Grace writes: I am an American living in Iceland. Here, many men purchase snuff tobacco, called neftobak, wrap it in toilet paper and stuff it in their upper lip. When done, my fiancé removes it and leaves what looks like an owl poop on the bedside table, free for my son to pick up. I ask you to order him to stop putting nose tobacco in his mouth.
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Tobacco is a carcinogen no matter which hole in your head you put it in, so I order him to dispose of his owl turds safely. But I can’t order a grown-up to forgo his national traditions of self-harm; I can only warn him that it is imperiling his marriage. You chose to wander amid a certain cultural strangeness when you self-deported; to borrow an own-bed-making metaphor, you wrapped your neftobak in your own toilet paper, and now it is time for you to chew on it.
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