An Alternate Witness

There are those really amazing days in teaching when you can see a student finally get it, make that breakthrough that just makes your day....
And then there are days like this....

Bulqiis was one of my brightest first graders. She had learned every word in her vocabulary, she had learned at home to identify all the words and letters in the English alphabet, and she never gave me any trouble in a class that was often quite unruly. Like the Queen of Sheba whose name she shared, Bulqiis was already well on her way to being a very capable, admirable woman.

One day, as I was starting class, Bulqiis raised her hand. "Miss Maryah," she asked, "do you speak Arabic?"

"Of course. We're speaking Arabic right now. You hear me use it a lot in class." Too much, perhaps, though I needed the least amount of Arabic to get the lessons across to my first graders, who had not yet formed the habit of learning English through Arabic. But maybe, I was thinking, I didn't use as much Arabic as I thought, if Bulqiis wasn't sure I spoke the language at all.

Then she asked the question that burst my bubble. "Then why do you always speak to us in English?"

In my second year of Peace Corps, I taught English to the first, second and third grade classes. Perhaps the freshest of my first graders was Sarah, the daughter of an Arabic teacher who lived right next to the school. Sarah's sister Selsabeel was the star of my third grade and the darling of the teachers' room, and Sarah was determined to be different from her sister. I'm sympathetic to this; my sister was in a very similar situation, and eventually she transferred to another school to avoid being compared to me!

Sarah was clearly one of the fastest learners in my class, but determined not to let anyone know it. Sometimes I would walk around the room and ask the girls to point, say, to the number 3 in their books. With a big smirk, Sarah would point to the 4, the fox, the pencil, the 2, the ball.... Sometimes I'd wait for her to point to everything else on the page, and then ask her again to point to the 3, and she would start over, pointing to the fox, to the 1, to the pencil, to the 4.... Anything but the 3, which made it obvious that she knew exactly where the 3 was, but was determined not to let me know it. In addition to trying to act dumb, Sarah did her best to be disruptive. I would turn around to write on the board, and hear some little girl's voice, usually Bulqiis or another of my best students, say, "Miss Maryah, Sarah's sitting under her desk again!"

Every morning, when I entered the first grade classroom, Sarah would ask, "Miss Maryah, do you love God?"

"Of course I love God," was always my automatic response, and I would start class. Though an agnostic with polytheist inclinations at home in my Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Maryland, in Jordan I described myself as a Christian, at Peace Corps' suggestion, and because UUism is hard enough to explain in English!

One morning, however, Sarah tried a different tactic of distraction as I entered the classroom. It was midmorning, with early morning flurries and no heat in the school, and it was cold! As usual that winter, I was wearing pants over second-hand Eighties stirrup pants, two wool sweaters, a wool cloak and my mother's gift from my trip home to Maine the summer before: a big fleece hat . "Miss Maryah," said Sarah in her chipper little voice, "you shouldn't be wearing that hat! You should be wearing a headscarf!"

Without really thinking about the fact that these were only first graders, most of whom had seldom left the village and probably never met another real, flesh-and-blood non-Muslim, I said, "I'm a Christian. I don't have to wear a headscarf." With older children, this was often (but not always!) sufficient explanation.

Immediately, though, another little girl asked, "What's a Christian?"

"Christians are of a religion like Islam," I said. "They worship the same God, but they have different customs. For instance, they don't wear headscarves." I thought this ought to do it: a fairly simple, non-judgemental statement that no parent could take offense to as prosthelytism, with carefully chosen pronouns to not dig myself too deeply into my habitual white lie of being a Christian.

Not so. "Miss Maryah?" asked someone else. "Are you a heretic?"

This hit a little closer to home, and perhaps made my response a little more vehement than necessary. "No, no!" I said. "Christians are People of the Book; they worship the same God as the Muslims. Christians aren't heretics."

"Miss Maryah?" asked yet another first grader. "Are you a pagan?"

