The last one is mostly what my life is consisting of these days...though the first two are having a slight impact on my day to day since coming home.
My first Sunday back started out so well...fortunately no Christmas pageant or other ridiculous American showmanship to upset me, and I like my church in general, we sang some nice Christmas carols, my dad gave a good sermon, all in all very positive.
It was the dreaded "coffee after service" which doomed my Sunday. First one of my friends came up and asked me about the Middle East, and Israel in particular...I immediately launched into a spiel on the wall, the deaths in Gaza, the invasion of Lebanon, and the feeling that I had all during Jerusalem that we were just sitting in the middle of a big gang war...she looked a bit confused and shell-shocked, and I remembered that, when she thinks Israel, she thinks holy sites...so I talked about some of the holy sites we went to and quickly made my exit.
It only got better. My mom, seeing me walking around without conversational attachment immediately pulled me over to introduce me to someone who was new at the church. She asked where I had been, I said Egypt and she asked, with that "look" on her face, how I liked living there. When I replied that I had liked it very much, especially the people, she launched into a lecture of her own on how Egyptians were basically Jew-hating terrorists. As her prima facie evidence, she told a story about a friend of hers who had gotten harassed while visiting Cairo: "...and all he had was a Star of David on his shirt!"
I, remaining the good pastor's kid and holding in the angry tirade which first came to mind, tried to explain that wearing a Star of David in Egypt would be roughly equivalent to walking around backwater Tennessee with Osama Bin Laden's head plastered across your chest, and "Fuck America" on the back just for good measure (Well, the fuck America part I was just thinking...). We didn't make any headway, though, and I really didn't want to get into an argument, so I found an escape route with one of my younger brothers and fled back to the safety of my quiet house.
I think that MESP has given me a sort of weird Middle Eastern Issues Terets...I keep spouting off these random angry tirades about racism, Islamophobia, ethnocentrism, "Children of Empire", yada, yada, yada...
In other news, I shaved my head again...
Miss all y'all
Peace
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2 comments:
I wore my "the camel is the boat of the desert" t-shirt today from Petra, and got happy quips in Arabic from both the Turkish guy who fixed the nose ring of mine that broke at Ana Fora, and from the Muslim woman that checked me out at safeway.
I think that was lucky divine intervention, though--I don't expect the same reception anywhere else. I also haven't yet busted out my kafeyya, my biography on Muhammad, or my 'ana bahebic ya filistine' t-shirt, nor would my parents be too happy if I did. I'm saving those for safer, more liberal Seattle.
-Alissa
yeah, I've got my family reconciled to the kaffeya and "Free Palestine" T-shirt. Besides...I need my kaffeya now that my head is naked. It gets really cold otherwise
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