Party Line: 'Israeli military officials have been quoted as saying Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had backed a "limited operation" targeting the "terrorist infrastructure".' -bbcnews.com.
Yes. Of course, the terrorist infrastructure is at least nearly all of the population of Palestine, if not the Arab world. I mean, the people feeding the terrorists, housing the terrorists, voting for the terrorists, cheering on the terrorists, the people giving the terrorists every confidence in the world that they are freedom fighters. And if we're to talk of brainwashing, then the entire population is brainwashed. So, very well, we have a "limited operation" targeting the "terrorist infrastructure" in Gaza--but the Palestinians already knew that. What is limited, Mr. Olmert?
Edit: '"We still hope to return safely our kidnapped soldier," Daniel Ayalon, Israeli ambassador to the United States, told CNN Tuesday night from Washington. Israel will call its operation off if Shalit is released safely, he added.' Yes, that's right, an innocent, I mean, almost unarmed, not-at-the-time-intending-to-engage-in-combat Israeli soldier has been brutally kidnapped by fanatical barbaric scum! How could we not take out a power plant essential to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people? (I always thought we captured soldiers, who were then regularly exchanged with the enemy for one's own prisoners, and it was civilians who were held hostage, usually by criminals for money, but I guess the good old days are over. Ah, the elusive perks of nationhood...)
Famous Last Words (Small Gifts): I went to Egypt without a camera, which I think puzzled some of my friends who saw how zealous I got with one in my hand. I had some fuzzy romantic ideas about writing everything down instead of taking pictures, developing my memory or something. I don't think that worked out, I didn't write much most of the year.
When my parents visited, though, they left the camera with me and I tried to make up for a year's worth of not taking any pictures in a few weeks. I never took my camera to my friend Omar's house, though. I'd remembered from refugee studies class tales of rich boys who went places and did things for the sake of their own sparkling moral resume. For fear of becoming one of those, I never brought my camera to Omar's house or asked for pictures of his friends or apartment.
About a week before I left, though, Omar took a one-week course at AUC on woman-related refugee issues. A couple days into the course, he asked if I could borrow my camera for the last day to take pictures of his friends and teachers there. I gladly obliged and showed him how to work the camera. He snuck out of the room and stole a couple shots of his roommates. Any unplanned picture he took was invariably hilarious to everyone. I was stunned and warmed when I realized I had gotten what I had wanted, and didn't even have to ask.
We sat down for a little dinner, and then started talking about money. I told him how the amount of money I had made me nervous in Egypt; I didn't quite say that I felt guilty as I saw myself spending half a month's rent on a phone bill or dinner and a sheesha. He told me about an American he'd known before me, who sounded a lot like the gregarious and carefree Christian who I'd seen championed at my new communities in San Diego. I didn't know if he was a Christian or not; I'd always assumed he wasn't, but I thought I could see the way he talked, and the way his luxury extended deep into the lives of those he was around. i was touched and regretted not being bolder with my offering.
Omar seemed to think money was for spending, and it was as simple as that. It was odd to have Egypt-raised Sudanese telling the individualist American, "What you do with your money is your business, why should I care?" And to think I'd imagined him jealous. I'd even created a divide in my social world, in what business I could do with Omar and what I'd better do alone. I lived in his neighborhood, and that was where we always hung out. I would have never invited him to the internet cafe with me. Was that my hood?
I think we both felt the warmth of the conversation, and he suggested we go to the ahwa (coffeshop) where I would meet him when I didn't go to his apartment. We sat down for sheesha and tea and found a couple of his roommates there, and the attendent began to give me the enthusiastic foreigner's ribbing he always gave me, every time like it was my first time there. Omar must have still had the camera, because he took it out and started showing his roommates. They began running around, taking pictures of the attendent, themselves, the street, giddy at 4 AM. I was stunned. A remote ecstasy slipped its finger in my pocket and whispered in my ear, this is the way things work.
Reverse Culture Notice: I'd been surprised to here rumblings of the reality of 'reverse culture shock' from some of my friends that had been home for a few weeks. I'd expected that reverse culture shock was another entitling Western invention. Perhaps 'shock' is just a bit to strong of a term, but you certainly notice a thing or two.
My dad was at the airport to pick me up, and when we got to the car, I asked to drive the new car. He was surprised I was in a state to drive but allowed it. As soon as I started backing out I began to chuckle. After taking trains and cabs the whole year, the idea that I was driving a car, for two people, and then parking it was amazingly absurd. I kept pushing away that I was feeling any sort of 'reverse culture' systems only to begin chuckling again.