Cringing inwardly, I said, "No, no!" Things were starting to get out of hand.

"Miss Maryah?" someone else inquired. "Do you love Satan?"

With a quick "no," I started class with our usual full-body review of the four verbs they knew in English. "Alright, ladies. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Jump! Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Turn around."

As a Peace Corps Volunteer in a small Bedouin village in northern Jordan, it bothered me to no end that no one every said "shukran," the word we had been taught in training to mean "Thank you." In fact, my neighbors and students would laugh when I said "shukran," and ask me why I used that word so often. Even more bewildering to my new community was the way I would say, "No, thank you." They would protest, "But I didn't do anything! I just asked a question!" It was a long time before I began to appreciate the nuances of thankfulness in Jordanian culture, and to recognize that I was being thanked, but in ways that were so culturally strange to me that I did not initially recognize my neighbors' gratitude.

Months into my service, I began to complain to my closest colleague and friend, a Muslim American raised mostly in Pakistan, about the lack of gratitude for the work I was doing. It was she who explained to me the Evil Eye and related customs, which were also prevalent in Pakistan. It was, she said, considered very bad form to give compliments or thanks, because this might foster a sin of pride and bring down the Evil Eye upon the recipient. I found the idea of the Evil Eye strange and, I must admit, backward. Nevertheless, I used the mantra I had learned as a Rotary Youth Exchange Scholar, "Not better, not worse, just different!" and tried to accept that I would not be receiving thanks for my work.

In fact, as I eventually recalled, they had told us in training that we would probably not be thanked for our work. They had told us that the things we would do in the community would not fall outside the realm of the community's expectations of us, and thus would not merit thanks. Also, they pointed out, we would be invited for tea and meals, to engagement parties and weddings, and this would be because the community appreciated our efforts there. However, our trainers were primarily Jordanian themselves, few had even traveled outside the Arab world, and few had lived in the villages, where life is very different from the capital city, Amman. Over time, I began to unpack the cultural norms that they could not recognize behind their own descriptions of how Jordanians show appreciation.

Jordanian life, especially among families in the smaller villages that tend to be of nomadic Bedouin origin, operates on a basis of collectivism. In the desert, the individual perishes without the support of the community. Even in the villages of the semi-arid regions, Jordan is one of many cultures where it truly does take a village to support an individual. Under such conditions, everyone always helps everyone else.

Sometimes the girls next door would come over for English help while I was cleaning, doing laundry or cooking, and I would say that I did not have time just then, and they should come back later. Often their mothers would then come knocking, and the mothers would say, "If you are going to live among the Arabs, as an Arab, you may not say no when you are asked for help." They would explain that even when someone called the house, asking for the mother of the house, and she was a mile down the road visiting a friend, whoever answered the phone would say, "She's right here! Just a minute," and run down the road to fetch her. Once it had been pointed out to me, I saw that exactly this was the case.

I started thinking about "Thank you," and what it implies. To say "shukran" in Jordan is to imply that someone did something for me that was not needed or expected. Giving me a cup of tea is not occasion for "shukran;" guests expect to be offered tea. Receiving a plate of whatever my neighbor had made for lunch is not an occasion for "shukran;" she was also sending plates to her inlaws, and she considered me her spinster sister. "Shukran" is for an unexpected gift, or something above and beyond the daily exchange.

In time, I noticed that, while I was not being thanked, thanks was constantly being given. A daughter of the house would serve tea, and the guest would say, "God bless your hands." A child would bring home a high grade on an exam, and the parents would say, "God's will is done!" A neighbor would give us a ride home from school and we would say, "God have mercy upon you." We had been taught all these phrases in training, and been told that they were an important part of village life and courtesy. At first I avoided such phraseology; as a secularist who has not declared faith in any God, it felt fraudulent for me to use such God-speak. Eventually I came to understand what our trainers had known intuitively, that all these phrases meant "thank you," but by thanking God, there is no danger of attracting the Evil Eye. It was not until I had studied Islamic law and tradition more closely in graduate school that I realized an even deeper significance of the practice. If they thanked God for the things I had done, I would remain sufficiently humble, and I would understand that my place was to work for the good of the community, promoting the good and forbidding the evil, which is the essential core of Islam.

