desert storms

it has been many storms since i have written - storms of many sorts.... the brewing controversy over the muhammed cartoons has tornadoed into a theatre-of-the-absurd situation without a positive or even practical denouement in sight. ... qatar had it's first major thunderstorm in years, which i was fortunate enough to experience in while camping in the desert. it was the first time i've seen rain here, let alone glorious sheets of daggering through an enormous silky sky. ... and i went to my first qatari wedding - a ladies-only affair of course and a perfect storm of ostentatious strutting, lavish barbie-pink and silver, too much food, too loud music, simply outrageous and outrageously risque dresses that defy description and make every oscar ensemble and prom disaster outfit ever seen look tame, gravity-defying hairdos and feature-transforming makeup, coffee being poured, chocolates being passed, money been thrown around (literally), laughter, dancing, and one very nervous, very white glittery spectacle of a bride on a throne.

it has been quite a few weeks.

the wedding was truly beyond description. i'm not sure that i can capture it in words. and sadly cameras and camera-phones are banned from the affair (bags are screened at the door). this came about because photos of young women at weddings, sans abayas and dolled up looking their finest in showy dresses, were being passed around to young men. so now no phones with cameras are allowed. instead, the eligible young ladies must rely on the old-fashioned way of making themselves noticed - dancing and strutting their stuff on a large catwalk that runs through the center of the room - so that other ladies observing will then comment to their sons / brothers / cousins / nephews that a particular girl is pretty, or dances well, or has a nice body, or nice hair. weddings are really one of the few opportunities for girls to be seen and noticed, so each affair is a big deal for everyone. though it is the biggest deal for the bride - this is the most important day of her life and all eyes will be on her - once she arrives, that is. the bride's entrance involved much fanfare and a "space odyssey 2001" kind of dah-dah-dah-daaaah musical intro. then a curtain was raised and she entered, in a voluminous white sparkly gown and veil with a 20-foot train, carefully making her way up the catwalk as the room watched her gingerly step towards the large throne on the stage at the front of the room where she would sit for the entire night. the groom and a few male family members in traditional formal dress did come for a time. prior to their arrival, there was much flurrying and scurrying as everyone covered the splendor of their dresses and hair and sparkles with black abayas, then they arrived up the catwalk, stood for some formal portraits - no smiling - until the other men left and just the groom was left sitting with his bride until they both left together about an hour later. this was not a marriage for love. but at least the bride knew the groom, and at least he was a good catch - good looking, educated, kind. they went to paris for the honeymoon. who knows, maybe they'll fall in love there....

speaking of falling in love, i recently went to oman and fell in love with muscat. i met my parents & my sister emmie there for three fantastic days. it's a truly stunning city - with mountains tumbling into the sea, lush oasis in the midst of the astringent and harsh omani desert-mountain terrain. staying in a hotel that was a converted palace was enchanting, as was the grand mosque, and as were the omanis themselves - very friendly, curious, and gracious people. it was a nice little adventure. so was having my family in doha.... we took a trip out to the desert to go tearing over the sand dunes in a 4x4 driven by a palestinian-qatari with a sense of adventure, run into camels wandering about, and camp in a bedouin tent. the desert is more beautiful than i had imagined. it is mysterious and vast, but also somehow at once gentle and unforgiving at the same time. a remarkable place. equally remarkable was the thunderstorm that broke above our little camel-hair tent at about 4:00 am. very rare, but beautiful to listen to, watch and live through.....

another storm that has been overwhelming to live through is the cartoons controversy. the boycott is still in effect here, and there are bumper-stickers about with various slogans - anti-danish, anti-west, pro-islam, etc.... i have had many conversations with diverse people. the wedding was remarkable in being the first dinner party i had been to in ages where the cartoons did not dominate the conversation... i'm sure you have all talked about it too much yourselves, but it's hard to escape here. i have a conversation class coming up this week where the cartoons are the topic and the question for discussion is whether this is "western terrorism." (you can only imagine how much i am looking forward to discussing this infuriating topic in my abaya....) i have had some surprising conversations, some less so.... some encouraging, many frustrating. i have had a hard time knowing the proper way to express myself on the subject, knowing how the walk the line between being honest and being respectful. or rather, knowing how to walk the line within myself. and of course all the while people are being killed over this, and more mutual damage is being done for "western" - islamic relations than ever, and more misinformation raining down hard on both sides. [i saw a CNN segment entitled "freedom v. sharia law" that (wrongly) claimed that it was "a strict interpretation of sharia law" that banned depictions of the prophet, not islam itself. many well-educated arabs still tell me this is all about the jews and rumors of quran-burning in europe are not uncommon.]

i recently came across a quote from a 2005 salman rushdie article that i thought worth sharing - "Democracy is not a tea party where people sit around making polite conversation. In democracies, people get extremely upset with each other. They argue vehemently against each other's positions. (But they don't shoot.)" so much of this whole controversy (at least here) seems to be about what freedom, or democracy, really means... and i think rushdie has it right here. just as he had it right in the satanic verses - "what kind of idea are you?" ... he asked that throughout the book. (and of course got himself a fatwa for it.) but sometimes we can only know what a free society is, and whether we want it, and if so what it should look like, and where the proverbial line in the sand between freedom and responsibility is drawn, by asking "what kind of idea are you?" what kind of idea are you freedom of speech? what kind of idea are you islam? christianity? secularism? multiculturalism? cultural relativism? is there a point in a free society where we ask all members of such society, immigrant or native, muslim or buddhist or christian, to accept certain values? a point where what we want our society to look like trumps cultural relativism? because is it really possible to have a free society when there are certain groups on the other side of communal values? certain groups protected more than others? is not offense and insult a daily part of life in diverse, democratic cultures? isn't the right to allow that offense and insult, and the dialogue and development and progress that is allowed by the freedom and imagination that also allow offense and insult, what the enlightenment was all about? i worry that the moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it's a belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision or contempt, freedom of thought becomes diminished..... freedom of thought - what kind of idea are you?

i also wonder if sometimes it is necessary to provoke in asking these questions. if provocation is in fact the only way to see where the line in the sand is actually being drawn, to understand what the line really is, what the sand really is - force the shades of grey grains of sand into starker colors.

and maybe provocation is wrong. but maybe it is not. maybe it is not when the london bombers were home-grown - british born and raised - and when honor killings are claiming the lives of young muslim germans in berlin, and when young belgian women are heading to iraq as suicide-bombers.... maybe provocation is not wrong when we are not sure exactly how cultural relativism and freedom and democracy are really working together. and we are concerned that they may in fact be working against each other sometimes. maybe that is the time to provoke, to throw too much sunlight on it all and see what we learn in the glare.....

what kind of idea are you?
it is a dangerous question. but it is perhaps more dangerous not to ask it.


more questions than answers, as usual. but that's usually what storms bring....

i hope that this finds you well, no matter what the forecast is where you are.