An (Islamic) Affair to Remember

France: First let me express my immense disappointment in you. I, as probably the rest of the educated masses, thought you were a progressive, intelligent, tolerant country. After all, America and her Constitution were designed with your help. We would have lost the Revolution had you not showed up in the eleventh hour. But your recent decision to make it illegal for women of the Islamic faith to wear the veil in public, is hardly forward-thinking at all. In fact, you have just taken your country a huge step backward. Shocking, because I never would have expected this from a country that was once the hot spot for so many philosophers ahead of their own time.

In any case, one tiny positive thing came out of this horrible decision of yours. I was reminded of a friend I had once…eleven years ago, before being a Muslim automatically meant you were an “evil doer” and before I had ever heard of the term “The Great Infidel”.

Her name was Amna. We worked together as counselors in a residential facility for abused and neglected children. I remember when she joined our staff. She was tiny. Whenever a tiny woman joined our group, (such as myself) we all took bets on how long she would last. These kids were big and most of them were angry. And they had every right to be. Amna surprised us. She was strong…physically and mentally. She didn’t take any back talk, either. But there was one thing she was better at than the rest of us. Amna had a way of being eerily calm in the face of danger. She could talk anyone down off a cliff. We all agreed: Amna could stay.

Our friendship began in the break room. Amna was extremely outgoing and could not tolerate silence from a person sitting across the table from her. She wanted to know everything about me and in return she told me everything about herself. She answered every awkward question I had for her like we had known each other for years instead of just a few months. I wanted to know where she was from. Amna laughed and said “America, of course.” Her parents moved here from Pakistan before she was born. One day, I got up the nerve to ask her why, if she considered herself “American”, she still wore the veil covering her hair. She surprised the hell out of me when she rose from her seat in the break room and locked the door. Since there were no men present, she took off her veil and revealed long, thick black hair that fell to her hips. I asked her why on earth she would want to cover up something as beautiful as that. Amna was physically beautiful to begin with, but she turned into a Middle Eastern supermodel in front of me in that room when she revealed her hair. She tidied up her hair into her veil again, and told me that it was her own decision to wear it. Both her older sisters and mother had long given up the veil. Amna believed in showing her faith to the outside world. She said it served as a reminder to herself for what she believed in.

I envied her. What did I have to show for myself and my beliefs? Nothing, except too many books collecting dust on shelves and a “Save Tibet” bumper sticker. There was nothing about me that showed everyone I was a Buddhist or an Activist. I did have my ACLU card, but short of taping that to my forehead, I looked just like everyone else. Amna was special. She was brave in her decision to stand apart from everyone else. It is safer to hide and blend in with the masses. Just admit it, you do it too.

Amna was set to get married within the next year. Her fiancée lived in Australia. No, her parents did not pick him out of a line up for her. She chose him herself, even though they had never met. Amna didn’t buy into the idea of marrying just for love. There was so much more to making a marriage work besides just love. She was looking at the bigger picture. He was a doctor, she was working on her Masters degree in Social Work. They were compatible. I asked her if her fiancée had any idea how opinionated and tough she was. We all joked that this poor guy had no idea what he was getting himself into by asking her to marry him.

Amna was going to make a stop in Pakistan, to visit extended family before meeting up with her fiancée in Australia, where they would live permanently. We kept in touch while she was gone through letters and phone calls. She was staying with an uncle of hers on 9/11. In the days following that disaster, I walked around in a haze, as did most of the world. After a week or so, Amna’s face leapt into my mind out of nowhere. I made several unsuccessful phone calls to her uncle’s home trying to reach her. The line always seemed to fail. No one would answer. Finally, one day, there was a voice on the other end of the phone. I asked for her. To my relief, she was there. But it wasn’t the calm, brave voice I was so used to from all of our conversations. She was afraid. It was too obvious. She didn’t know if she was ever going to make it to Australia, now. She painted a picture of chaos. Everyone was now suspicious of any person who “looked” Muslim…making travel almost impossible. At the time I phoned her, she had been sowing her and her mother’s jewelry into her clothes. I couldn’t believe Amna had been reduced to this….a stereotype. All I could tell her was to be careful and that everything was going to be fine. She told me that in a few days, she was going to try once again to leave the country. That was the last time I heard from her. No more letters. No more phone calls.

In Arabic, Amna means “safety”.  I’ve spent many years with her name in the back of my mind….hoping that it lives up to its meaning for her sake.

President Sarkozy, you have reduced  brave, intelligent, steadfast Islamic women, secure and happy in their beliefs, into a stereotype. No one could talk Amna out of giving up her veil. In my opinion, small and insignificant as it is, you are a disgrace to the idea of democracy and everything your country once stood for.

A Hic-Up

The sitter bailed on me this week. No therapy last Tuesday. And I had a lot of questions, too. Ones that I will probably not remember for next Tuesday. My short term memory is shit these days. But I could tell you my first grade teacher’s name…I think.

Questions like: why, since I’ve been home, do I feel like someone has died? Was it me…that someone? And…how come the meds just seem to be taking the edge off of things and that’s it? Have I been off and on them so long that they don’t work the way they should anymore?

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I forgot to mention that in our spare time in therapy together, Jane and I like to make fun of Americans who are afraid of  the DREADED Socialism. What morons. The two of us have been all over the world and it seems to be working just fine. Yes. When we’re done talking about me, we make fun of others. And I pay for it….literally.