Living with the Bedouin in Jordan and learning their language and idiom helped me to see the world in a new way. As I embark on an academic career leading to a career as an Arabic interpreter, I find myself wondering about the interdependence of interpreters and the peace process. If I am the linguistic liaison between Arab and American parties, and at the end of negotiations, the Arab says, "God's will is done!", it may be unwise to translate this literally, because the American party is likely to understand this as a statement of religious conservativism, whereas perhaps the Arab's meaning is closer to "Thank you." Likewise, in English, perhaps it is worth considering how sincere my own "thank you"s are, and what cultural baggage they carry.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9783129

I can't believe it. The Americans and their Iraqi lackeys are building a wall around the Shi'a community of Adamiya in northern Baghdad. Despite spokesman for the US military command in Iraq, Major Gen. William Caldwell's comment that it is not usually America policy to build walls, I am reminded of the wall under construction between the United States and Mexico. Not only that, but who do you think is really paying for the so-called "Security Barrier" (i.e. Big Concrete Wall) that Israel has almost finished building around the West Bank? At the very least, the United States' government is perfectly transparent about its support for the Anti-Palestinian Wall. That's surely the wall Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was referring to when he said he was "afraid that the wall may remind us of other walls we reject."

But let's be realistic here. Do walls really work? No wall is going to keep destitute Mexicans out of the underbelly of the United States' economy, nor keep outraged, desperate Palestinians from attacking their Israeli opressors. How successful was the Berlin Wall at keeping capitalism out of the Soviet Bloc?

I can only think of only one wall that was truly effective at confining a targetted population: the wall around the Warsaw ghetto. Do we really want to follow Hitler and Himmler's example, though?

There must be a better way. What ever happened to negotiation, democratic processes inclusionary of militant Iraqi nationalists, humanitarian aid, and "winning hearts and minds"?

This morning I and other residents received an email from the campus Apartment Housing Office with "Virginia Tech" in the subject line, and a message to the effect that this is a multicultural community and we should be careful not to make generalizations about large groups of students based on the actions of a few. I was amazed that anyone would have generalized from one clearly deranged student's actions to the entire Korean and Korean-American community.

I hoped that I would see a frequent client at the writing center, a South Korean chaplain studying counseling, but when I found myself coming to an early finish with an East Asian international student writing about Korea, I took the opportunity to ask him if he knew of any incidents against East Asian students on campus. While he concluded that he believed the university's Korean community was overly anxious, he mentioned a few accidents that left me feeling uneasy. He said he had heard that all the Korean students have left Blacksburg, VA, that two of our city's four Korean churches have canceled outdoor services scheduled for this coming Sunday, and that his pastor had told him about incidents of high school students ganging up to beat on Korean classmates. He also said he had heard that the South Korean diplomatic mission to Washington, DC, had wanted to attend and perhaps say a few words of sympathy at the convocation at Virginia Tech in which Pres. Bush spoke, but that the US State Department told them that, as the shooter was a Permanent Resident, i.e. an immigrant to the US, South Korea had no reason to get involved.

I'm disappointed in my fellow Americans. After September 11th, in which al-Qaeda overtly claimed to be attacking American society, I expected some backlash against Arabs and Muslims, though I still thought it would be small-minded to blame an entire ethnic or religious group for the acts of the extremist few. But it didn't even cross my mind that anyone would blame Koreans and Korean Americans generally for the acts of this single student, who was clearly disturbed and acting from personal motives.

