Ballots, Blackouts, and Broken Wings

Today I felt everything at once.

In New York City, part of me stood in line under drizzle and neon, clutching a ballot that helped elect Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist from Queens, as the 111th mayor of the city, defeating Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa and becoming my first Muslim, first South Asian, and youngest New York mayor in generations.

In those lines, my younger selves showed up in unusual numbers, drawn by promises of free buses, rent freezes, universal childcare, and city-run grocery stores; some of me cheered, some of me worried about taxes, all of me felt the ground shift.

Down in Virginia, another piece of me exhaled in a crowded Richmond ballroom as networks called the race for Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer and congresswoman who just became Virginia's first woman governor by beating Winsome Earle-Sears with a comfortable margin.

In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, won the governorship with a solid majority, while out in California I checked a single box for 'Yes on Proposition 50,' a new congressional map expected to hand Democrats several extra House seats, and watched the numbers climb toward victory.

While some of me celebrated these results as a brake on Donald Trump's power, other parts of me doom-scrolled, cursing gerrymanders and corruption, convinced the whole system was rigged; the same species, looking at the same vote totals, drew opposite conclusions.

In Washington, D.C., my stomach growled as the U.S. government shutdown hit day 35, tying the longest in the country's history and freezing food assistance for about 42 million people who rely on SNAP to fill their refrigerators.

Federal workers and service members refreshed banking apps and saw nothing, while TSA agents, air-traffic controllers, and park rangers kept showing up to work without pay as economists tallied billions in projected losses for every extra week of deadlock.

Inside the Capitol, senators traded statements on cable news, Republicans blaming Democrats for insisting on healthcare subsidies, Democrats blaming Republicans for blocking them, and underneath the talking points I could hear something more corrosive than anger: exhaustion.

Far to the south, along my Caribbean shores, I traced the scars left by Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm whose 185-mile-an-hour winds and storm surge killed dozens and caused billions in damage from Jamaica to Haiti and eastern Cuba.

In Jamaica's Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth parishes, I walked barefoot through muddy, splintered boards that used to be homes, past flattened fields and downed power lines, while children balanced on broken concrete steps that no longer led anywhere.

Today another part of me sat at a desk in the U.S. State Department signing off on a $24 million emergency aid package for Jamaica, Haiti, the Bahamas, and Cuba, turning my remorse into pallets of tarps, water filters, and food bound for the very places my overheated oceans had just drowned.

Near Louisville, Kentucky, I tore myself open when UPS Airlines Flight 2976, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 cargo jet bound for Honolulu, lifted off and then lurched as an engine failed, rolled, and slammed into an industrial strip of warehouses, fuel tanks, and scrap yards beside the airport.

Fourteen of me died there—three crew members on the plane and eleven people on the ground—and fifteen more were pulled from the fire with burns and broken bones as more than a hundred firefighters fought walls of flame that lit up the November dusk.

In the same hours, other parts of me stared at package-tracking screens, mildly annoyed that a shipment was delayed and completely unaware that, for a handful of my bodies in Louisville, those packages were the last thing they ever handled.

On the Giza plateau near Cairo, I put on my best clothes and opened the Grand Egyptian Museum fully to the public at last, a billion-dollar glass and stone monument that has taken more than two decades to finish.

Visitors stepped into a vast atrium beneath the towering statue of Ramses II and then wandered into galleries where, for the first time, all five thousand-plus objects from Tutankhamun's tomb—his gold mask, his chariots, his beds, even his sandals—now rest together under softly glowing cases.

Outside, the real pyramids still cut their angles into the desert sky, while inside I tried to hold my own history steady behind climate-controlled glass, proof that I can build something lasting and beautiful as well as break things.

In Doha, Qatar, delegates at the Second World Summit for Social Development adopted the Doha Political Declaration, and in that conference hall another fragment of me solemnly promised again to eradicate poverty, create decent work, and strengthen social protection so that fewer of my people fall through the cracks.

Even as I wrote those promises into formal language about leaving no one behind, workers from poorer countries poured coffee and cleared plates outside the doors, a quiet reminder that the inequalities we were pledging to fix were serving the meeting itself.

A fresh United Nations climate report landed in my news feeds today, full of numbers showing that countries' new plans have barely nudged my warming trajectory, leaving me pointed toward well over two degrees of heating even if every promise on paper is kept.

The scientists explained, again, that every tenth of a degree will mean more storms like Melissa, more flooded neighborhoods, more days when the air in some cities becomes dangerous to breathe, and I listened with one ear while the other stayed tuned to stock tickers and election returns.

Another notification told me that Dick Cheney, the former U.S. vice president who shaped wars and security policies after September 11, had died at eighty-four, and I found myself sifting through memories of speeches, invasion votes, intelligence briefings, and prison photos that defined an era.

Some of my voices called him a patriot and steady hand in crisis, while others named him a war criminal whose choices killed and displaced countless people, and his passing joined the long list of unresolved arguments I carry about power, fear, and accountability.

So this day ends with me opening museums and closing paychecks, rescuing storm survivors and continuing to burn the fuels that supercharge their storms, electing leaders on promises of justice while leaving millions in limbo because I cannot agree on a budget.

I feel like a species standing at a crossroads with one foot in floodwater and the other on polished stone floors, one hand dropping a ballot into a box, the other reaching into rubble.

I do not yet know which direction I will choose more often, but writing these contradictions down makes it harder to pretend I do not see them, and that is the small kind of honesty I can offer myself tonight.