Sinister: old hat

[caleb ben moore]

hey-lo all you sinister folk.  i know i havent
said much lately, and i know how you all fairly
yearn for my flowery testaments. :)  you'll be
happy to know that i am doing well. i recently
discovered a mouse in my apartment, which, in
addition to the numerous ants and spiders, makes
my evenings quite lively.  

unfortunately i have no b&s content to relate
(except another attempt to find out any info
about pre/post chicago gig meet-ups???), 
  instead 
    i just popped by to share this letter that i
recently read.  i know that anything having to do
with the whole terrorism issue in the world is
considered "old hat", but i feel that all of you
will appreciate this very eloquent call to love. 
its by naomi shihab nye, who as many of you know
is a wonderful, wonderful contemporary poet.
   please email me back with your comments, i'd
love to hear how it makes you feel.  and, if you
feel so inclined, please copy this and forward it
to as many as you can.  it's a beautiful and
tender message that i believe everyone should
read.
      truly yours,    .caleb ben
  
An Open Letter by Naomi Shihab Nye


TO ANY WOULD-BE TERRORISTS 


I am sorry I have to call you that, but I don't
know how else to get your attention. I hate that
word. Do you know how hard some of us have worked
to get rid of that word, to deny its instant
connection to the Middle East? And now look. Look
what extra work we have. 

Not only did your colleagues kill thousands of
innocent, international people in those buildings
and scar their families forever, they wounded a
huge community of people in the Middle East, in
the United States and all over the world. If
that's what they wanted to do, please know the
mission was a terrible success, and you can stop
now. 

Because I feel a little closer to you than many
Americans could possibly feel, or ever want to
feel, I insist that you listen to me. Sit down
and listen. I know what kinds of foods you like.
I would feed them to you if you were right here,
because it is very very important that you
listen. 

I am humble in my country's pain and I am
furious. 

My Palestinian father became a refugee in 1948.
He came to the United States as a college
student. He is 74 years old now and still
homesick. He has planted fig trees. He has
invited all the Ethiopians in his neighborhood to
fill their little paper sacks with his figs. He
has written columns and stories saying the Arabs
are not terrorists; he has worked all his life to
defy that word. Arabs are businessmen and
students and kind neighbors. There is no one like
him and there are thousands like him - gentle
Arab daddies who make everyone laugh around the
dinner table, who have a hard time with
headlines, who stand outside in the evenings with
their hands in their pockets staring toward the
far horizon. 

I am sorry if you did not have a father like
that.
I wish everyone could have a father like that. 

My hard-working American mother has spent 50
years trying to convince her fellow teachers and
choir mates not to believe stereotypes about the
Middle East. She always told them, there is a
much larger story. If you knew the story, you
would not jump to conclusions from what you see
in the news. But now look at the news. What a
mess has been made. 

Sometimes I wish everyone could have parents from
different countries or ethnic groups so they
would be forced to cross boundaries, to believe
in mixtures, every day of their lives. Because
this is what the world calls us to do. WAKE UP! 

The Palestinian grocer in my Mexican-American
neighborhood paints pictures of the Palestinian
flag on his empty cartons. He paints trees and
rivers. He gives his paintings away. He says,
"Don't insult me" when I try to pay him for a
lemonade. Arabs have always been famous for their
generosity. Remember? 

My half-Arab brother with an Arabic name looks
more like an Arab than many full-blooded Arabs do
and he has to fly every week. 

My Palestinian cousins in Texas have beautiful
brown little boys. Many of them haven't gone to
school yet. And now they have this heavy word to
carry in their backpacks along with the weight of
their papers and books. I repeat, the mission was
a terrible success. But it was also a complete,
total tragedy and I want you to think about a few
things. 

1. Many people, thousands of people, perhaps even
millions of people, in the United States are very
aware of the long unfairness of our country's
policies regarding Israel and Palestine. We talk
about this all the time. It exhausts us and we
keep talking. We write letters to newspapers, to
politicians, to each other. We speak out in
public even when it is uncomfortable to do so,
because that is our responsibility. Many of these
people aren't even Arabs. Many happen to be Jews
who are equally troubled by the inequity. I
promise you this is true. Because I am
Arab-American, people always express these views
to me and I am amazed how many understand the
intricate situation and have strong, caring
feelings for Arabs and Palestinians even when
they don't have to. Think of them, please: All
those people who have been standing up for Arabs
when they didn't have to.

But as ordinary citizens we don't run the
government and don't get to make all our
government's policies, which makes us sad
sometimes. We believe in the power of the word
and we keep using it, even when it seems no one
large enough is listening. That is one of the
best things about this country: the free power of
free words. Maybe we take it for granted too
much. Many of the people killed in the World
Trade Center probably believed in a free
Palestine and were probably talking about it all
the time.