But then this student I was tutoring said that Koreans, both here and in South Korea, were expressing feelings of guilt that one of their own could do such a terrible thing. This, he thought, was unnecessary, but I was reminded that I was in Switzerland eight years ago this week when the Columbine shooting happened, and I felt the same impulse to apologize and explain that this was not the American way.

Even still, the biggest tragedy of Virginia Tech, the airplane crash that killed a Yankees ball player last fall, and countless other such incidents, is the way we as a nation respond. It is sad to me to see that our first reaction in a tragedy has become this: "Police say that they are not yet ruling out terrorism." As if that were the primary motive for violence in this world.

I was a college Senior in Political Science 101 on the first anniversary of September 11th. The professor wanted to spend that day's class remembering the tragedy of a year before; knowing that almost half the students in the class had been high school Seniors in New York City a year earlier, I was dreading the class. I was wrong to do so. I was surprised at how clear-headed and eloquent my classmates were. In particular, I remember the words of a girl from Oregon. Her mother woke her that morning with the news, and she said her first thought was that she didn't have time to mourn, because someone was going to have to make sure that our civil liberties would not be stolen away as the nation reacted.

When I heard what had happened at Virginia Tech, I thought of the girl from Oregon, and I thought, I can't mourn because someone has to remember the dead, beseiged and violated elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong, this is a tragedy, as unprecedented a tragedy in its own way as September 11th. My junior high was the site of a school shooting, and my sympathy goes out to the students of Virginia Tech and the people of Centerville, VA, home town of the shooter and several of his victims (and some friends of mine).

But let us not neglect to notice that today--two days later--was an extraordinarily bloody day in Iraq. More than a hundred were killed and over twice that many injured. It is absolutely right for Pres. Bush to pray at Virginia Tech, and for universities and schools all across the country to re-examine their emergency procedures and the measures they take to monitor the mental health of their students. However, we must be careful that such actions are not taken at the expense of the attention Iraq, Darfur, Nigeria, Russia and other troublespots also deserve, even require.

Taxes are supposed to support government programs to support and protect the people served by that government. If that were truly the case, I wouldn't mind paying taxes at all. As the Finns and Swedes say, we gladly pay 50% in taxes, because the government takes good care of us. Or as Elton John has said, he has no interest in moving to the U.S. where the taxes are lower, because his taxes support the poor in South London who buy his records and make him rich.

Half a century ago, the CEO of General Motors made fifty times what his average worker made, and paid well over half that money back to the government. Now the CEOs of major companies pay easily 500 times what their average workers make, and pay far less than 50% of that money back in taxes. Yes, there are philanthropists like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and the Ford Foundation who are privately distributing their wealth all over this country and the world; they are major contributors to the fact that Americans, per capita, make more private donations to people and programs in impoverished nations than the citizens of any other nation in the world.

But if we taxed Bill Gates for half his yearly net income, he'd still have millions of dollars to put into philanthropy, and I suspect that his taxes could almost single-handedly provide universal health care in the United States. Instead, take a look at this report of UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre, "Child Poverty In Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being In Rich Countries" (http://www.unicef-icdc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf). Of the 21 countries surveyed, the United States ranks in the bottom third in 4 of the 5 categories for which US ranking was provided, including 20th in Family and Peer Relationships, and Behaviours and Risks, and 21st--that's last of the richest nations!--in Health and Safety! That's worse than even the significantly poorer former Soviet Bloc nations of Poland and the Czech Republic. According to this report, 22% of American children under 18 live in homes taking in less than 50% of the median national income; that's dead last of the nations polled. One in eight American 15-year-olds polled has less than 10 books in his or her household. The United States has among the highest rates of infant mortality and accidental child deaths of these rich nations. At 75%, the United States has the 5th lowest rate of 15-19-year-olds in school. American children are judged to have the second worst relationships with parents and peers of the 21 nations surveyed. American children have the worst health behaviours of the nations surveyed, the highest child obesity rate, and the highest teen pregnancy rate. One in 5 American children rate their own health as 'fair or poor.'

