Over here on the edge of the Arabian Gulf, or anyplace for that matter, sometimes the toughest obstacle to overcome is your own mind. Rational thought, perspective--it is all there through a glass darkly and when the lens lightens suddenly you find yourself standing in a different world. How to moderate or control that passage is a mystery, a trick, a sleight of hand that I often fail to understand. My birthday has come and gone. Forty-five years--not much to some and old to others; I wonder if it marks a halfway point yet or maybe I’ve already passed it--or is it yet to come? That is the question and if anyone tells you they know the answer, well, they’re full of hot air or as my grandpa used to say, “windy.”
We left for Thailand right after my last entry. The practice of Buddhism in Thailand was part of the fabric of the place and the temples and spirit houses were visited by people and were freshly maintained each day. We learned of the sitting Buddha, standing Buddha, reclining Buddha and teaching Buddha--the only attitudes in which Buddha exists. During our almost three weeks there, I was always moved by the visible expression of gratitude practiced by the Thai people. The frenetic activity of Bangkok didn’t always allow for it but when appropriate you put your hands together at your chest and gave a slight bow while thanking one who has done a service for you--even if only after buying a bottle of water at 7-11 or paying your bill at a restaurant. It is always reciprocated and respectful. I don’t know this person and they don’t know me but I’m thankful and that feeling is acknowledged and returned before we continue on with our day.
We toured the ancient city of Ayutthaya, the former capital of Thailand, and on its grounds were sign posts with the 38 blessings, which remind me of the Beatitudes, both of which affirms our commitment to making the world a better place through our actions. Deceptively simple.
We are topping off our tank here, so that when we return to Waukenabo we won’t wonder what we are missing, because it will be nothing.
Yesterday I noticed a big dead ram decomposing on the side of the highway (kind of like a racoon on hwy 169). It’s fur was a rusty shade of brown and its head encircled by thick dark ridged horns the size of a man’s forearms. It must have fallen from the back of one of the many open truck loads of goats we see from time to time. Oh, for a moment, he was free!
There are acres and acres of mound after mound of construction and demolition debris dumped in the desert spaces along our route each day. From the air they form a semi-symmetrical pleasing pattern, but on the ground, it’s just plain ugly. There has been a small herd of camels strung out between those mounds, large dark brown almost black camels with their single shaggy humps replicating those they scavenge within. I’d never seen a baby camel before but lately there are often one or two out there as well.
Not far from the turnoff to our compound there is what appears from the window of our van to be an entire city being built. Long complexes of structures, dump trucks and earth movers surrounded by clouds of dust from all of the activity. Building is happening everywhere here. It’s as if at some time in the not too distant past, the land was released to developers and they have continually raced to fill it in ever since. There are many that are only partially built and stand empty and many more that get completed and eventually have cars parked in front of them.
We just wrapped up George Orwell’s 1984 in my senior classes. One of its enduring expressions is doublethink: the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time. The majority of people who live here must exercise this mental maneuver regularly. One has to believe that if the physical landscape can be altered and adapted so fast that the cultural landscape can as well. It must. This is a place that operates with impunity, which in turn does not promote reflection and without reflection, how do you avoid a kind of stultifying stagnation intellectually, psychologically, physically and socially. You don’t.
Here is where I was (for a moment) in my head in January:
ISG Dammam students and my colleagues are all wonderful people for whom I have much respect and admiration. They have taught me way more than I ever taught them. They have opened my eyes to a part of the world to which I’d never really been exposed, particularly the local hires who have all been so welcoming, and who make up the majority of the staff at Dammam. My students are intelligent, compassionate, awesome people and future citizens of the nations they represent and I will never forget them. It has been a rich and rewarding experience filled with love and inclusivity and my door in Minnesota will always be open to all of these people.
What I see for many, if not most, is that they reside here because of financial, political, social or some other necessity. I do not have to. I understand that the choice I had to come here was a luxury not afforded to many and I take that privilege seriously. Unfortunately, I don’t think I adequately evaluated the reasons for that decision or just wasn’t aware of the impact living in Saudi Arabia would have on me. When I came, I did so with thoughts of adventure and excitement, but that has turned to resentment and self recrimination. It is not an option to continue on in a place whose governmental system and the manner in which it treats its environment and its people, both expatriates and nationals, I despise.
When this school year is complete, I will have accomplished what I set out to do.
While Sara Compound comfortably covers up much of the reality of the Eastern Province and has provided us with a wonderful experience, I always feel like I am somehow complicit in an environment to which I am absolutely opposed. I know that I am just a visitor and this is someone else’s country, but now that I’ve been here I can honestly say that I am deeply uncomfortable with the manner in which this country operates and exists and to continue living and working here, I only contribute to the sense that this environment is somehow a legitimate expression of what it means to be a fair and functioning society. It violates who I am as a person, which is not something I spent a lot of time consciously considering before residing here. It is a choice to stay here and by continuing, I feel like I am condoning it.
Of course my country has plenty of problems as well, but its problems are my problems. That is not the case here.