As I rolled the car over the hills on the way to my house, I noticed the green splashing out of the medians and sidewalks of Pleasanton's wide, manicured roads--it was like Reagan said, how Pleasanton is beautiful. I remembered the brown piles of buildings and people I had inhabited just a day before, and I began wondering how these two places existed on the same planet. I futzed around with a couple Communist thoughts-- you know, about world systems and how my Nikes are destroying the world--but those weren't really enough anymore. Oh, sure, there's money behind every picture in the place, but it couldn't be just that. The extraterrestriality of Cairo wasn't just a matter of class, but style, of culture and religion and expectations. Is that why we call them aliens? Is it that we just don't know how other people live, or what?
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Saturday, June 17, 2006
we all struggle for each breath that we take, or, why i am the talisman of american football
Pretentiousness Alert: Very High, apologies to Biran
Hair Length: The neighbors have threatened to make me start wearing the hijab
World Cup: Although the the US' 3-0 thumping at the hands of the Czech Republic has deflated my world cup enthusiasm*, I should mention a few of the stellar headlines brought to us by this event: 'Training to begin for S&M' and 'The Netherlands prepares for S&M.' Sadly, the proud Montenegrin nation has recently voted for independence from Serbia, and thus, the nation of 'Serbia and Montenegro' will no longer exist, depriving future generations of such blissfully snigger-worthy headlines. If only S&M had a chance to make it to the BBC politics pages...
*: Or am I just lonely? I had been looking forward to and expecting to watch the US-CR game. A friend of mine called me; her parents are visiting and she invited me to join them for the day. She said it'd be from one to sunset, right over the game, and I agreed, just said I might have to leave early, to catch the match at 7. I thought about it for another second, and made sure to add, "To meet with my friend Omar." You know, because what kind of punk doesn't have time for people because of some stupid game. I had my eye on Important Things.
We went to a Nile-side cafe at around 4, and after a while I flipped off my give-a-shit switch and scrapped the game and agreed to go to Al-Azhar Park to watch the sunset over Cairo, which seems to have become the last hurrah of choice for departees. Of course, and my friend had figured the sun to set at precisely 7. I've been there at least half a dozen times in such circumstances, but the pollution that can make the sunset sublime more often buries it. On Saturday, at least, it set.
I began to wonder I went. I'd seen the same thing so many times, after the first, always remembering to point out what stunning patch of green Al-Azhar Park was in Cairo--as it is--to perhaps underappreciating guests. I wonder at myself, after having made such an uncharcteristic commotion about the World Cup, after having actually expressed a desire to do something, do anything. I began to consider that I had abandoned my team at its time of greatest need, in the place where I'd agreed to make among the biggest of sacrifices in my demure center-of-left-of-center-but-we-should-always-be-open-to-new-ideas circles: to give a shit, a sporting shit, for my country, no less. Some waste.
The line of thought--my usual line of thought, that is--runs something like, "Oh, yea heartless, mindless cretins, in thou insouciant hurry to get to the D section of thine newspaper, thou hath forgotten the blood, tears, and sin of the front page! Hath you no perspective? See ye not the Important Things in life? Hath you only balls but not brains? Cojones but not caring?"
After the sun set, we ambled around the park, waiting for the Marine van to come pick us up (one of our friends is a US marine at the embassy). Opportunity allowed, and I turned on my give-a-shitter up, just flickered it, really. We walked by a cafe and I peeked over to the TV to check the score. Two - nothing. Embarassing. I hoped they wouldn't embarass themselves too bad. I felt mildly responsible. Those boys are probably missing my caring, I allowed.
Those silly boys. I've heard people say that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, that the body decays with age, and all that you worked so hard for will age away. Maybe so. But I can't help but think that weight training builds more than muscles and practice more than quickness and skill, that the obsessive determination of the world's greatest football players is no less beautiful and fraught than that of the world's greatest artists. If anything, it seems that vaunted mind that some put so much stock in just saddles with arrogance for life, instead of just youth. As for heart? Sadness and joy should come just as well from football than the results of some social justice project.
In a godless world, I cannot see the difference between a singular obsession with social justice or football. It's overcoming naysayers and telling the man to shove it, toughness and resilience and singular determination, buidling a team, deep sadness, and radiant joy. And if one man rises and falls with the fortunes of his team, and another with that of his politics, I should say that the first man is simply a bit more to the point. When it seems giving a shit for anything is so costly, I should say both have taken an admirable first step.
The marine van took us to my apartment, where my friend had been stashing her stuff while she and her parents toured Upper Egypt. We got the bags and rushed back to the van because I didn't want to keep the Marine's newish-looking Ford 15-seater waiting on my narrow, easily-piqued, 1970 Fiat street. Her father put her bags in the car, and perhaps my impending doom slipped her mind, because she held the door open expecting me to get in. But that was my stop, it was the end of the night, the end of the journey.
