forty years in the desert

i met a woman at church in eastlake who told me that she was lost in a desert, a forty year desert. as a young woman, she was vivacious, blonde, always in trouble. she went to university in boston, where several men proposed to her and she refused them all. one of the best pranks she ever pulled, she said, was stealing the lofty stone busts of great theologians and historical figures that lined the entrance of her school and arranging them so that it looked like they were having a lively conversation. she even put wigs on several of them.

after years of refusing men and running wild in boston, she said she made a deal with god that she would accept the next christian man to propose to her. within a month, a dashing stranger from london had asked her to marry him and she consented.

they lived between london and the states, switching back and forth every few years with their five children. she said that her husband was brilliant and stingy and that for the majority of their married life she raised her five kids in a two-room flat without heat, an oven, or a bath. she called it a loveless marriage, proudly showing me a picture of her handsome husband that she carried in her wallet. he had been dead for several years, and her house was full of his oil paintings, perched on every wall.

i met her sitting in a pew at church, and she told me that her heart was dead and barren. she said that she had not felt the lord's presence or the blooming of anything in forty years, but she kept coming to church every sunday in the hopes that her desert would blossom one day.

PSALM 107: 35-38 "he turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs; there he brought the hungry to live and founded a city where they could settle. they sowed fields and planted vineyards that yielded a fruitful harvest... and the LORD blessed them."

a resolution after global trends

Though Westerners equate jihad with terrorism, Islam teaches Greater Jihad (struggle for personal sanctification) as normative and Lesser Jihad (armed warfare to protect, expand, and purify Islam) as an extreme recourse.

            In order to work toward harmony between the domineering West and hostile Islamic nations, a process of mutual education must take place. As CS Lewis wrote in reference to hostility and judgment between Christians and atheists, “We are usually not thinking about real people whom we know at all, but only about two vague ideas which we have got from novels and newspapers… Unless we come down to brass tacks… we shall only be wasting time.” In a similar way, Westerners and Muslims cannot begin to live in harmony and diplomacy until they take the time to get to know one another personally, ideologically, and religiously. A first step toward this goal could be a proper understanding of jihad as primarily a pursuit of holiness, not a death wish against ‘infidels’. Emphasizing this common desire for peace rather than violence by educating Westerners about the true teachings of Islam will further cooperation, erode hostility, decrease prejudice, and calm terror between the West and the Islamic peoples.

Having spent part of my childhood in Kosovo, I grew up amid the tensions of Kosovar Muslims embittered against Serbian Orthodox Christians after their barbarous agenda of ethnic cleansing during the war. Seeing firsthand that Christian and Muslim extremist “holy wars” have caused both religions to be perceived as fundamentally violent has instilled in me a desire to work toward reconciliation and understanding.

I want to have intentional discussions about prejudice and combating misperceptions from which prejudice results, but that must start with my own personal commitment to tackle my own misperceptions. Therefore, I commit to reading part of the Qur’an by the end of this semester. 

dreams IV

i dreamed last night that i was racing through the woods with my mother, brothers, and sister. we were sitting behind horses on a wooden cart like the ones that carried prisoners to the guillotine during the french revolution. there was a man lying on the back in revolutionary dress, bright reds and blues and a plumed hat. he was unconscious and bleeding from the chest.

as we rumbled through the trees, running away from something, he turned paler and paler until we stopped beneath some white apple trees and watched him die. we were in an orchard, and as we stood there, wondering where to bury the dead man we had rescued in vain, my mother had a miscarriage.

the baby passed quickly and quietly, and my youngest brother turned to me and said, "we must give up our children as well." he took pincers, forced them down my throat, and pulled out a tiny fetus the size of a finger. i began to bleed. it looked like a gumdrop. he dropped it beneath an apple tree in full blossom, and then i woke up, a piercing pain in my throat.

airplane tickets

i've bought dozens of airplane tickets. i've been on one hundred fifty flights. my mom and i counted once while we were flying somewhere back when i was in high school, keeping tally on a napkin that came with our standard lunch of a white dinner roll, lasagna, a fruit cup, an lettuce salad with italian dressing packets, and a shortbread cookie, all contained in one plastic tray.

but in spite of all my travel experience, i still feel thrills of uncertainty and terror every time i buy a plane ticket. my mouse hovers over the 'purchase' button on my computer screen, second-guessing, doubting. what if i accidentally entered the wrong month? what if i'm buying one-way when i need round trip? did i spell my name wrong? by the time i actually click the button and purchase the ticket, i've stared at the screen for so long that i'm afraid the flight has filled up while i was deliberating and proofreading all my information for the fourth time.