I do not say this lightly--I admire those that continue to do the honorable work of operating an international school in Saudi Arabia and I am deeply impressed by the space and quality created by the ISG system which operates in an insular environment that heroically conflicts with seemingly so much of what the country of Saudi Arabia stands.
Not this month.
Like I said in the therapeutic exercise above I am fortunate to have this experience--to see this with my own eyes. I am fortunate to have had the opportunities that I’ve had. It is true that I’ve worked for these opportunities but I’ve had the luck to be born to the parents I was born to and the community into which I was born. I know I’m more lucky than not. The cards in the deck of existence are shuffled differently for everyone.
Holy shit! I’ve just been dealt a full house, better not mess it up.
My juniors are going to begin reading The Great Gatsby soon and Nick Carraway recounts the advice his father gave him in his “younger and more vulnerable years.”
Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.
That sentiment is placed right on page one, and I try to keep it on page one for myself as well.
Bhilal, our taxi driver, who happens to be Muslim and Indian, was ruminating on religion in the car the other day--about how we all believe the same basic thing: Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, etc. “just different names,” he said. Be good to each other. Obvious stuff.
I don’t like too much certainty or sweeping statements or extrapolating social circumstances into character judgements. This predisposition, coupled with a reserved nature sometimes puts one at a conversational disadvantage.
Lately, it feels like division and sensationalism reign supreme and I wonder how we maintain equilibrium? Why does cynicism, ignorance, fear and even hate get elevated to the legitimate by some while kindness, humility, thoughtfulness and earnest, open inquiry, reflection and patience are ridiculed and mocked?
There are times when I’m frustrated with the level of effort or attitude of my students and I implore them to rise to the occasion and not sink to the obvious or easy. We all do it sometimes. It is a sign of weakness, and you are not weak, I say. You are only choosing to be weak because it’s easier in this moment. Managing conflict both physically and mentally is what a responsible adult tries valiantly to do. Our lives are stories and a story isn’t a story without that conflict but in our greatest stories someone overcomes that conflict (or is destroyed by it) and inspires everyone around them (or those reading about them) to do the same, often by subverting the base instincts that are often the easiest to succumb to and so rise to something better.
There is a bright crescent moon this morning accompanied by a single star (seriously). The air smells fresh and cool. It is darker later into the morning now and lighter later into the evening. There is no daylight savings time here--no saving of time at all, so you adjust to the shift in the presence of the sun rather than artificially account for it.
The call to prayer came through the window around five this morning. It is ubiquitous and ordinary here now yet was a defining characteristic when we arrived. A chorus of Imams singing almost in time, creating a cacophony of sound--the kind of sound that is amplified and demonized on TV and in movies--even the host of a recent episode of Saturday Night Live, Aziz Ansari joked about it.
It’s a church bell calling the parishioners to mass as if it were Sunday Morning at St. Adalbert’s in Silver Lake, Minnesota.
It is fear. I’d be afraid too, if it’s all I knew. In fact, I was afraid--and still am sometimes but my fear comes from ignorance and ignorance can be an indiscriminate weapon, maiming and frightening anyone in rhetorical sight. This comes up on our van rides to and from school sometimes--attitudes based solely on a worldview shaped by narrow or, at least, extremely specific experiences and apocalyptic headlines and news stories. The age range for us in the van seems to dictate our views. It isn’t categorically the case, but the younger the rider is, the more they are prone to believe those attitudes can or will change and the older passengers tend to see those attitudes as fixed and entrenched, stuck in a rut of complacency, grooves worn into a comfortable repetition of judgement and discrimination with no consequences because they’ve wrapped themselves in a blanket of protective distance and unexamined perceptions, reinforced and fortified by a steady diet of simplistic overgeneralizations custom made to perpetuate and feed itself through a Rube Goldberg-esque infotainment machine whose parts are so shiny and interesting we forget that someone built it and it is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Based on sentence length alone it is pretty clear which view I am most preoccupied with.
I don’t want to be one of the “older” passengers but I am. I have changed and I appreciate that change. I’m better for it. But sometimes I just feel a little used up in a way--worn, comfortable and capable, reliable, but a little out dated and doesn’t always quite match, like a comfortable leather boot and all that implies--you know, tough, smelly, wrinkled, etc.
At any rate, I believe in my international school and what it tries to do. I believe in kindness. I believe in taking responsibility. I believe in the idea that if you don’t have anything nice to say you shouldn’t say anything at all (unless it’s in your blog). I believe in the beauty of nature. I believe in physical labor.
I watched the hard work of Dad and Dale and other family when I was growing up and have always respected that work, the work of making something worthwhile. I still respect it more than any other kind of work. It has made for a kind of self imposed tension. I remember as a high school wrestler, instead of remembering moves and holds I would just depend on my physical strength which would sometimes work but more often it would not and I would be defeated by someone who worked at getting better at wrestling, rather than relying on what they already knew. Teaching is similar that way sometimes. It can be easy to rely on your personality and technique yet not really have a grasp of the content. You’re participating and even feeling like you are making progress, but in the end the experience is a little empty of what it could be, so you recognize it and try harder. I keep working on it. People don’t really change, but we can adapt and learn, and that’s enough.