My goodbye's never go as I want them to, awkward and what-the-fuck?ish, and this one was no exception, quick hugs and handshakes and mutterings about safe travels. I pulled out and quickly slammed the door to let an impatient cab past, and like that it was over. The last of my travel buddies had left.
A bit dejected and unsure of what to do with myself, I rushed to check the score. Three - zero. An utter embarassment. More embarassing than playing football with udders. Udders with little cleats on them. I felt justified that I hadn't wasted time or face watching the match, but I went to bed utterly sad, unsure if it was the players on the field or the playa inside of me I was dissapointed with. The next day, it got worse, as I didn't want to watch the World Cup and my friend flew out. I grabbed the yoke from the pilot, ready to crash the whole mess into the sea. At the last minute, I allowed that I might have been truly, acutely, [heroically?!], lonely.
After a few days I was able to watch again, and, with my return count in single digits, I set out again to give a shit. For tonight, I planned for myself to watch the USA-Italy match at a snooty cafe next to the student dorms on Zamalek, because in that hopelessly hopeful human way, I thought we could win. And besides, I had learned my lesson last time.
I spent most of the day at AUC, where it was World Refugee Day. Mostly, I avoided the festivities. One step at a time.
I went to another cafe (Fortress America travels with your dollars) where I called my sister and wrote a long, crumbly entry in my journal, the first in awhile. I dropped by the campus to visit Omar and his mother, who was selling East African food (think Ethiopian). We chatted for an hour or so, and I scarfed down his mother's food, but when he asked if I was going to go, I didn't hesitate. I was going to watch the match. I didn't tell him, but my team needed me.
We were supposed to get throttled, Italy being such a strong footballing nation, and the US putting in such a fantastically anemic performance against the Czechs. It had been a long time since I cared so much about any sports match, a good while I'd been so tense about anything really, but the US came out with guns blazing (as we are wont to do), and it looked as if we might stand a chance against the Italians. They scored first, and I was ready to flip the switch off and go home, but we scored four minutes later. The match went back and forth, and to make a long story short, we finished the game playing nine against ten and tied anyway against one of the best teams in the world.
It was terrible, I don't know why people do that, I mean, sit through ninety minutes of gut-wrenching meaninglessness, well meaningless in so far as there is no one with a gun to their head saying, "Watch the match or die." But I mean, I was nervous, I was angry, I was dissapointed, incredulous. All these things that happen when you care, all of a sudden, all these things in the match that I had skipped for a drink and a sandwich for my apartment were huge, mid-field free throws and goal kicks and unremarkable touches. All these people, they just choose to care, to get up for it, to get down, to imitate the very first and maybe the only step of love.
For all its supposed meaninglessness and jockery, I walked out of the cafe a little stirred, a little angry, a little proud, and happy. I passed walked passed a man sleeping on a bridge on the way home, and then a dirty, shoeless kid, with these invariable eyes. No, Team Social Justice still has a match on its hands. But the lovers and heroes on the US soccer team had been so obsessed with a result, so obsessed all their lives, with their meaningless little game, that any fan who should chose to flick the switch could trace the face of love on the pitch with his own heart and mind.
So I felt a little proud, a little vindicated, a little angry? Oh, Solomon, everything is meaningless. What a great, good God.
Hair Length: The neighbors have threatened to make me start wearing the hijab
World Cup: Although the the US' 3-0 thumping at the hands of the Czech Republic has deflated my world cup enthusiasm*, I should mention a few of the stellar headlines brought to us by this event: 'Training to begin for S&M' and 'The Netherlands prepares for S&M.' Sadly, the proud Montenegrin nation has recently voted for independence from Serbia, and thus, the nation of 'Serbia and Montenegro' will no longer exist, depriving future generations of such blissfully snigger-worthy headlines. If only S&M had a chance to make it to the BBC politics pages...
*: Or am I just lonely? I had been looking forward to and expecting to watch the US-CR game. A friend of mine called me; her parents are visiting and she invited me to join them for the day. She said it'd be from one to sunset, right over the game, and I agreed, just said I might have to leave early, to catch the match at 7. I thought about it for another second, and made sure to add, "To meet with my friend Omar." You know, because what kind of punk doesn't have time for people because of some stupid game. I had my eye on Important Things.
We went to a Nile-side cafe at around 4, and after a while I flipped off my give-a-shit switch and scrapped the game and agreed to go to Al-Azhar Park to watch the sunset over Cairo, which seems to have become the last hurrah of choice for departees. Of course, and my friend had figured the sun to set at precisely 7. I've been there at least half a dozen times in such circumstances, but the pollution that can make the sunset sublime more often buries it. On Saturday, at least, it set.