But this tragedy could never help the
Palestinians. Somehow, miraculously, if other
people won't help them more, they are going to
have to help themselves. And it will be peace,
not violence, that fixes things. You could ask
any one of the kids in the Seeds of Peace
organization and they would tell you that. Do you
ever talk to kids? Please, please, talk to more
kids.

2. Have you noticed how many roads there are?
Sure you have. You must check out maps and
highways and small alternate routes just like
anyone else. There is no way everyone on earth
could travel on the same road, or believe in
exactly the same religion. It would be too
crowded; it would be dumb. I don't believe you
want us all to be Muslims. My Palestinian
grandmother lived to be 106 years old, and did
not read or write, but even she was much smarter
than that. The only place she ever went beyond
Palestine and Jordan was to Mecca, by bus, and
she was very proud to be called a Hajji and to
wear white clothes afterwards. She worked very
hard to get stains out of everyone's dresses -
scrubbing them with a stone. I think she would
consider the recent tragedies a terrible stain on
her religion and her whole part of the world. She
would weep. She was scared of airplanes anyway.
She wanted people to worship God in whatever ways
they felt comfortable. Just worship. Just
remember God in every single day and doing. It
didn't matter what they called it. When people
asked her how she felt about the peace talks that
were happening right before she died, she puffed
up like a proud little bird and said, in Arabic,
"I never lost my peace inside." To her, Islam was
a welcoming religion. After her home in Jerusalem
was stolen from her, she lived in a small village
that contained a Christian shrine. She felt very
tender toward the people who would visit it. A
Jewish professor tracked me down a few years ago
in Jerusalem to tell me she changed his life
after he went to her village to do an oral
history project on Arabs. "Don't think she only
mattered to you!" he said. "She gave me a whole
different reality to imagine - yet it was amazing
how close we became. Arabs could never be just a
'project' after that."

Did you have a grandmother or two? Mine never
wanted people to be pushed around. What did yours
want?

Reading about Islam since my grandmother died, I
note the "tolerance" that was "typical of Islam"
even in the old days. The Muslim leader Khalid
ibn al-Walid signed a Jerusalem treaty which
declared, "in the name of God… you have complete
security for your churches which shall not be
occupied by the Muslims or destroyed."

It is the new millennium in which we should be
even smarter than we used to be, right? But I
think we have fallen behind.

3. Many Americans do not want to kill any more
innocent people anywhere in the world. We are
extremely worried about military actions killing
innocent people. We didn't like this in Iraq; we
never liked it anywhere. We would like no more
violence, from us as well as from you. HEAR US!
We would like to stop the terrifying wheel of
violence, just stop it, right on the road, and
find something more creative to do to fix these
huge problems we have. Violence is not creative;
it is stupid and scary and many of us hate all
those terrible movies and TV shows made in our
own country that try to pretend otherwise. Don't
watch them. Everyone should stop watching them.
An appetite for explosive sounds and toppling
buildings is not a healthy thing for anyone in
any country. The USA should apologize to the
whole world for sending this trash out into the
air and for paying people to make it.

But here's something good you may not know - one
of the best-selling books of poetry in the United
States in recent years is the Coleman Barks
translation of Rumi, a mystical Sufi poet of the
13th century, and Sufism is Islam and doesn't
that make you glad?

Everyone is talking about the suffering that
ethnic Americans are going through. Many will no
doubt go through more of it, but I would like to
thank everyone who has sent me a consolation
card. Americans are usually very kind people.
Didn't your colleagues find that out during their
time living here? It is hard to imagine they
missed it. How could they do what they did,
knowing that?

We will all die soon enough. Why not take the
short time we have on this delicate planet and
figure out some really interesting things we
might do together? I promise you, God would be
happier. So many people are always trying to
speak for God - I know it is a very dangerous
thing to do. I tried my whole life not to do it.
But this one time is an exception. Because there
are so many people crying and scarred and
confused and complicated and exhausted right now
- it is as if we have all had a giant
simultaneous break-down. 

I beg you, as your distant Arab cousin, as your
American neighbor, listen to me. 

Our hearts are broken, as yours may also feel
broken in some ways we can't understand, unless
you tell us in words. Killing people won't tell
us. We can't read that message. 

Find another way to live. Don't expect others to
be like you. Read Rumi. Read Arabic poetry.
Poetry humanizes us in a way that news, or even
religion, has a harder time doing. A great Arab
scholar, Dr. Salma Jayyusi, said, "If we read one
another, we won't kill one another." Read
American poetry. Plant mint. Find a friend who is
so different from you, you can't believe how much
you have in common. Love them. Let them love you.
Surprise people in gentle ways, as friends do.
The rest of us will try harder too. Make our
family proud. 

Naomi Shihab Nye



=====
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a 
harder battle." ~Plato


"Love does not consist of gazing at each other, 
but in looking together in the same direction." 
                       -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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