Could we not be using our tax money to improve these numbers? Why are we not?

Instead of making the richest nation in the world the best place in the world to be a child, we are engaged in a quagmire in Iraq. We were told that fighting the "terrorists" there would keep us safer here. This is unlikely to be the case. Our arrogance in Iraq has cost us more friends than it has made us; this conflict has undermined our soft power and image in the world, and made us look like the big bully on the block. And we are suffering at home for this war every day.

The money we have spent in Iraq could have provided health insurance to nearly 250 million American children, or have built over 3.7 million units of public housing for the millions of hurricane displaced or otherwise impoverished and homeless persons, including children, in the United States. Or the money we spent in Iraq could have paid for a year's Head Start expenses for 55 million children, or hired over 7 million new teachers, or provided over 20 million 4-year scholarships for Americans to attend college. You can see a running tally of these figures at http://costofwar.com/index.html. Or we could use the money we're spending in Iraq to reduce world hunger by half in 10 years, immunize children around the world for that time, stem the tide of AIDS in the world, and still have money left over (http://costofwar.com/numbers.html)! Any one of those things would improve our image and thereby increase our national security far more than any war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran or elsewhere.

As you pay your taxes, I challenge you to consider where that money is going, and whether you are comfortable supporting the actions your money supports. Because if you're not, it's time to take ownership of that money and of your government--for the people, by the people--and demand change!

It's a terrible thing, as the minister said Sunday morning, to hear on the morning news that over 130 Iraqis were killed and an entire market obliterated by a truck bomb in Baghdad. It is a still worse thing to find that you have become numb to the horror. I heard that news on NPR this morning, winced, and immediately pulled out the expresso machine and started making coffee. I fear and dread the day when I don't even wince.

There came a point, when I was studying the Holocaust as an undergraduate, at which I became numb to the horror, able to watch footage of emaciated, gassed inmates bulldozed into a hole and not even blink. It was a relief to reach that point, because I wanted to be able to make witness to these terrible occurences, to understand them intellectually so that I could join the fight to keep such horror from happening again. Of course, in my idealism, I didn't fully realize that it was happening all the time: Rwanda, Kosovo, Darfur, East Turkistan, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Chechnya....

I started this blog full of outrage and anger at Bush, Blair, Olmert, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all the others who abetted and even instigated wars, apartheid, death and destruction in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. I had lived in the Middle East, I had talked to Baghdadi mothers and children about their lives there, I listened to Sid Ismahan and others as they thrust the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison into my face and said, "Look at these well! These are our brothers!" I bawled my eyes out in front of two dozen Jordanian teachers because I thought (mistakenly, I hasten to add) that I had heard one of them say, "How can she be upset about a stolen pen when people are dying in Iraq?"

I must remember....

• I'm still angry about the ghetto-ization of the West Bank and the boycotting of Hamas.
• I'm still anguished about those rendered homeless and plagued with PTSD in Lebanon.
• I'm still apalled that a bunch of political appointees locked up in the Green Zone could think they know what's best for Iraq without ever meeting an Iraqi.
• I'm still frustrated with Bush's total disregard for the opinions of both his constituents and the experts.
• I'm still horrified at the neglect of physically and psychologically mained Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans.

I want to find that fire again, and let it devour the despair and helplessness I feel here, as I sit in class and talk the problem to death, as I languish before my computer and listen to the body count rise on NPR, listen to the Bush and Cheney build their case to add Iran to the two fronts--Iraq and Afghanistan--where we are already losing the so-called "War on Terror."

Because if we lose the tiny sliver of flame we have, I shudder to think where that might lead us.