I began to wonder I went. I'd seen the same thing so many times, after the first, always remembering to point out what stunning patch of green Al-Azhar Park was in Cairo--as it is--to perhaps underappreciating guests. I wonder at myself, after having made such an uncharcteristic commotion about the World Cup, after having actually expressed a desire to do something, do anything. I began to consider that I had abandoned my team at its time of greatest need, in the place where I'd agreed to make among the biggest of sacrifices in my demure center-of-left-of-center-but-we-should-always-be-open-to-new-ideas circles: to give a shit, a sporting shit, for my country, no less. Some waste.
The line of thought--my usual line of thought, that is--runs something like, "Oh, yea heartless, mindless cretins, in thou insouciant hurry to get to the D section of thine newspaper, thou hath forgotten the blood, tears, and sin of the front page! Hath you no perspective? See ye not the Important Things in life? Hath you only balls but not brains? Cojones but not caring?"
After the sun set, we ambled around the park, waiting for the Marine van to come pick us up (one of our friends is a US marine at the embassy). Opportunity allowed, and I turned on my give-a-shitter up, just flickered it, really. We walked by a cafe and I peeked over to the TV to check the score. Two - nothing. Embarassing. I hoped they wouldn't embarass themselves too bad. I felt mildly responsible. Those boys are probably missing my caring, I allowed.
Those silly boys. I've heard people say that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, that the body decays with age, and all that you worked so hard for will age away. Maybe so. But I can't help but think that weight training builds more than muscles and practice more than quickness and skill, that the obsessive determination of the world's greatest football players is no less beautiful and fraught than that of the world's greatest artists. If anything, it seems that vaunted mind that some put so much stock in just saddles with arrogance for life, instead of just youth. As for heart? Sadness and joy should come just as well from football than the results of some social justice project.
In a godless world, I cannot see the difference between a singular obsession with social justice or football. It's overcoming naysayers and telling the man to shove it, toughness and resilience and singular determination, buidling a team, deep sadness, and radiant joy. And if one man rises and falls with the fortunes of his team, and another with that of his politics, I should say that the first man is simply a bit more to the point. When it seems giving a shit for anything is so costly, I should say both have taken an admirable first step.
The marine van took us to my apartment, where my friend had been stashing her stuff while she and her parents toured Upper Egypt. We got the bags and rushed back to the van because I didn't want to keep the Marine's newish-looking Ford 15-seater waiting on my narrow, easily-piqued, 1970 Fiat street. Her father put her bags in the car, and perhaps my impending doom slipped her mind, because she held the door open expecting me to get in. But that was my stop, it was the end of the night, the end of the journey.
My goodbye's never go as I want them to, awkward and what-the-fuck?ish, and this one was no exception, quick hugs and handshakes and mutterings about safe travels. I pulled out and quickly slammed the door to let an impatient cab past, and like that it was over. The last of my travel buddies had left.
A bit dejected and unsure of what to do with myself, I rushed to check the score. Three - zero. An utter embarassment. More embarassing than playing football with udders. Udders with little cleats on them. I felt justified that I hadn't wasted time or face watching the match, but I went to bed utterly sad, unsure if it was the players on the field or the playa inside of me I was dissapointed with. The next day, it got worse, as I didn't want to watch the World Cup and my friend flew out. I grabbed the yoke from the pilot, ready to crash the whole mess into the sea. At the last minute, I allowed that I might have been truly, acutely, [heroically?!], lonely.
After a few days I was able to watch again, and, with my return count in single digits, I set out again to give a shit. For tonight, I planned for myself to watch the USA-Italy match at a snooty cafe next to the student dorms on Zamalek, because in that hopelessly hopeful human way, I thought we could win. And besides, I had learned my lesson last time.
I spent most of the day at AUC, where it was World Refugee Day. Mostly, I avoided the festivities. One step at a time.
I went to another cafe (Fortress America travels with your dollars) where I called my sister and wrote a long, crumbly entry in my journal, the first in awhile. I dropped by the campus to visit Omar and his mother, who was selling East African food (think Ethiopian). We chatted for an hour or so, and I scarfed down his mother's food, but when he asked if I was going to go, I didn't hesitate. I was going to watch the match. I didn't tell him, but my team needed me.
We were supposed to get throttled, Italy being such a strong footballing nation, and the US putting in such a fantastically anemic performance against the Czechs. It had been a long time since I cared so much about any sports match, a good while I'd been so tense about anything really, but the US came out with guns blazing (as we are wont to do), and it looked as if we might stand a chance against the Italians. They scored first, and I was ready to flip the switch off and go home, but we scored four minutes later. The match went back and forth, and to make a long story short, we finished the game playing nine against ten and tied anyway against one of the best teams in the world.
