10. If you stop going shopping
9. If you think things are not going well in Iraq
8. If you become kind to a Muslim
7. If you ask for attorney general resignation
6. If you ask for a national health care
5. If you vote for Barak Obama
4. If you don’t support Israel
3. If you think American torture is just torture
2. If you support feet-bath in public places
And the number 1 sign that the terrorist one
1. If you wake up and smell the Humus
Every time I stop by the segregated Moslems cemetery in southwest metro area I remember a story of my hometown in Egypt, a small, unassuming village in the Egyptian Nile delta. Many people’s lifestyles hadn’t changed that much since the time of the pharaohs, and local demographers have not issued their census report ever since the farmers found a better use for the counting beans.
Before CNN and Al Jazeera, villagers lived the simple life of a farming community, and their interest in the outside world went only as far as the edge of their cornfields. People seemed to consult the same fashion designer, go to the same mosque to pray, eat the same food, celebrate the same holidays, and for generations, villagers kept the gene pool very much confined to the area’s families.
However, there was something un-provincial about my village. Unlike most of villages around us, we had one Christian family living among us. They lived in the outskirts of the village near the cemetery, a place villagers would visit only when there was a divine call.
The Christian family’s peculiar lifestyle was intriguing to me; in fact, it was a breath of fresh air to invigorate the monotonous village life. They seemed friendlier than most, and they flashed a smile to anyone who cared to make eye contact.
Unlike other villagers, who worked on the farm, the Christian family was still in the hunting-and-gathering age. They made their living chasing wild wolves lurking on the outskirts of the village during a time when wolves were considered a dangerous species. The Christian father would disappear into the remote cornfields for days and suddenly reappear with his kill. The family then would drag the dead wolf around the village for show-and-tell, describing the grave danger they had just faced and the heroic adventure they had encountered, which earned them considerable admiration from villagers and a handsome handout of rice, corn or whatever the season offered at the time.
The students in the Christian family weren’t required to attend the daily religious class at the public school like the rest of us, who had to endure the daily dull regimen of the overbearing religion teacher.
It was customary for the teacher to call on “Sameer Kariakoos,” the only Christian student in my class, to leave the room. He left under the watchful eyes of all the Muslim students, looking on with a mix of envy and sarcasm. He freely
Years went by, and since Egyptian Christians had the same life expectancy as Muslims, the father suddenly died. The family was not prepared for this eternal fate, and neither was the rest of the village. Although the cultural tradition of the Muslim villagers accommodated the Christian family while they were alive, the religious burial traditions were not flexible enough to accommodate the mixing of their dead in the same cemetery. The Christian family wanted to bury their father in the village among his Moslems friends and not venture away to a segregated Christian cemetery, as most of them do across Egypt.
There was some reluctance and hesitation from the village leaders. Islam prohibits mixing the dead in the mausoleum. I guess they were afraid that the Christians might eavesdrop on the dead Muslims’ conversations with God.
My family were not known for their religious zealotry, but for their kindness and generosity. The family logic was that if the Christian family had lived in peace with the rest of us all these years without any trouble, there definitely wouldn’t be much trouble while they were dead.
My family consulted no one in the village. As we had welcomed the Christian family alive, so we welcomed them among our dead. The burial ceremony was completed with a grave, like all Muslim graves, that lacked religious symbols or eulogy — just a Christian family name, “Kariakoos,” and dates: “Born in 1911 and died 1962.”
All those years, in my village, Muslims and Christians had lived together and died together in peace and harmony. As my brother put it, “No diversity programs were required, no axis of evil was declared, and no crusade or jihad was launched.”
My brother asked me in a reflective voice “Please relate this story to your friends in America.”
I just did.
Ahmed Tharwat is host of the Arab-American show “Belahdan,” which airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on Twin Cities Public Television (Ch. 17).
©2007 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
Tear down this settlements wall
Many Americans are currently affixed to their YouTube and TV sets desperately trying to figure out which presidential candidate will inspire them to hope, watching staged debates and manufactured emotion that allows each candidate to define his/her version of real hope. Away from all this political hope business, the incumbent president himself, President Bush – the one who for more than seven years has taken the American people into a post 9/11 bunker mentality devoid of any hope – went to visit the Middle East to give the peace process and the Palestinian people some hope. President Bush the champion of outsourcing our democratic project ended his visit dancing with the most undemocratic leader in the area, Saudi king not to ask him for more democracy but for more oil for the American people instead. Sounds familiar. This strategy has become part of the American political landscape: to use the Middle East as a last resort and refuge for desperate presidents to escape their domestic crises and/or their irrelevance. In the seventies, an embattled President Nixon went to the Middle East during the Watergate crisis, Carter tried it during his misery index era, and Clinton visited the area for a last gasp attempt for peace to build some kind of legacy after Monica-gate. All domestically ineffective American presidents head to the Middle East to promise the people of this besieged area what they couldn’t deliver to the American people at home: real hope. So what is it about the Middle East that makes it not just a magnetic place to satisfy the Americans’ insatiable appetite for oil, but also a place where American presidents escape their disastrous domestic demise? Will it work this time? Based on a recent poll conducted by Aljazeera.com, most people in the area (85%) think President Bush visit wouldn’t make any difference, the majority of the Arab street look at President Bush’s visit as nothing but another desperate attempt to divert attention from his incompetent presidency domestically and internationally, and to use his visit to isolate Iran in the area. President Bush went to tell Arab leaders that as the New Your Time columnist Maureen Dowd reported “Israel is good Iran is bad”. But the Arabs may fear the Iranians because of their old hatred history, but they fear Israeli more because of their present hatred. In his attempt to give peace a jumpstart before he levees office, the master of lowering expectations himself, warned us not to look for a major breakthrough. Can the decider president who couldn’t get the democratic and republicans to talk to each other, get the Israelis and Palestinians to talk to each other and have real peace; now with the unconditional American support to Israel all these years, regardless of who is at the political helm, and President Bush’s mantra being the so called war on terrorism, he is disqualified from being an effective peace broker in the Middle East. As a Palestinian official from Ram Allah announced on the Arab network Al Jazeera, “what can we expect from a country that has vetoed the UN more than 40 times to defend the Zionist state occupation and its aggression against the Palestinian people?” So is there any hope for President Bush’s latest visit to the Middle East to salvage any legacy for himself? That remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t mortgage your house on it, as there is very little hope and legacy to spread around these days. President Bush doesn’t have the personal and political conviction of president Reagan that stood up against the Soviet Unions aggression to tell the Israelis to “tear down these settlements wall,” nor the competence and charisma of President Kennedy who one the heard and mind of the besieged Berlin city declaring his new alliance to the Berlinians , and reach out to the Palestinians to say, “Anna Kodsy” – I’m Jerusalemian. Those hopeful Americans leaders are sent to Europe, the Middle East gets the desperate ones.
Ahmed Tharwat/ Host
BelAhdan
Arab American TV Show
My BIO:
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Ahmed Tharwat :Producer & host
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Ahmed |
Born and raised in Egypt in a family of 8 children.
I immigrated to the US when I was 25 year old.
I have been teaching and consulting in Multicultural marketing for more than 20 years. I have been producing and hosting the only Arab American TV program in the Midwest This weekly TV program is a vehicle to strengthen our multi-cultures relationship in the community. I have written for Slate magazine, public radio (All things considered) Pioneer Press and StarTribune, a winner of the community columnist 2000 award.
As a hyphenated American, I helplessly tray to bring the irony of living to my readers and viewers.
