Going both ways

When life takes away youtube, drink lemonade and
cookies (NYC).

So just now, while procrastinating about writing, I came across a tweet that sounded hilarious:

Tom Murphy ‏@viewfromthecave

This is just too good: NGOs + Nairobi + The Office = Aid for Aidhttp://bit.ly/PnExyG  HT @SwahiliStreet

I love the premise—I’ve been talking about trying to make a similar show based in South Asia (surprise) for the past year.  So far I’ve only gotten as far as writing 1-minute awkward scenes and coming up with a few key cast members.  These guys are much more with it, they’re applying for money on kickstarter, a cool new fundraising platform.  I click through and want to watch their short clip.  No can do.  It’s on youtube, which hasn’t been accessible to those in Bangladesh for several weeks, since the massive uproar about the insulting movie about the prophet went viral.

Earlier today, I came across an article on the Daily Beast about Lara Logan’s comments about terrorism (HT @asifsaleh).  Even accessing that was tough—something on the same page linked to youtube, so I had to refresh a few times to get a different format that was allowed.  Ironically, my quest to see what she had said (I really admire her courage last year in starting a public conversation about what journalists and other frontline reporters face in crisis situations), I ended up on a few other, more dubious media sites summarizing her comments.  Since they were fairly emphatic about the persistent threat of terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan and our false sense of calm, clearly conservative papers were the quickest to pick them up.  As I read the articles, and then mistakenly read the comments, I was shocked at the vitriolic hatred that people so nonchalantly throw out there, with sweeping statements about religion, ethnicity, continents, etc. What made it more ironic to me was that, if one changed a few words here and there, he could essentially re-shoot the same scene in the protests that we saw all over the national news in the last few weeks in the U.S., the anti-American chants, violence, and threats.  The root sentiments were present in those that were involved in the rally to Occupy Wall Street on the movement’s one year anniversary (yes, I was there, but not on purpose!).

I escaped OWS and had a block party of my own.
For one. (Philadelphia)

  For all the talk about fundamental differences, what I see are the similarities between those that up on a pedestrian fanning flames.  The enemy of fire is not a bigger fire.  That’s how we burn the whole world down.  Like it or not, with the weapons we have at our disposal now and the mutual dependence of nations on one enough, I think we share a destiny.  At the very least, we are an ecological system, like a rain forest.  Maybe the birds and the bees don’t care about each other, but one can’t prosper if the other dies out.  To quote Martin Luther King, Jr., “we can live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”  The jury is still out on whether self preservation will trump spite and ignorance.

Regardless of which way I jump, either from Dhaka to the U.S. or back, it’s always a jarring landing.  On the one hand, so much of life is the same.  People are the same.  We gossip about our co-workers.  Talk about politics.  Exercise.  Try to figure out which set of pants hides the extra weight we put on last months (oops.  Too many cookies!).   Complain about transportation—costs, inefficiencies, early closing times, etc.  Life is largely mundane and comprised of the minutia.   But there are these moments when these insurmountable differences are pointed out to us, by experts, politicians, religious leaders, and often other people we respect and admire.  Sometimes it comes on the small scale, the people who will be “friends with black people but would never date them.”  Or Republicans. Or non-Ivy League Graduates (I kid you not.  I’ve heard a girl say this).  We can make these boxes as arbitrarily and narrowly as we want.  It’s choosing to make and enforce the boxes that is the danger.  

Dhaka or NYC?  Hard to tell.....