It was terrible, I don't know why people do that, I mean, sit through ninety minutes of gut-wrenching meaninglessness, well meaningless in so far as there is no one with a gun to their head saying, "Watch the match or die." But I mean, I was nervous, I was angry, I was dissapointed, incredulous. All these things that happen when you care, all of a sudden, all these things in the match that I had skipped for a drink and a sandwich for my apartment were huge, mid-field free throws and goal kicks and unremarkable touches. All these people, they just choose to care, to get up for it, to get down, to imitate the very first and maybe the only step of love.
For all its supposed meaninglessness and jockery, I walked out of the cafe a little stirred, a little angry, a little proud, and happy. I passed walked passed a man sleeping on a bridge on the way home, and then a dirty, shoeless kid, with these invariable eyes. No, Team Social Justice still has a match on its hands. But the lovers and heroes on the US soccer team had been so obsessed with a result, so obsessed all their lives, with their meaningless little game, that any fan who should chose to flick the switch could trace the face of love on the pitch with his own heart and mind.
So I felt a little proud, a little vindicated, a little angry? Oh, Solomon, everything is meaningless. What a great, good God.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
if i was crying, it was for freedom, from myself and from the land
[whoa, that was a close one, I nearly couldn't think of any cryptic song lyrics for the subject line; this is mostly from about a week and a half ago]
How the times change. I used to think I was good at persuasion, like, the debate kind of persuasion. I was built and trained, I thought, for evangelism and conversion, knit of Cartesian wool. I saw philosophy, apology, and accumulated knowledge as essential tools in the arsenal of the Christian soldier. I had solid answers for 'the nuts and bolts' questions, the tract questions, what does a Christian believe and how does he act in this situation or that etc, and for the big questions, poetry. Politics too, you know, I had great answers, facts and poetry style, especially after I figured out that my religion and my politics could be separate. That became the whole issue, really for both, separating my politics from my religion and presenting the results to either side. See? Easy...
I was talking with a friend tonight though, and I felt the words I was so good with... I felt like a kid with broken crayons who couldn't color inside the lines to save his life. We were talking about politics first, he brought it up, not me. There's these Bahais here in Egypt and they want to put "Bahai" under the religion section of their birth certificates and the religious powers that be haven't taken well to the suggestion. They say that there are only three religions and that Bahai is merely an 'adjective'. I don't suppose they have a 'blasphemer' stamp over at the Department of Health either.
We started talking about politics and religion, because there's none of the separation business here and I was having the hardest time ..>..>listening. I felt like, I can't really be bothered, because that itself is a new political disposition I've taken to, just let him talk, take it out on a Westerner, so that he knows we're listening. But, I mean, that's just the thing, I still felt the weight of responsibility, like I was an emissary from some dignified 'Western' collective. Instead of this pressure to share the gospel of Jesus, I felt this pressure to stand up for human rights and world peace etc. You know, to be respectful and listen, but then remind him of what he was really saying.
I asked him if he thought that the government should be responsive to religious law and he said yes, if the government were to implement the rules of Islam things would be much better. I asked him if he thought the Taliban was a model of an effective government and he said yes it was. I asked him to ask his friend, and his friend agreed. That was a good government. Successful? I asked. Yes.
I remember last time we talked, we were watching Al-Jazeera and he asked me if I had seen the new Al Zarqawi video and I said no I hadn't but I'd read something about it on the BBC. We got into it and I asked him what he felt about Zarqawi. He said, you know, when there's a bully at school, and someone stands up to the bully and punks him, you feel like, yeah! we got 'em. You put a vindictive sneer on your face and tell him to suck it and tell you how it feels.
I remember that time, I launched into a canned rehashing of Zarqawi's various inconsistencies and atrocities and then suddenly becoming very disenchanted with it. I rambled on for about five minutes but began tying knots with my sentences so that in the end I said nothing. It was a vague, beggy acquienscence, even, an admission of defeat: yes, I agree, the US is oppressive. At the same time, it was like... let's not talk about it.
I thought after that that I would give no more canned answers and the ..>..>next time he told me how he felt I'd just try to be all tabula rasa-like and see what I could let him write on me. In the end, I was sure we'd reach some Zen agreement on the unity of us all. But when he began telling me about the Taliban, I felt that pressure again, like we should fight: "tell him Alex ... tell him The Truth!" Incidentally, "Saved" had been on TV, and the conversation paused as I wanted to see the end, before we walked over to a coffeeshop.
When we resumed I marched right back up to the Taliban questions. I tried to ask listening questions, you know, questions where I wouldn't go all white-mans-burden and be tempted to burnish my knowledge on the subtleties on judeo-christian political philosophy. Thing was though, there wasn't any question I could ask that wasn't some version of "isn't it absolutely correct that church and state should be separate and that individuals should practice their religion individually and that you are wrong?"