airports feel like home to me. i've heard dozens of people say this, nomadic people i grew up with. there's an overwhelming sense of comfort and belonging as i maneuver my way through scurrying crowds of people and their groaning luggage carts. i travel light, usually with just a backpack, even when going home for christmas. i sit in the faux-leather seats, looking out at the runways or watching families at the gate across from me. i am never lost in airports, even if i've never been there before. there's an instinctive navigation that sets in wherever i am, whether it's berlin, heathrow, LAX, o'hare, atlanta, skopje, frankfurt, zurich. they all follow the same path: check-in, baggage, passport & security, waiting at the gate, boarding, take-off, in-flight, landing, disembarking, passport, baggage claim, customs, arrival. there is some variation, as in zurich you pass through security before showing your passport and the reverse in skopje. but the general pathway is the same. i've done it a million times, but i'm always nervous up until the point of passing through security and walking toward my gate.

i need to buy this ticket to memphis for an interview in march, and it's just sitting on my screen.

third lobby couples

as RAs, part of our job is doing rounds during open-dorm hours to make sure covenant contract is being followed. during open hours, rooms that host mixed company have to keep the door at least a foot open and turn on at least one light. since the founders trash cans are about a foot wide, most people just stick a trash can in the door to prop it open. the definition of a light has also been much debated as of late. a few weekends ago, we had to clarify whether or not a lava lamp counted as a light. it does not.

this weekend i was on duty with alicia, which meant that whenever i saw a dimly-lit room with the door open only a crack, i hurried by, not wanting to know what amorous pair lurked within. alicia, on the other hand, stuck her head into every room to surprise the happy couple with a greeting or comment about the weather while checking to see if they were sitting upright. "keep it vertical," she said as we walked around first belz. we differ in the brand of our curiosity.

you'd be surprised what people find themselves doing even with a light on and the door open to the rest of their hall. but even more surprising is what people are willing to do in third lobby, which has fluorescent lights and is the entrance to all of founders. i thought briefly about busting up a couple the other day who had draped a blanket over themselves like a teepee and disappeared beneath it on the couch outside our RA office. every once in a while, i would see one of their heads peek through the window into the office, where i was working on homework, and then dive back into the relative safety of their blanket. i say relative safety, because one blanket was not enough to conceal the intimate massage taking place beneath it. one blanket does not a true teepee make.

i should have told them to stop monopolizing third lobby with their awkward love... but instead i just stayed safely in my office and then rushed past when it came time to return to my room. alicia would have been ashamed of me.

first attempt at literary journalism

The window in my last Brooklyn apartment, a hardwood room in the dim ribcage of a slim maroon townhouse sandwiched between a deli and a men’s barbershop, faces back into a neighborhood block of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Sitting on my fire escape in the June sun, I stare out into a vacant lot between the rows of houses, empty but for two scraggly trees, a grill, and a ripped tire sitting in the gravel. I hear a gospel choir practicing at the Baptist church, two blocks east. Through a chain link fence, I look down into the street toward Nostrand Ave, one of the neighborhood’s busiest avenues. The cracked, uneven sidewalks are lined with brownstones and local businesses: Star’s Bar, Momma’s Kitchen: Food for the Soul, Malcolm X Bookstore & Barber, Brooklyn Deli, Dominican Hair, Miss Dahlia’s Bakery. Dahlia’s is famous for her cucumber lemonade and coconut cakes, recipes the original Miss Dahlia brought with her from Mississippi in the 1920s. I walk past these shops every day toward the subway station, the post office, or the Fulton Street Grocery.

While shopping in the Grocery, I’ve been stopped in the aisle several times by irate women who block my path, refusing to let me pass, sometimes hissing under their breath. These same women often guard the washing machines in the laundromat, telling their children to stand in front of them when I try to load my laundry and glaring me when I say hello to their daughters. For the first month, I thought I was doing something wrong, breaking some unspoken neighborhood law concerning the pasta aisle or laundry hampers. Then, one afternoon in the Grocery, a woman ran at me in the cereal aisle and rammed me with her shopping cart. “White folks!” she shouted. “Why you white folks gotta move here, to our neighborhood? Our neighborhood!”

springtime

spring has always been a season of goodbyes. we talk of fall as the time of fading, but every year since before i can remember, spring is the season in which something golden shines bright and dies.

we always leave at the end of spring, the beginning of summer. i've left twenty houses, all in the spring. every spring since i was three, i pack up everything i own into trunks or suitcases and everything changes, again. again again and again. eighteen springs of leaving and being left.

spring looks like a trunk, a plain black trunk with silver buckles, duct-tape on the side with BRINKMAN lettered in permanent marker. amid the flowers, the fresh green, the lone daffodil that pokes its head up out of the wood chips by the library, an early riser- there's always a black trunk waiting to swallow up my belongings and my past.

i've already found myself sitting in the rocking chair in my room, a gift from my roommate's father who outgrew it and bought a recliner, staring at the row of books under my bed and wondering whether it would be wiser to put them in one big box or an array of little boxes, easier to carry. i've already considered whether to roll or lay flat my paintings, whether i should give away my desk lamp. it's an awkward shape to fit in a suitcase,

even for an expert packer.