Here’s another writing assignment: The Break Up…from the girlfriend’s point of view. I have to write a second one (250 words or less) from the stupid boyfriend’s pov, too. Haven’t gotten around to that one yet. So have it:

The door was unlocked. She closed her eyes. He was there. Shutting the door behind her, she took a whiff. Shit. He was making dinner. Terrible timing. She slipped out of her heels; gliding toward the kitchen.

 

Maybe not tonight. 

 

She saw the back of him as she stood in the kitchen doorway; chopping methodically, measuring exactly, humming to himself.

 

No, definitely tonight, she decided. She cleared her throat. She didn’t want to startle him. No need for him to lose a finger. 

 

She felt his smile. How proud he was proving himself. She was beside him now.

 

“Were we seeing each other tonight?” She saw herself in the blade of the knife as he chopped away…a veil of frustration covering her face. All he had to do was look.

 

“Just a little surprise.”

 

She realized the room: lit candles on the table. In the cupboard his coffee mug, his vitamins. The walls were up against her.

 

Chop, clink, scrape.

She snatched the blade from his hands.

 

“Stop.” She pointed it at his chest. 

“Stop all of this!” And her arms waved all around her-knife still in hand. He backed away.

 

She blew out the candles; pointed the knife back at his chest.

 

“The key.”

Silence.

“The key to the apartment. Now.”   

 

He threw it across the room and she caught it, waving the knife in the direction of the door. It slammed shut behind him and the walls pulled themselves outward to make space for her again.

Elections, Fog, Passive Aggressive Swiss Confrontation, & A Thousand Splendid Suns

So….here we are…another election kaput. Only this time it looks like half the country elected a guy who actually gives a crap about the rest of us. At the risk of sounding completely cliche…I have to say it: I never thought I’d see a black man elected in my lifetime. I’m feeling oddly emotional about the whole thing and jealous that I’m not at home celebrating in the streets with the half of the country that still has some sense left in them. I was beginning to doubt that there was anyone left in the nation with half a gnat’s worth of logic to do the right thing. I love being proved wrong. And I love love love seeing Palin pack up and get the hell out of dodge. Please, someone get her a library card so she can have access to the volumes of research done proving that dinosaurs did actually once roam the planet.

In case you were wondering, this is what Zurich looks like in November…all of November, so we’ve been told:

<a href=”http://s288.photobucket.com/albums/ll186/amlongstreet/?action=view&current=fog001.jpg” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll186/amlongstreet/fog001.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”Photobucket”></a>

Latest developments with the neighbors are verging on hostile…but keep in mind, we are in Switzerland. Hostile usually means nasty looks, tongue clicking, and letter writing to the management…lots and lots of letter writing. Or, in our case, as happaned last night: knocking on the walls. Seems as though, the more than middle aged couple next door doesn’t like the sound of Sean teething at 3am. Guess what? Neither do I. As if it wasn’t noisy enough in #55 last night, the folks next door start rapping on the walls. And why? Would they have liked it if I stuffed a sock in his mouth? By the way, #56, thanks for waking up the three year old.  I wonder what will happen tonight. Most likely it will go something like this: Sean screaming his head off, rapping on the walls, Cate getting up a thousand times to pee, and my disheveled, bleary eyed self kicking some swiss granny ass.

In book news: just finished A Thousand Spendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini…the same guy who wrote The Kite Runner (which I have not read).  I give it 5 out of 5 stars. In brief, it’s all about the plight of the Afghan woman. How they keep getting so close to having basic human rights and then it all goes to hell with the help of either the Soviets, the fighting warlords, the Taliban or the U.S. It also has a boat load of historical and political facts about the country and some horrendously grim, but I suppose all too real, descriptions of the casualties of war. Read it, then go to www.UNrefugees.org and do something. If any country has been shit on over and over again since Genghis Khan, it’s Afghanistan.

And uh, that’s about it. Good night, my cheeky monkeys.

Never Too Young to be Brainwashed

I probably shouldn’t name names of certain religious insitutions but…I’m going to anyway. I doubt anyone over at St. Gregory the Great Church in Hamilton Sq, NJ is reading my blasphemous blog, anyhow.

I have it on good authority…through the Hamilton Sq gossip grapevine, of course… that a close neighbor of mine, who teaches ccd classes at said church, was handed her curriculum for the new term with the distinct instructions to inform her second grade class that when election time comes for them in their futures, they should vote for the ELEPHANT and never vote for the DONKEY.

Where do I even begin? Most important, I don’t think second graders need to be burdened by adult things. They grow up fast enough as it is and will make hundreds of horrible decisions along the way, and they don’t need the catholic church’s help in doing so.

Secondly, and most folks probably don’t even realize this when they’re putting their money into the collection pot, when you combine religion with politics you get a by-product called fascism. (I know I know…the big scary F word…) Our kids don’t need to be “taught” politics in a religious setting…or vice versa.  Anytime you sit in a pew and the priest begins a long lecture about abortion and it’s political affiliations, you might as well imagine a distinct, short black mustache across his upper lip.

Finally, there is so much more behind it than just picking an elephant or a donkey. To try to simplify it this way to a bunch of eight year olds in the hopes that they’ll never want to ask an important question about “why the elephant over the donkey” , is a cowardly technique.

I can just see the Archbishops making all their underhanded plans for the brainwashing of the next generation of catholics…it’s a dark room with a single overhead lightbulb dangling above thier heads..they’re rubbing their hands together and squinting their eyes…sly smiles play at they corners of their salivating mouths….as they scheme away together on ways to fatten the church’s belly beginning with the deconstruction of our kid’s natural (dare I say, god-given) ability to think for themselves.