On the way to the coffeeshop, when I was still probing about the Taliban, he had instructed me that if I had religious questions, he couldn't answer them all, I should ask a sheikh. I was going to sass him and say, "Well why shouldn't you tell me, its not like the sheikh knows everything. Everyone has a different interpretation anyway." The thing was, my ideological resistance to the Taliban was about as gutteral as his support of it. I am sure there are many denunciations of the Taliban, but I wasn't feeling any of them. I mean, the Taliban is supposed to be a slam dunk for a liberal democrat. But I got to thinking that that's just the thing: for a liberal democrat. All my learning has tired in my brain and gone to my gut. And then I was disinterested and my critiques were Jello: colorful and substanceless.
Eventually, we came to straight religion. Sometimes we do that, quiz each other on this or that on Islam or Christianity. So when it came to questions and answers about my religion, I found ..>..>that I might have said the same thing he did: well you should talk to my sheikh. All my answers were these old things, these answers I used out of a sense of responsibility to not misrepresent all the teachers who have put some much care and effort at getting the details straight, at infusing me with a solid theology and philosophy.
Those answers were also Jello. He asked me what Jesus was, man or God or what, which is a popular question in these parts. I think its the stumper Muslim apologists smack their lips over: see? Absurd! The pagan crazies...
Christian theologians may smack back, thinking in triumphant righteousness, yes! absurd! and launch into a soliloquy on divine mystery, on the poetry of creation. I tried that tonight. He asked about Jesus and I said something about the trinity. I said Christianity was about mystery, and I rehashed a few bombass mystical thoughts I'd had in days passed. A few years ago I would have been trying to convert him, but in the run of conversation, I was just trying to explain. And I couldn't. Like I couldn't refute the Taliban or Al Zarqawi. It was like the zenith (or nadir) of academic disinterest. I was so objective I couldn't say anything, didn't care about anything I was saying.
At the same time, I knew, I know, that Christian mystery is what makes me cream my proverbial jeans in class and in song, that every amazing thought I have goes through John's invocation; it makes my heart beat fast when I read and write, when I sing in the car and on the street. But it seemed so very far away tonight. They were all old things I had said and had felt sure of before, and desparate for some kind of validity, some sort of solid ground, I used them again. Talking to my friend, I felt a total inability to connect, to say anything that mattered to him. I wondered if a Christian philosopher and a Muslim philosopher could ever make sense to each other. (But then, did they send the Muslim to Oxford anyway?)
I kind of wished I had kept my evangelist's tools sharp and ready, to give precise, nuanced, correct, answers. Have I been in to much school for my own good? I honestly wonder if it would have done any good to ..>..>try to give him some sense of the benefit of international human rights regimes and what not. I had these roomates for about a month who were pros at crafting Christians concepts for Muslims. As far I could tell it worked. You know, they would ask like, stuff about apostasy or Jesus to them, and they knew some Quran, and they knew that the key word was "where's the proof?" Like where does it say this or that in the Quran, and then it turns out that what it says is problematic, and then refocus the conversation on this logically complete Calvinism that drives me crazy when I think about it too much. I can't stand all the work this entails. Anyway, there are too many things to get 'wrong': Oh, shit, Ahmed is going to hell because I don't know how to make a proper logical equation. Hell, I'm going to hell because I don't know how to make a proper equation. To be clear, I enjoy a proper equation as much as the next guy.
My friend is not a fundamentalist Muslim. He hasn't a big bushy beard. He's a refugee, and he's relatively well-connected at AUC; he's had quite a few connections with Westerners. I've given him a few of my readers and he reads them. He's translated for journalists and NGOs; he puts up with shit at UNHCR and CARITAS. He speaks good English; he likes Steven Segal and takes care of his mother. He probably reads and watches more news than I do. He even told me he would marry a non-Muslim if he liked her. I suppose I would expect that I have a lot to say to him, a lot about Jesus and U-N-topia and how we'll all get a long in the next world, but I can't. I've no good words.
I wonder if when Jesus said, "hate your family, hate your mother and father," he wasn't talking about the way we speak. I wonder if he wasn't saying, forgo the world in which you are intelligible, forgo your mother tongue and your fatherland and take up the impossible task of preaching in another language. Forgo your family of friends where you are a hero, where you are understood, and where you make your value. Because going to New Places will mean silence for your family, untranslatable gaps, unimaginable darkness between your world and those of your loved ones. And when its all over, you might not quite look like the son they raised. At least, if you really intend for that place to be new, because otherwise, you'll just be like those ridiculous five-star hotels, a little bit of America in the middle of Cairo or Kinshasa or whatever corner you've found yourself in. I've kicked stones over those edges, but I've not heard them hit the bottom. I eye it nervously and it eyes me back.
