I went through my old blogs and found one I had written when I was in Yemen called, "Once Upon a Time". I re-wrote it with some additions...
I tried to dream of home, but it has become a tangled memory for me. The normal life I knew of the past has changed and my childhood home is as foreign as the lands I’ve traveled to. My comfort zone has changed. People no longer ask when I’m coming ‘home’, rather they ask when I’m going to return…as I’ve proven I nearly always do.
I came back to the Mid East and felt comfortable again and happier than I have in years. I had thought it would be that way when I returned to the USA, but alas time has changed both me and the people who live there. I don’t understand why things are they way they are there and I don’t remember who I was when I lived there. I remember wondering what the Mid East was like…now I know and I can never go back to my naïve self.
The vague memory of my Friday nights involve making plans for a Southside Crawl and wondering if I could hold strong and make it to Bar 11 for the obligatory Long Island Iced Tea. Even a weathered Irish man would be astonished by the amount of alcohol I consumed. O Fries and Primanti Brothers sandwiches were a treat. Visiting my grandmother was a weekly tradition and fighting with my mother seemed to be a mandatory daily occurrence. Having to drive a car to work from 9-5 was the norm; paying $20 for a good meal was not such a bad deal. I supported the goal of my best friend getting married and promised I would be there for the wedding day. I never broke an arm, ran marathons and was always happy to have health insurance coverage from either my family or job. I spoke with a Pittsburgh accent and dreamed of the day I would finally leave the ‘City of Bridges’. The Middle East was a location on the map, a place of violence, wars and hatred towards the West.
I thought that Islam was scary. I thought it was a religion based on violence and wanted to hurt the West. We were to be either with or against the enemy, who was Al Qaeda—no wait, Osama Bin Laden—wait, no better yet Saddam Hussein—or was it Taliban? Did we ever figure that one out??? War for me was men fighting in trenches—and like the action movies I saw on TV. I had never been exposed to how fragile life could be and how in the blink of an eye everything can change.
I have fallen in love with the Middle East—its culture and history so rich and diverse that it has taken years for me to really understand how much there is to it and how much I still have to learn. Islam is anything but scary. It’s full devotion and the basis of the religion is on peace. I really don’t understand why the United States believes the world is out to get them, when in reality many parts of the world feel the exact same about the United States.
Years of living in the Middle East has made me realize and that it’s not just a location on a map; rather it’s an intricate mix of people, cultures and languages brought together in the same geographic location. I see the violence and wars just I saw them in the United States, on television. Except of course in Afghanistan—but that’s a different story all together. My image of hatred has been replaced by experiences of relentless hospitality and curiosity of who I am and where I am from. Being American is identified by a passport, and explaining why I think a certain way is lost in translation.
Fridays involved hearing the local Imam at the mosque with the call for prayer and there is no Southside, let alone alcohol. Beer drinking and Long Island Iced Teas were replaced with sheesha smoking and in Yemen there was always the Qat. Friday became the Sunday in that the work week begins the next day on Saturday. Unless of course you’re in Lebanon, where the Christians are the majority and adhere to their work week.
Visits with my grandmother live now only in my memory along the rosary beads I took from her funeral. If I have the chance to fight with my mother it happens at the most once a week and involves dialing international—sometimes we don’t even know enough about each other’s lives to argue. Planning for my best friend’s wedding was done through emails and phone calls and ended with a falling out when I was not able to attend her special day. I have no car, and I would have a suicide wish or masochistic desire if I were to drive here—except for when I took to the wheel in Bahrain and I was worse than the others. I would seriously flip if I were to pay more than $5 for a decent meal. I have some crazy pseudo-British accent from time spent with foreigners and not speaking English.
Here in Lebanon, I have to worry about my clothes, what I look like in public. In Afghanistan, I worried I revealed too much. In Yemen, I would wake in the morning and conceal my pajamas with my abeya when I left the comfort of my air conditioned home. It didn’t matter if my hair was clean or dirty; styled or un-brushed; long or short; because it was always wrapped in a headscarf, hiding it from the public eye. Women’s legs, arms and faces were concealed in sheer flowing cloth, even on the most blistering of heat days. Yemeni men wear skirts, those of the Gulf wear long dresses and no one blinks an eye, nevertheless if one were to wear shorts a line of curious spectators would form wondering why they would choose to wear that.
I now know what trauma is both in a physical and mental sense. An injury to my back left me in unimaginable pain led me to go under the knife in Taiwan. My limited Mandarin led me to be in tears and also taught me how precious friends and family are int times of need. A near death experience in the sea near Somalia left me with a shoulder that will never be the same. Consoling my colleagues following attacks in Afghanistan and trying to understand the waste of life that occurs on a daily basis is something I may never truly understand or process.
CNN has been replaced by Al Jazeera. Fruits and vegetables are bought by the kilo at a corner produce stand, sometimes at 2 am; no more Farmer’s Market waxed apples bought with a two for one special at Giant Eagle. A caffeine fix is a complimentary Turkish coffee served in a porcelain cup, so much richer, yet so much more basic than the double soy grande skim latte that cost $5 and is served ‘to go’ in a foam cup. Regardless of fixed price tags, the price can always be negotiated.
Aside from Lebanon and Syria, church bells do not ring, even if they did they would be drowned out by the five daily calls to prayer reminding everyone that Allah is greatest and the Prophet Mohammed, his messenger, has written this for us in a sacred book. Praying does not occur privately or just on Saturdays or Sundays, praying here happens everywhere whether it is in a mosque, in a home or on a prayer rug in the corner of a grocery store.
So I ask myself, when did it all become normal and when did I lose touch with my own native home? When did I stop comparing myself to others and realize that I was one of them? When did a language so unfamiliar and cryptic become easy to understand? I love it. I’ve changed. If I compared myself to myself ten years ago, I would not know her. I have come a long way since that time not so long ago when I was a curious teenager living in the Northeastern United States. The experiences, people and places I have had the opportunity to encounter can not be expressed in words nor replicated on film. They exist only in a continuous movie played only in my memory.
As I gain more of these experiences I am beginning to realize that life is a series of events meshed together in a bittersweet symphony that no one will ever be able to capture in shape or form.
And so I continue to live and absorb these experiences, for what purpose I am still attempting, if ever, to comprehend…