His feet cracked as the earth
Robes tattered as roadside thistle
Caked-in dirt beneath the nails
Greasy scraggles of thin, grey hair
And rheumy eyes, fogged with years
Yet shoulders straight and strong

Chapped and cracked, his thin lips mutter
Over and over, one reminder
‘kareem, kareem—kareem, kareem’
Muttering as the beads fall
Slipping through dark fingers

The oldest elder of the village
Calls to him to sip of her tea
On wool-stuffed ticks in the sun
Staring quietly at the street
Traveler muttering, ‘kareem, kareem’
A granddaughter pouring tea

Sun creeps slowly down the sky
Flocks return from the hills
Children play soccer in the dust
Women bring their laundry in
Hens scratch and donkeys bray
And two old people sip their tea
Beads slip through crooked fingers

The sun descends, muezzins call
Fathers plod up to the mosques
Women dice and toss the salad
A slender granddaughter carries plates
To the oldest elder and her guest
Who bend and eat with a ‘bism’ullah’
Sipping sweetened tea on mint

Darkness falls, lights flicker on
Chickens roost and nannies bleat
Men with their wives, babes in arms
Toddlers clinging to their gowns
Stroll across the rocky ground
To the oldest elder’s house.

Women pull out the extra ticks
Men all press the elder’s hand
To lips and brow, and then again
‘Yumma, Mama, how are you?’
Their wives settle to one side
‘Amma, Auntie, how’s your health?’

‘Pilgrim, Uncle, welcome here
Peace and welcome in our homes
Mercy and blessings on your hands
From what direction do you come?
What news have you from beyond?’
Yet the traveler—‘kareem, kareem’—
And the elder silently sip

Prayer beads slide, eight sets
Sons, wives, elder, pilgrim
Each a gentle mantra reads
‘bism’ullah, mercy, compassion
Thank the divine, lord of all
There is none but the one’
Under it all, ‘kareem, kareem’

Babies nurse and fall asleep
Once again, muezzins cry
‘There is none but the one’
The shouts of playing children fade
The breeze has died, all is still
Except the traveler, ‘kareem, kareem’

Hoisting toddlers, babes in arms
Two by two, young parents depart
‘Go with peace, wake well
You do us honor, pilgrim’
As he nods, ‘kareem, kareem’
Beads clacking rhythmically

The last young wife, before she goes
Spreads blankets, comforters
For the elder and the traveler
Sleeping in the cool night air
Still the mystic muttering
‘kareem, kareem—kareem, kareem’
The name of God is ‘generous’

I am appalled to hear that four imams were removed from their flight out of Minneapolis Airport Monday for saying their prayers. Prayer alone, even Muslim prayer, is not an indication of terrorist intent. This culture of fear undermines the very foundation of the United States. Exactly this sort of hypocrisy makes our motives suspect in many parts of the world.

Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, Lutherans, Mennonites, Amish, Jews, Armenians, Maronites, Palestinians, Tibetans, Uyghers, Lebanese Shi'ites, members of resistances against Nazism, communism, military juntas and theocracies, psychoanalysts, artists, scientists, philosophers.... Throughout the nation's history, people have immigrated to these United States for the freedom to practice and profess their beliefs. Religious freedom is protected in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and has been repeatedly upheld by the US Supreme Court as a founding principle of this nation.

Prayer has often been used in the history of this country and others as a form of peaceful resistance and civil disobedience, but prayer has never threatened our nation's security. Do we ban Orthodox rabbis, evangelical Christian ministers or Buddhist monks from flying because we fear their religious convictions? Not at all! To the contrary, we offer kosher and vegetarian options for in-flight meals, even though Jewish, Christian and Buddhist adherents have all committed terrorist acts in the name of their religion. If we encourage the religious convictions of Jews and Christians in our airports, who are we to forbid Muslims, who worship the same God of Abraham, from fulfilling their own religious obligations?

It is not the only recent episode of prejudice by the airlines. There have been many, many examples. One that is getting attention is a woman who was kicked off her flight for breastfeeding, and Tuesday NPR reported on “nurse-ins” across the country in protest. We ought to be able to raise the same sense of outrage for such blatant religious discrimination, as well.