Prologue: I experienced the terrible happenings of 9/11 in Palembang, Indonesia. To that extent I was probably among the least informed due to the shortcomings in South Sumatra of electronic communication as well as the bias of local print media. Leaving Indonesia towards the end of October that year, I arrived in Egypt to complete a project begun the previous spring. As I had lived in Cairo for several years in the middle 90’s, I had the opportunity of once again seeing old friends. This is a commentary I wrote on October 26, 2001.
I had a date this morning with a beautiful lady named Nour. I had not seen her for a long while and it was a very special time. Some of you have seen a picture of the two of us and that picture has become my screen saver. You see, Nour is the lovely white mare that I have been riding for many years whenever my labors bring me to Egypt. Maybe it is that in this misguided world, a world getting more fanatical each day, the simple act of riding a wonderful horse into the desert is reassuring.
I rode with Osama, my Bedouin friend of many years. He is one of the people I am closest to in this ancient land and it was indeed good to be back in the desert with him, just the two of us, riding and laughing and remembering. Over the years we have seen friends come and go, shared experiences, sought advice, told many stories, but always trusting in each other's honesty. In a way that is a one way street because Bedouins cannot lie; it is not a part of their character.
I had not seen Osama since the terrible events of 11 September. Life is important to Bedouins and the specter of thousands of people dying in moments is as unthinkable to them as perhaps it was to us before we watched that horror unfolding.
We slowed our horses to a comfortable walk and crossed a sand-dune. There in front of us stood the Pyramids. In many ways the WTC Towers were the Pyramids of our age. Now they are gone. We shared our mutual horror and disgust. He asked me who committed this act and I responded with an unequivocal: Bin Laden. There, in the shadows of millennia, in this meeting of two cultures, I immediately realized we held different views. There was not anger in our discussion; there never is. What there was is reciprocal tolerance. The conflict is not between he and I as persons but between what we are. I can lament with Osama but I cannot feel the frustrations of the Muslim people nor can they feel ours.
Perhaps we don't want to admit it but realistically our respective cultures are presently in conflict and pragmatically they have been for centuries. Was not and is not our response to 11 Sept that of outrage? Can we not feel in our wrath some of what they have felt for so much longer? Or is it that we do not care to feel? Maybe what we are seeing in Pakistan and Indonesia is but the beginning of a ground swell of their outrage, a fury built up for so long and, yes, exacerbated by happenings in Palestine, but having roots in our different views of history.
Have we looked at the alternatives to what we are told is history? We sometimes do when it is to our benefit; we reviled apartheid though we were guilty of it ourselves. Is there some measure of truth in history seen through the eyes of others? If there is, then we must study this and search inside ourselves for answers and find them before those answers become moot.
This is what I learned today, on a wonderful horse, in the desert, with a friend I cherish and who I know is searching as I am for answers to the same vexing questions.
Please God grant Osama and I wisdom, the wisdom that all of us need to live together so that as he and I did today, all people can ride into their deserts and ride together.
Cairo, Egypt
Friday 26 October 2001
I had a date this morning with a beautiful lady named Nour. I had not seen her for a long while and it was a very special time. Some of you have seen a picture of the two of us and that picture has become my screen saver. You see, Nour is the lovely white mare that I have been riding for many years whenever my labors bring me to Egypt. Maybe it is that in this misguided world, a world getting more fanatical each day, the simple act of riding a wonderful horse into the desert is reassuring.
I rode with Osama, my Bedouin friend of many years. He is one of the people I am closest to in this ancient land and it was indeed good to be back in the desert with him, just the two of us, riding and laughing and remembering. Over the years we have seen friends come and go, shared experiences, sought advice, told many stories, but always trusting in each other's honesty. In a way that is a one way street because Bedouins cannot lie; it is not a part of their character.
I had not seen Osama since the terrible events of 11 September. Life is important to Bedouins and the specter of thousands of people dying in moments is as unthinkable to them as perhaps it was to us before we watched that horror unfolding.
We slowed our horses to a comfortable walk and crossed a sand-dune. There in front of us stood the Pyramids. In many ways the WTC Towers were the Pyramids of our age. Now they are gone. We shared our mutual horror and disgust. He asked me who committed this act and I responded with an unequivocal: Bin Laden. There, in the shadows of millennia, in this meeting of two cultures, I immediately realized we held different views. There was not anger in our discussion; there never is. What there was is reciprocal tolerance. The conflict is not between he and I as persons but between what we are. I can lament with Osama but I cannot feel the frustrations of the Muslim people nor can they feel ours.
Perhaps we don't want to admit it but realistically our respective cultures are presently in conflict and pragmatically they have been for centuries. Was not and is not our response to 11 Sept that of outrage? Can we not feel in our wrath some of what they have felt for so much longer? Or is it that we do not care to feel? Maybe what we are seeing in Pakistan and Indonesia is but the beginning of a ground swell of their outrage, a fury built up for so long and, yes, exacerbated by happenings in Palestine, but having roots in our different views of history.
Have we looked at the alternatives to what we are told is history? We sometimes do when it is to our benefit; we reviled apartheid though we were guilty of it ourselves. Is there some measure of truth in history seen through the eyes of others? If there is, then we must study this and search inside ourselves for answers and find them before those answers become moot.
This is what I learned today, on a wonderful horse, in the desert, with a friend I cherish and who I know is searching as I am for answers to the same vexing questions.
Please God grant Osama and I wisdom, the wisdom that all of us need to live together so that as he and I did today, all people can ride into their deserts and ride together.
Cairo, Egypt
Friday 26 October 2001
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