40 Minutes on the Phone

I called Malek and talked to him for 40 minutes. I think that will probably cost a million dollars. It was worth every second, though. Bringing these two strange worlds together again. I have not been gone for long, but it feels like centuries, millenia. "With you, everything is life or death," says Trevor. Yeah well...that's...not ALWAYS totally true...

Tonight I watched about 50 trailers and previews on the apple website. I was impressed, except for the part where it got to movies about Islamic Extremists and Terrorism. Whatever, freedom of speech, "horea ta'abeer erra2ee", if people want to make movies about Islamic Extremists who strap bombs to themselves, or conspire to strap bombs to themselves, or who believe that the only point in life is to engage in Holy Jihad, go them. It's a free country. Doesn't mean I have to frequent them, but they can do whatever they want.

I just get mad when entwined in the images of terrorists are images of people praying in mosques, or flashes of pages from the Quoran. Seriously. As a Mormon, I imagine I'd feel the same kind of frustration if I were to see a trailer for a movie about the Fundamendalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with images of polygamist colonies flashing next to images of the Book of Mormon.

About two years ago, I came to the realization that the world would be so much better if everybody would just stop being stupid. "People should just stop doing stupid things. If everybody just didn't do dumb things anymore, the world would be such a better place!" The difference is that I don't think the government has the right to control people doing stupid things, like make images that diliberately distort the western world's perception of Islam, and perpetuate the image that it is a fundamentalist terrorist machine.

My Jordanian friends all said that the US government is controlled by Jews. That our media is controlled by Jews. That the Jewish influence in our society is only superceded by Israel itself. I never thought that was true, until coming home. You notice things like kosher signs on food labels, and the star of David, a lot more after being without. Hmmm.

Reading, "The Lemon Tree," was a great relief for me. It helped in so many ways. I finally felt as though there were someone who understood part of my experience, though what I lived in Jordan was in many ways very far removed from the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that was the heart of the book's story. I need to contact the man who wrote it; he did a most excellent job.

I strongly believe that the solution to the misunderstandings, the solution to violence, the solution to hate - is education, compassion, and understanding. You get education from reading. You get compassion from experience. You get understanding from exposure. All of these things, reading, experience, and exposure - the base of it all - is language.

The Arabic Language is the first step.