THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER16, 2019 17
sneakers—and bearing mangoes for des-
sert. She said that she wasn’t about to
let a trip to London get in the way of
peak mango season. “We call them ‘jew-
els,’ ” she said, halving and peeling the
fruit for the other guests.
When the rain let up, Shehab grabbed
her shopping bag of spray cans. “Let’s
do it,” she said to her accomplices. They
drove to Clerkenwell, a trendy neigh-
borhood in central London, and pulled
up to a construction site bordered by a
high wall more than thirty feet long. “It’s
all ours,” Shehab said.
Neither Whiting nor Schwepcke, who
had changed out of a batik dress and into
a brown fleece, had any graffiti experi-
ence. Shehab took a leather portfolio
filled with stencils from the trunk and
handed out gloves and masks. “Ladies,
are you ready?” she asked. She showed
them how to press the first stencil—“No
to Borders,” in Arabic—against the wall,
while she, bare-handed and without a
mask, popped the top off a paint can,
shook it, and started spraying.
A few stencils later, Shehab, her
fingers now black, put down the can,
and waited for a double-decker bus to
pass. She ran across the street (“Don’t
get run over!” Schwepcke yelled) to as-
sess the work. The stencils’ alignment
was a bit off, and some of the paint was
dripping. Shehab shrugged. “This is street
art,” she said. “It’s the anti-perfect.” She
was more concerned about running out
of paint. “It’s too early for you,” she
scolded one empty can, its ball bearing
rattling around inside it.
Rubberneckers slowed down to gawk.
“I’m not worried about the police, I’m
worried about the people,” Shehab said.
Once, in Cairo, she got chased away by
street thugs. Clerkenwell was friendlier.
A young couple, sidestepping puddles
and stencils, walked up. The woman
turned to Shehab.
“What made you choose Arabic?” she
asked.
“They’re not getting it in English,”
Shehab said, smiling. “Maybe they’ll get
it in Arabic.” She added, “I’m from
Egypt.”
“I ’m from Egypt!” the man said. He
was half German, half Egyptian.
“That’s why we love London,” the
woman said.
After they exchanged “Ma’assalama”s,
Shehab looked pleased. “I fucking love
1
DEPT.OFSELF-CARE
VITALITY
M
editation time! Find a comfy
spot to stretch out, close your
eyes, and breathe deeply, in and out.
Good. Now imagine a beam of energy.
Ride that beam out of your body, up
into the air, and toward the stars. Peace-
ful, right? And are you hearing that ce-
lestial music yet? What type of music
is it? Is it ... rap?
Perhaps it is not. And perhaps that
is why Lonnie Rashid Lynn, the rapper,
actor, writer, and activist known as Com-
mon, based his new album, “Let Love,”
on concepts of healing, therapy, and med-
itation. As he explains on the first track,
“Taking care of self is the new black.”
The other day, Common was mak-
ing his way to a wellness sanctuary inNolita called Reset, which specializes in
astrological readings, sound baths, and
mindfulness workshops for burned-out
professionals. He was scheduled for a
meditation session. Liz Tran, the cen-
ter’s thirty-four-year-old founder, was
making preparations. She burned a stick
of wood called palo santo and waved it
around. “I’m just going to clear the air
a bit,” she said.
Common arrived in a light-blue
sweatsuit, with color-blocked pants, and
basketball sneakers, which he removed.
He is forty-seven, and he smiles often
and speaks gently. He pulled a match-
ing stick of wood from his pocket. “I’ve
got my own palo santo!” he said.
Common said that he began his
wellness journey seventeen years ago,
after a rough breakup with his girl-
friend, Erykah Badu. The goal of “Let
Love,” he says, is to change the culture
of repression and self-neglect in neigh-
borhoods like the South Side of Chi-
cago, where he grew up. “I’d had con-
versations with people from different
generations, the elders. They feel, like,
‘Yo, we don’t talk about that. We don’t
do therapy. We got God,’” he said. “I’m,
like, ‘God works through the thera-
pists, too!’”
He threw back a shot of mustard-
colored liquid. “This is a little thing
called Vitality,” he said. It’s part of his
juice regimen, and it contains lemon,
ginger, honey, yuzu, and echinacea. Hethe street,” she said. “You can’t have a
conversation like that in a gallery.”
They soon reached the end of the
wall. Shehab had run out of space be-
fore she ran out of paint. Now they just
had to add the English translations,
above. “We spray those at the end,” She-
hab said. “And then we run.”
—Nicholas Schmidle