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.