Because that allows for large-scale stacking of boxes into a jenga-like situation, where there’s nothing left to maintain stability and structure.  Then you’ve set up a grid that can be exploited for any purpose.  Atrocity is legitimized because you’ve effectively deemed one part of the population sub-human, so they don’t deserve the same rights.  This phenomenon is well documented in genocides from Germany to Rwanda, to individual rapists and perpetrators of intimate partner violence.   My take is that religion is just a tool that can be used for or against this process; it’s not in itself the root cause.  I reject this idea that some religions are fundamentally opposed to human rights (Aayan Hirsa Ali, for example, says this about Islam and human rights for women; Qanta Ahmed would disagree with her).  But some of the best and worst people I know are fervently religious, and at the end of the day, we all make choices based on values.  For God.  For our country.  For honor.  For love.  For far less lofty and idealistic reasons, since no choices are really that shiny and easy.  Guns don’t kill people.  People kill people.  Especially those that they deem less human than themselves (all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others, right?).  I’m scared because I feel like many in the country that I’m from have deemed Muslims sub-human—consciously or not—and in the country that I’m living, the Muslims are perhaps reciprocally inclined to see Americans as less and less human.  And if we cut out the bonds that have begun to tie us together—the youtubes, and the twitter, and yes, even the facebook that somehow has found 1 billion (or 100 crore, as we say here) suckers to join its network (full disclosure: I just joined LinkedIn), I think that sets us on a far worse course.  If we take away cultural privacy (no longer is anything said in the inner halls of even the most exclusive clubs really off the record; the other 47% will find out), then there are bound to be moments of discomfort, anger, and disagreement.  In the end, however, hopefully the increasing interconnectedness results in an ability to deepen our recognition in humanity in each other, rather than build our bombs to destroy faceless, unknown one-dimensional aliens.  Build broadband and they will come.  And friend one another on facebook.

Can't start too early, evidently.

I was having a particularly bad day a few months ago—I felt completely ostracized here and unable to move past my simple identity as a bideshini (female foreigner).  My friend and I were taking a rickshaw together, and when he asked the price, the guy looked at me and said some ridiculous price.  My friend said, “Why do you ask for a price like that?  Do you think I’m a rich guy?”  Driver said, “Just as her to pay it.”  My friend retorted, “Do you think she came here to give you money?  That she has a bag of gold just for you at home?  Don’t you have family overseas?”  The driver’s brother was in Saudi Arabia.  “Don’t you hope that people there are treating him with kindness rather than exploiting him?  How can you be so rude to a foreigner when your own brother is a stranger in another land?”  The driver stopped talking, though I seriously doubt he had a major revelation as a result of the conversation.  But this is the crux of it.  Those of us in the middle, who say that the extremists don’t represent us, need to get busy fighting indifference.  Cultivating empathy in ourselves and those around us.  Looking for common ground or at least space to coexist peacefully.  We have to deconstruct our own boxes—prejudices, resentments, and hatreds; whatever they are—because they all make us instruments to manipulate.  

Really cool exhibition at the Mass School of Art--in
Mexico students are asking people to hand over
guns, and they are melting the metal down into
shovels to plant trees.  Powerful stuff.

And that’s a battle we’ll all lose.  Just look at the Hunger Games for another example of that (avoiding a spoiler alert to give you all a chance to read the 900 page series and then get back to me for a longer discussion!).  Who is the real enemy?  Don’t hate the players, hate the game.  As long as you keep playing it, you lose by default.  It’s a “Heads, I win; Tails, you lose” dog-eat-dog proposition.

But the world isn’t all gloom and doom!  Not by a long shot.  On the positive front, my little brother got married last week and it was magical.  And slightly soggy due to the major rainstorm that hit town the day before.  I was asked to sing in the ceremony and had a huge panic attack the morning of because I was choking back tears.  It might be cute when a slightly over intoxicated college roommate tears up when saying, “I love you, man,” but I didn’t think I could pull that off.  But I managed, and then cried to my little heart’s content during the vows and then threw eco-friendly lavender at the bride and groom.  

Mr. and Mrs. Travis May!

A new Mrs. May has joined the family, and at least two other Mrs. May’s danced Gangman in celebration at the rehearsal dinner (I would also like to note that there was a lot excitement when the Bengali “hit” 100% love came on).  That was obviously the perfect distraction to enable the cousins to sneak out and fill Holly’s car with balloons and write silly messages in shaving cream.  

Which is more?  Infinity love or 100% love?

This is the antidote, or at least my sanctuary, to these undercurrents that are tugging the world in different ways, much to my discomfort as I try to live with one foot in each.  The laughter, the commitment to love over all other things, to hope.  All of which, of course, is better with Nutella.

Full photo album forthcoming.