Fire vs. Fire
The safest place for one to be in a raging fire is an area which has already been burned, a place that cannot burn again because the fuel source has been eliminated. To prevent forest fires, the U.S. Forest Service employs a technique called the “controlled burn.” This reduces the amount of fuel and effectively halts the progress of a spreading wildfire. It is a very simple procedure.
It is alleged by the Bush administration that we are waging a “War on Terror.” But is it not blatantly obvious that this administration is committing selfsame acts of terror – to “neutralize” terrorists on foreign soil? Imagine a British predator drone flying over a small town in the mountains of Colorado, launching a flurry of missiles into a small cluster of homes, to “neutralize” some wanton European “evil-doer.” Now imagine that “just a few” mothers and their children are “accidentally” killed. What do you think would happen. Fury. Rage. A day of reckoning.
Does it surprise anyone that U.S. tactics in the “War on Terror” often take innocent lives? Isn’t that what terrorist tactics are designed to accomplish? If we employ the fighting-fire-with-fire strategy in the hunt for al-Qaida, are we not committing acts of terror on foreign soil? The American people should be ashamed of the Bush administration’s blatant disregard for life under the pretext of eliminating fuel for future flames. Bombing a village in Pakistan to kill al-Qaida’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is as ridiculous an act as bombing a bus in London to kill a bank robber. And we missed.
Published: AR Democrat Gazette, January 2006
KFC
January 11, 2006 :: Kashmiri Fried Chicken
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
The nights in Kashmir have not been bitter cold. Our tent is spacious and warm. I imagine my family, back home – after dinner – the light around the fireplace, the television, finishing up the dishes in the kitchen and kids asking for stories. And that isn’t far from the way this feels. We are comfortable. The men, telling stories in their beautiful blend of Hindko and Urdu, continue on with tales which I am slowly realizing have been developing for thousands of years. I began, a few nights ago, picking up phrases and inflections in their voices as they traded between making fun of our expensive boots with the clumsy feet stuffed inside – and their deep gratitude for the aluminum sheet roofing and lumber we have brought into the mountains. We’re welcome guests, but that doesn’t mean we’re above their jokes. I am watching a young man named Wajid. His eyes tell me everything I need to know. Wajid smiles when Mr. Rashid mimics the exaggerated movements of my arms when I fell earlier in the day – hobbling up an embankment from the river. I chime in, “Yes, sir. But I didn’t roll all the way down the hill.” We are becoming friends.
Noor Mohammed, a village elder, told me he and his donkey met JFK in Karachi
It is 8:30 in the evening, about the time I’m ready to ask whether or not we will be eating anything anytime soon, when Mr. Rashid disappears into the stars outside the tent and brings back a large silver pot and a propane cooking stove. He sets these in the front of the tent – by the door – and begins pouring oil and other ingredients into the pot. Outside the tent, my ears single out the sounds of chickens being slaughtered. Ladies and gentleman, the captain has turned off the No Dinner sign – you are free to move about the tent and prepare for your meal. He was just playing with us, Mr. Rashid. He knew we were uncomfortably hungry. After all, he hiked us fifteen miles – up one side, and down the other of the range that separates his village from Balakot and the NWFP. I imagine him to have been biding his time, telling stories, and listening for some certain pitch in our groaning American stomachs. He’s all smiles as he begins separating chicken parts into various pots and pans. The tent is filling with smoke and the aroma of frying chicken. Men are coming from all over the village to sit in the tent. Chai and biscuits are passed around. This is going to be good.
If I hadn’t seen it, I would never have believed it. But Mr. Rashid fried the chicken without utensils. He used his fingers to put the chicken into the hot grease – and take it out again. I saw it with my own two eyes. Maybe noting for the record, at this point, that he is missing a finger would be appropriate. Check. When he finishes, he calls outside the tent and a young man comes and takes all the cooking bowls, plates, and pans outside to wash in the river. We look around at one another, as if to say, “Who will say grace?” There’s grace enough in our hearts.
We are offered first pick of the steaming hot fried chicken. No problem! There are piles of chipates and mounds of warm rice in the center of the tent. Everything is drizzled with ladels of a spicy curry sauce – and then it’s every man for himself. We pile chicken, rice and fresh yoghurt into our bowls and begin tearing the chipates apart to pick up the meal with our hands. That’s how it works. . Delicious. This morning, I eat the leftovers. This is our last morning in the mountains. Today, we will come down from the hills and return to Mansehra – then Islamabad – then home. As we rise and leave the tent to stretch in the sun, all is quiet. Peace. Today begins the Eid celebration. Everyone is inside, in their shelters, preparing their best clothes – washing their faces and hands. Fragrant sandalwood floats on the air. Today is special. I imagine the reverence of Christmas Eve back home. Only, in this memory, the focus has widened outward. We are not staring into a box lit by flourescent lights and flashing signs that funnel our attention onto goods and services, bags, papers and boxes. The blind rush of consumption has vanished; no malls, credit cards, traffic, designer outfits or out-of-town family arriving late to the dinner table with stories from the road. The people in these mountains don’t have to imagine all that – or push it back – into some dark, quiet abyss just to wind down the gears of automated existence. They only know the other, the peace that exists outside that world. And nothing matters now, to me, but a remembrance somewhat akin to that. A snowfall so brilliant – so heavy – I knew school would be closed by the time my teeth were brushed and Mom pulled the cool sheets tight around my shoulders, kissed me on the forehead and turned off the light. A train whistle vaporizing in the frozen night air hours later, while I stared between the curtains at the clean white road – and cars tucked beneath blankets of fresh powder. I will always remember this village the way I see it this particular morning. Fresh, and brand new. We are on the edge of something we cannot possibly have imagined. There is a silence here unlike any quiet I’ve heard. And I claim the sweet remembrance of it now, remembering that it did – at one time – exist in the early morning hours of my American childhood. I may not have known it since. I haven’t. But what is clear is that I didn’t possess the vision to notice that I had lost it – driven it away. I had forgotten it altogether. And that realization holds within it a quiet, lingering sadness that turns, somehow – inward – into joy.