I suppose I could be feeling the same kind of understanding gap at home, and I do remember going on a trip to Mexico with a bunch of non-college students and feeling very nervous and lost. Many of them were recovered drug addicts and I felt like neither of us had anything to say to each other. (They did not feel the same way, and I found many of them rather overeager). I think the difference is a matter of proximity. That experience was five days away from being digested in a familiar circle of friends and family, by friends who could easily recall or imagine what I was saying. I guess really its not so much a leap over the edge of an abyss but a steady walk away from what you know, which is why it take so much time, and so much distance, and why it seems so absurd at times, even most of the times: Home is that way [points in opposite direction]. And then you just keep going, for no good reason.
Alright, that's all I have or now... persnaps a conclusion will come to me later. Peace.
How the times change. I used to think I was good at persuasion, like, the debate kind of persuasion. I was built and trained, I thought, for evangelism and conversion, knit of Cartesian wool. I saw philosophy, apology, and accumulated knowledge as essential tools in the arsenal of the Christian soldier. I had solid answers for 'the nuts and bolts' questions, the tract questions, what does a Christian believe and how does he act in this situation or that etc, and for the big questions, poetry. Politics too, you know, I had great answers, facts and poetry style, especially after I figured out that my religion and my politics could be separate. That became the whole issue, really for both, separating my politics from my religion and presenting the results to either side. See? Easy...
I was talking with a friend tonight though, and I felt the words I was so good with... I felt like a kid with broken crayons who couldn't color inside the lines to save his life. We were talking about politics first, he brought it up, not me. There's these Bahais here in Egypt and they want to put "Bahai" under the religion section of their birth certificates and the religious powers that be haven't taken well to the suggestion. They say that there are only three religions and that Bahai is merely an 'adjective'. I don't suppose they have a 'blasphemer' stamp over at the Department of Health either.
We started talking about politics and religion, because there's none of the separation business here and I was having the hardest time ..>..>listening. I felt like, I can't really be bothered, because that itself is a new political disposition I've taken to, just let him talk, take it out on a Westerner, so that he knows we're listening. But, I mean, that's just the thing, I still felt the weight of responsibility, like I was an emissary from some dignified 'Western' collective. Instead of this pressure to share the gospel of Jesus, I felt this pressure to stand up for human rights and world peace etc. You know, to be respectful and listen, but then remind him of what he was really saying.
I asked him if he thought that the government should be responsive to religious law and he said yes, if the government were to implement the rules of Islam things would be much better. I asked him if he thought the Taliban was a model of an effective government and he said yes it was. I asked him to ask his friend, and his friend agreed. That was a good government. Successful? I asked. Yes.
I remember last time we talked, we were watching Al-Jazeera and he asked me if I had seen the new Al Zarqawi video and I said no I hadn't but I'd read something about it on the BBC. We got into it and I asked him what he felt about Zarqawi. He said, you know, when there's a bully at school, and someone stands up to the bully and punks him, you feel like, yeah! we got 'em. You put a vindictive sneer on your face and tell him to suck it and tell you how it feels.
I remember that time, I launched into a canned rehashing of Zarqawi's various inconsistencies and atrocities and then suddenly becoming very disenchanted with it. I rambled on for about five minutes but began tying knots with my sentences so that in the end I said nothing. It was a vague, beggy acquienscence, even, an admission of defeat: yes, I agree, the US is oppressive. At the same time, it was like... let's not talk about it.
I thought after that that I would give no more canned answers and the ..>..>next time he told me how he felt I'd just try to be all tabula rasa-like and see what I could let him write on me. In the end, I was sure we'd reach some Zen agreement on the unity of us all. But when he began telling me about the Taliban, I felt that pressure again, like we should fight: "tell him Alex ... tell him The Truth!" Incidentally, "Saved" had been on TV, and the conversation paused as I wanted to see the end, before we walked over to a coffeeshop.
When we resumed I marched right back up to the Taliban questions. I tried to ask listening questions, you know, questions where I wouldn't go all white-mans-burden and be tempted to burnish my knowledge on the subtleties on judeo-christian political philosophy. Thing was though, there wasn't any question I could ask that wasn't some version of "isn't it absolutely correct that church and state should be separate and that individuals should practice their religion individually and that you are wrong?"
On the way to the coffeeshop, when I was still probing about the Taliban, he had instructed me that if I had religious questions, he couldn't answer them all, I should ask a sheikh. I was going to sass him and say, "Well why shouldn't you tell me, its not like the sheikh knows everything. Everyone has a different interpretation anyway." The thing was, my ideological resistance to the Taliban was about as gutteral as his support of it. I am sure there are many denunciations of the Taliban, but I wasn't feeling any of them. I mean, the Taliban is supposed to be a slam dunk for a liberal democrat. But I got to thinking that that's just the thing: for a liberal democrat. All my learning has tired in my brain and gone to my gut. And then I was disinterested and my critiques were Jello: colorful and substanceless.
