot announced with an
unseemly cheeriness, “the temperature is thirty-five degrees Celsius”. He was, of course, lying through his
teeth. It was ninety-five degrees
Farenheit.
I
already knew that my ordeal was by no means over. The “Air Train” connection at Newark Airport is temporarily
shut down for major maintenance.
The drill was to schlep a very heavy bag to a bus stop curbside, there
to find a shuttle to take me to Newark train station, there to schlep the said
heavy bag up to the platforms, then to hoist it up into a train…I had steeled
myself, but God interceded in the form of Mr. Aziz. It was Mr. Aziz who pointed out to me the workings of the
divine hand in this affair. Mr.
Aziz is a large, bald, muscular private taxi entrepreneur who lives in Jackson,
New Jersey, well to my south.
Certain semi-surreptitious gestures of his led me to wonder whether his
activities were all duly certified by the dull certifiers. Who knows? He had been casting his metaphorical net around the baggage
claim area for hours but without success, all the while incurring a
thirty-three dollar parking bill.
It is Ramadan. He was
hungry. He was tired. He wanted to get to Jackson and his
family for his evening breakfast.
He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
I
still woke up at three-thirty, but this time to air-conditioned comfort. The darkness outside sparkled with a
thousand fireflies. It’s sexual,
you know. “Baby, won’t you light
my fire?” That’s what they are
saying in lantern semaphore.
I felt a little less blurry.
I thought I could even manage to put up a blog post so long as it didn’t
have to have a point.
