Changed Everything

I woke up early this morning with the thought, "This is the Sunday I'm finally going to make it to All Souls UU Church and make some friends in NYC who aren't teachers." Then, I remembered that today was September 11th, and decided I didn't really want to get out of bed after all, let alone leave the house and have to face New York City in full mourning.

Maybe it's because I wasn't in New York on that day, wasn't even in the United States.
Maybe it's because of all the time I've spent in the Middle East since then and the collateral damage I've born witness to in that time.
Maybe it's because of all the harassment and difficulty my Muslim and "brown" friends across the country and the world have suffered in the interim.
Or maybe it's just because I was raised to be such a radical humanist.

I'm so tired of America putting on this big parade about how unfortunate we were to be attacked on 9/11. We've been attacked ONCE in SIXTY-FIVE years by foreign adversaries. How many nations around the world can say that? Or as my friend Ginny noted on Facebook today: 

9/11 death toll    =      2,819. 

US casualties in the wars that followed    =      6,686. 

non-US casualties in the wars that followed  =  148,000. 

It's not that I begrudge the families of the dead their mourning, their anger, their remembrance. They suffered. I would never deny them acknowledgement of that.

But I really struggle with the self-indulgence of people in Florida and California and Kansas and everywhere in between who think their lives have been irrevocably marked by what happened in New York, DC and Pennsylvania.  Did the bombing of Sarajevo change the world?  Did the fall of Mogadishu change the world?  Did the massacre on the Pearl Circle change the world?  Did the blockade of Gaza change the world?  And these are just the tragedies of the last 65 years that I can recall off the cuff.  How many hundreds more are there that we never even heard about?  It seems so arrogant to think 9/11 is so much more important.

But, of course, it's not arrogant. It's fact. 9/11 did change the world, starting a chain reaction of a magnitude we never could have imagined, which resulted directly or indirectly in massive deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, civil war in Yemen, liberation in North Africa, increased oppression in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, increased Kurdish autonomy, God-only-knows in Iran....

And maybe that's what makes me angry most of all ... that we have such overwhelming power to impose our judgements, our grief and our consequences on the rest of the world.

My 15 Minutes Remain Elusive

I finally found the YouTube broadcast of the panel that Queen Noor of Jordan participated in at last year's ServiceNation Summit.

I was sitting in my 2nd grade classroom at the Modern American School, having just sent my students off to gym class, when my phone rang. I put down the math homework I was grading, and picked up the phone, pleased by the serendipity of its timing. It wasn't a number I recognized, but I answered anyway.

"Is this Maryah? My name is Barbara, and I'm the Chief of Staff for Queen Noor." I was glad I was sitting down. "Her Majesty is participating in a panel in New York City next week, and someone recommended you as a Peace Corps Volunteer who loved Jordan enough to come back again. I wondered if I could get some stories from you about the importance of Peace Corps, and international service."

Of course, there are few things I love more than talking about my travels abroad, and especially about Peace Corps. I told her many of my favorite stories, including the story of the Jebel Bani Hamida bus station, which she thought would be too controversial for her purposes. Most importantly, I talked to her about Peace Corps' Third Goal, to bring knowledge of my host culture back to America. For the first time, I explained, I had come home from somewhere that people really cared about. Even the most unexpected people, housewives who'd never been 100 miles from home and never seemed interested in international affairs, had a thousand questions about Arabs, Muslims, Islam, women in the Middle East, public opinion of America in the Muslim world, the education system in Jordan, etc. And unlike the few questions I would get about the places I've lived in Europe, when it came to Jordan, people were very conscious that they really had no idea what the answers to their questions would be. People really listened to what I had to say.

Due to computer problems, I've not seen more than two thirds of the video myself, and I haven't yet heard Her Majesty mention anything that might have come from me. Nevertheless, what she and others have to say about public service, international service, and its importance to international relations are worth hearing.

Aa, ya Sid Ismahan!

Amman, Jordan

The encounter took me back to my first weeks in the village in Peace Corps, when the pictures were published from Abu Ghraib Prison in a two-page, full-color spread in Al-Ghad newspaper. Things are not so tense around here anymore. There seems to be a vague sense of cautious, qualified optimism here about the future of Iraq, or at least the prospect of Pres. Obama getting America out of the mess. Still, there are awkward moments.

Yesterday evening, as I was coming home from work, I met our new neighbors here on the third floor. Two or three middle-aged Iraqi men now live in the apartment across the landing. At least one of them speaks excellent English, and at first he translated for the other, until they figured out that I understand Arabic. That was when the other guy started rolling up the sleeve of his dishdash to show me a long, puckered scar that curved from his wrist around his forearm to his elbow. Then he explained that his son had been killed by the Americans in Iraq. I think I said, "God be merciful upon him," the usual response to a death in Arabic. After that, I lost the thread of the conversation, except that I felt sure that they wanted something from me. Then they excused themselves - they'd been on their way out the door anyway - and I let myself into my apartment. It was awkward, and I sat on the couch for several minutes trying to figure out what in the world I could have said.

I suppose there's nothing to say, really. Yes, as Miss Ismahan said to me years ago, those are my brothers over there in uniform in Iraq. They are my people. But that, ultimately, is why I am here. As John F Kennedy envisioned for the Peace Corps, as Rotary International envisions for their Youth Exchange Program, so I see myself in the world. Perhaps it's naive or idealistic in some way, but this is what I do: I travel not merely because I love to discover new places and meet new people, but because I want those people to see another side of America. I write this blog and run my mouth constantly about my travels because I want people back home and my friends elsewhere to understand the people and places I encounter.

Like Rotary and the Peace Corps, I believe that if we understand each other better, if we know that real human beings live in those supposed "bad places" on the map, people who love their children and struggle to eat and stay warm and put their kids through school just like us.... If we understand that all the places of the world are full of people just like us, then we won't have to fight each other. The Bible says, "Love thy neighbor" and "Love thy enemy." The Quran says, "We made you into tribes and peoples so that you might know each other better." The US Constitution says that "all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The UN Charter affirms "faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person." The Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association "affirm and promote ... Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." These are all fundamental elements of my moral, even my spiritual being.

While there is nothing I can do about my neighbor's loss, I hope that it is clear from my actions and attitudes to others that I am trying to mitigate that loss (as much as any death can be mitigated) by trying to work in whatever way I can towards a world where such losses can be prevented.

To my neighbors' great credit, they did bring me sweets this evening. No apology was made, and I would have rejected any attempt to make one, but I did see this offering as some tacit recognition of the awkward position I'd been put in last night. There was some question in the office this week as to whether the very considerate actions of Jordanians - e.g. how taxi drivers will, immediately and without being asked, pass you a box of tissues if you sneeze - were sincere, or because they expected to be berated. I think the Arabs really are that considerate; hospitality is not just a historic value of Arab culture ... it is a very present and prominent one.