These three people are not related at all, in any way, except in my heart. They are especially colourful stones in the mosaic of people in my life, the many people who have some tie to the navel of the world, that is, the Middle East. They are in a special grouping: those pieces whom I cannot quite categorize, except to place them carefully together in the place on my mosaic in which the grout is prayer for the special grace of God.
Miralee was my nanny, my grandfather who cared for me when we lived in Afghanistan. I have dim memories of his wizened and gentle hands patting me on the arm, “Imjabeeb, Tamee, imjabeeb”; his quiet and sun-bleached eyes smiling, always smiling, until the day we left and they were wet and sparkling, with the words, “When you are big, Tamee, come back to visit me.”
I have never gone back-except in spirit, many, many times- for I am sure Miralee is dead, he was a grandfather in truth when he was traveling the dirt roads of Kabul, back and forth from our house to his. He was a Muslim, a simple man too, and like the poor can, he loved me with a care and purity. He warned my naïve young parents about the bad gardener and the packs of dogs outside, the scorpions the size of a man’s hand. I remember Miralee as the most pure gift of Fatherhood, a spark of older, wiser gentleness. When we left Afganistan in 1973, I had a recurring dream of the land engulfed in flames, totally destroyed. The dreams receded and were replaced by reality only a few years later. And as my own life entered into the metaphysical flames of confusion and uncertainty, the fate of Miralee and how he’d loved me were always in the back of my heart, because he’d given me his heart, many times over- and my soul has hope for his in the mercy of God.
Kensa is my neighbor here in California. She comes from Morocco but of an American mother and an English/Iranian/Moroccan father. She is a mosaic within a mosaic piece- responds easily and naturally to pulls of compassion and virtue, but skeptical to any organized religion. She sees selfishness clearly and has no pretensions to the upper class being somehow better, yet also seems strangely, loosely luxuriant. She fits both in the Quaker Meeting House and belly dancing in someone’s sitting room in Morocco. We go on long walks and I talk sometimes about Christ and she questions me on hypocrisy and real love and politics; she is extremely reasonable but suddenly hurt and sensitive, putting the Hand of Fatima around her child’s neck. She understands the situation in Lebanon from a Western and an Eastern point of view.
Somehow, the Kensa I see inside does not fit with the secular, environmentally ferverous, international, third-culture kid. Her soul seems to be a religious one: in that when her children and her husband fail her, when she is faced with something raging like a fire in her life (as we all face, both failure and fire, in ourselves and in others) she will raise a metaphysical cry- and I hope that she will remember the little glimpses of Christ (I hope were see-able) she may have encountered. When she asks me what made me change into a religious person, and I say that I finally understood that God loves me- that simple truth- she does not say anything, there is a flat and closed silence. I do not understand this silence, and it grieves me. It as if she cannot grasp the paradox of intimacy and omnipotence I am presenting to her. But I love her, nonetheless, because I see something in her, like love set to the music that floats along the harbor-water in Tangiers. I have never heard it, I have never been to Tangiers, but I hear it in her. In some ways, she, like those of her father’s culture, has from the beginning of my knowing her, given her heart to our family and to me- the heart-giving of an open tent, a sharing of food, time and care. She treats my children like she does her own and catches them when they jump to her in the pool; she saw that Ana was ready to swim before I did. Yet, I know that also in this giving, there is great responsibility to walk therefore carefully, because once betrayed, even inadvertently, and the tent will never be the same. So I pray but know that I am not her answer- only Christ will be, as He is for the whole world.
The Crippled Lebanese Man is the only name I have for him- just a chance meeting outside a Catholic Church somewhere you wouldn’t expect to meet him. He told me something that brings Miralee and Kensa together, and places them in the context of the suffering in Lebanon, Iraq and Israel. “A Muslim,” he said, leaning on his walker, “will give you his heart if you approach him with open hands in peace. He will give you everything he has. But if you approach him with war he will fight you until he dies.”
Is this right philosophy? No. It lacks prudence, forgiveness and holy balance. It lacks the Wisdom of Christ: “Do not throw your pearls before swine”- that is, know with whom you are dealing- and “ be gentle as doves, wise as serpents”- that is, be gentle but with the firm constitution that survives to forgive- “ if a man asks you for your shirt, give him your cloak as well”- that is, in the context of detachment and love for your fellow man, but with no conditions of return- “ if a man slaps you on your left cheek, give him the other also”- that is, forgive all the way to the Cross.
So now the Semites are in a civil war- for the Lebanese, the Iraqis and the Israelis are all Semitic, all descendants of Abraham. Their lines of division are religious and political- but it is essential to remember, essential, that neither side explicitly has Christ informing it- except among small communities and individuals like Miralee and Kensa who are trying to follow the lights of love as they understand it, who are singing songs of love with their lives. We Christians are the salt granules who must answer those songs with the Word that will fulfill the nascent melodies.
The difficult thing is that the communication cannot come through UN Resolutions, armies, or frontal assaults. It comes when one lays his life down for the other in the Spirit of Christ. It is like a live-wire connecting one wire to another, passing the electricity along until all is connected: and there will be the Kingdom of God. And this is not a Western project- how presumptuous! No, it is a project the Lord started in the Great Command, "Go ye unto all the world, making all men my disciples". Nothing less will do.