We are somewhere northeast of Muzaffarabad, in the mountains that run long above the Vale of Kashmir, it is mid-morning. The river is soft and far away, ambling between stones that have rolled down onto the valley floor over the millenia. We hear the occasional cadence of gentle feet on the path above us, the muted jangle of goats’ bells as they wanders between familiar huts. You feel a quiet like this. I feel it now, staring into the black and white world of this machine, these words on the screen and my own children squealing over their games in the next room. But I am taken back there, to the mountains, where we learned somehow to grow accustomed to the sounds of other children laughing in a language we are infinitely unaware of. The business of the tea-house, and the usual goings on there are gone. This is all I know. I have seen something of the beauty that confuses both worlds. And this morning it grabs me by the shoulders and lifts me off the ground, static rising up my spine, the spark. Today, we will pray in an open air mosque with our brothers.
When the azaan comes, the words of the muezzin hang in the air like the fragrance of a hidden garden. Men are gathering where the mosque once stood. The front row of this auditorium is a line of torn woolen blankets stretched out in the dust – the podium, a dead tree. Goats and sheep are spectators here, as reverent as young boys giggling – pointing from the periphery at sisters leaning around trees up the hill to get a better look. Men from four villages are pouring themselves into the gathering. A mosque once stood here. But not one stone was left upon another. All of them have been thrown down. The children are shushed – the sun grows louder. When the imam begins his song, my ears go useless. I cannot hear him. I see his lips moving, but hear only the sound of my own breathing, my heart in my throat and the flow of 200 men falling prostrate on the ground in submission to whatever it is in each one’s heart that he finds himself willing to submit to. Each of us finds, I suppose, the object of his sweetest adoration when his lips touch the earth – the prayer ringing around us like a bell.
I am not a humble man. I can say that I am a simple man, but for that, I often find pride where humility ought to be. Humility doesn’t come naturally. It arrives when we stumble toward it, knowing that we don’t know, begging for help. And it isn’t very fun. In fact, it can be painful. There is an honesty there, in humility, that one dare not convey for too long a time. It is such an uncomfortable state; so uncomfortable, it makes those around us uneasy as well. We never stay long at anyone’s feet. We aren’t made that way.
Islam is an Arabic word that means “submission.” And submission, when and if it comes, comes with a healthy portion of humility, a medicine that is tremendously hard to swallow. It is flavored with dust and concrete, pride and resentment, pain and death. It has choked me to death all my life, because I have refused to swallow a little every day. I wait, holding on to it. I wait until I am flat on my face on the side of a mountain, realizing that it is almost too late. Why do I hold on to what hurts me the most, and refuse to let it go? Why would I – why would anyone – deny that this is our true condition? So, as we lay flat on our faces on a site where a mosque once stood, the very spot where friends lost their lives, pieces of useless pride are chipped away. Clearly, in submission – when we bow our will to Allah’s – the miracle of grace happens. This is how God shows love. This is why we pray in the first place. It is an act of obedience.
The apostle Paul said, very clearly, that grace is what saves a man, (Ephesians 2:8) not his own actions. Not his belief in a set of rules or rituals. Not his willingness to say prayers or give money to the poor. It is by grace that we are saved through faith. And we are saved from ourselves – not some outside influence. We are saved from hate, fear, prejudice and pride. But the most interesting thing is that Salvation requires faith. And faith isn’t something one can choose – or even deny. Believers all over the world agree that, when belief and faith have come, they have come as a gift from Allah, from God. We do not possess the heart to choose faith. We do not even trust a stranger we meet on the street! And how much less the invisible force that spins the stars into being?
When we stand as the prayers are ended, each man wades into the sea of his brothers – each embracing the members of his community – to say two simple words: “Eid Mubarak!” (Blessed Celebration) I cannot expalin this here. Imagine colliding with burning planets, or beings spinning, wrapped in wings. This is fellowship. No words but what follows, as the declaration of my heart, are adequate:
ASH-HADU ANLA ILAHA ILLA-ALLAH
WA ASH-HADU ANNA MOHAMMADAN RASUL-ALLAH.