Eventually, we came to straight religion. Sometimes we do that, quiz each other on this or that on Islam or Christianity. So when it came to questions and answers about my religion, I found ..>..>that I might have said the same thing he did: well you should talk to my sheikh. All my answers were these old things, these answers I used out of a sense of responsibility to not misrepresent all the teachers who have put some much care and effort at getting the details straight, at infusing me with a solid theology and philosophy.
Those answers were also Jello. He asked me what Jesus was, man or God or what, which is a popular question in these parts. I think its the stumper Muslim apologists smack their lips over: see? Absurd! The pagan crazies...
Christian theologians may smack back, thinking in triumphant righteousness, yes! absurd! and launch into a soliloquy on divine mystery, on the poetry of creation. I tried that tonight. He asked about Jesus and I said something about the trinity. I said Christianity was about mystery, and I rehashed a few bombass mystical thoughts I'd had in days passed. A few years ago I would have been trying to convert him, but in the run of conversation, I was just trying to explain. And I couldn't. Like I couldn't refute the Taliban or Al Zarqawi. It was like the zenith (or nadir) of academic disinterest. I was so objective I couldn't say anything, didn't care about anything I was saying.
At the same time, I knew, I know, that Christian mystery is what makes me cream my proverbial jeans in class and in song, that every amazing thought I have goes through John's invocation; it makes my heart beat fast when I read and write, when I sing in the car and on the street. But it seemed so very far away tonight. They were all old things I had said and had felt sure of before, and desparate for some kind of validity, some sort of solid ground, I used them again. Talking to my friend, I felt a total inability to connect, to say anything that mattered to him. I wondered if a Christian philosopher and a Muslim philosopher could ever make sense to each other. (But then, did they send the Muslim to Oxford anyway?)
I kind of wished I had kept my evangelist's tools sharp and ready, to give precise, nuanced, correct, answers. Have I been in to much school for my own good? I honestly wonder if it would have done any good to ..>..>try to give him some sense of the benefit of international human rights regimes and what not. I had these roomates for about a month who were pros at crafting Christians concepts for Muslims. As far I could tell it worked. You know, they would ask like, stuff about apostasy or Jesus to them, and they knew some Quran, and they knew that the key word was "where's the proof?" Like where does it say this or that in the Quran, and then it turns out that what it says is problematic, and then refocus the conversation on this logically complete Calvinism that drives me crazy when I think about it too much. I can't stand all the work this entails. Anyway, there are too many things to get 'wrong': Oh, shit, Ahmed is going to hell because I don't know how to make a proper logical equation. Hell, I'm going to hell because I don't know how to make a proper equation. To be clear, I enjoy a proper equation as much as the next guy.
My friend is not a fundamentalist Muslim. He hasn't a big bushy beard. He's a refugee, and he's relatively well-connected at AUC; he's had quite a few connections with Westerners. I've given him a few of my readers and he reads them. He's translated for journalists and NGOs; he puts up with shit at UNHCR and CARITAS. He speaks good English; he likes Steven Segal and takes care of his mother. He probably reads and watches more news than I do. He even told me he would marry a non-Muslim if he liked her. I suppose I would expect that I have a lot to say to him, a lot about Jesus and U-N-topia and how we'll all get a long in the next world, but I can't. I've no good words.
I wonder if when Jesus said, "hate your family, hate your mother and father," he wasn't talking about the way we speak. I wonder if he wasn't saying, forgo the world in which you are intelligible, forgo your mother tongue and your fatherland and take up the impossible task of preaching in another language. Forgo your family of friends where you are a hero, where you are understood, and where you make your value. Because going to New Places will mean silence for your family, untranslatable gaps, unimaginable darkness between your world and those of your loved ones. And when its all over, you might not quite look like the son they raised. At least, if you really intend for that place to be new, because otherwise, you'll just be like those ridiculous five-star hotels, a little bit of America in the middle of Cairo or Kinshasa or whatever corner you've found yourself in. I've kicked stones over those edges, but I've not heard them hit the bottom. I eye it nervously and it eyes me back.
I suppose I could be feeling the same kind of understanding gap at home, and I do remember going on a trip to Mexico with a bunch of non-college students and feeling very nervous and lost. Many of them were recovered drug addicts and I felt like neither of us had anything to say to each other. (They did not feel the same way, and I found many of them rather overeager). I think the difference is a matter of proximity. That experience was five days away from being digested in a familiar circle of friends and family, by friends who could easily recall or imagine what I was saying. I guess really its not so much a leap over the edge of an abyss but a steady walk away from what you know, which is why it take so much time, and so much distance, and why it seems so absurd at times, even most of the times: Home is that way [points in opposite direction]. And then you just keep going, for no good reason.
Alright, that's all I have or now... persnaps a conclusion will come to me later. Peace.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)