|
A week in the Middle East
By
James Norton
| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Editor's note: The Monitor's Middle East editor James Norton shares his observations during a one-week tour of Jordan and Israel.
1-30-03
Air France Flt. 325
Boston to Paris, Paris to Amman
I'm flying out to Amman on Air France, an experience that bears repeating. French is a lovely language for mundane flight-related information; to these unsophisticated ears, an announcement about upcoming turbulence sounds like an invitation to spend a romantic summer on the Riviera. And then the plane shudders like a broken milkshake machine.
And the airplane food - so often an oxymoron on American carriers - is fantastic, offering a mind-blowing choice between veal sauteed with wild mushrooms and provencale-style tilapia.
I plan to save the menu as a souvenir. And order the tilapia.
On the Paris to Amman leg of my journey, I sit next to Khalil Gulzar, a young insurance consultant from Toronto. He wears an untrimmed beard combined with a neat pinstriped dress shirt and slacks, a full-color English-language pamphlet about the hajj tucked into his breast pocket. Khalil is on his way to Saudi Arabia to perform the hajj in Mecca, a pilgrimage all Muslims are required to make at least once in a lifetime, money permitting.
We quickly start chatting; without little prompting, he tells me about his understanding of Islam, which he emphatically describes as a religion of peace. What about the Sept. 11 hijackers, who killed in the name of his religion?
"The people who [committed Sept. 11] who had Muslim names are not even Muslims," he says. "Killing of innocent people is against Islam. Killing yourself - suicide - is not permissible. So either way, it's against the beliefs of Islam."
Khalil, who moved to Canada from Pakistan seven years ago, speaks highly of Toronto's multiculturalism, and of the relative tolerance of Canadian and US cultures. But for him and his friends, he says, the mood has shifted since the attacks. He has friends with professional degrees who can't get jobs because of their Muslim names, he says. And because intolerance and the unlawful detention of Muslims is rising, he adds, many skilled professionals are returning from the US and Canada to their home countries.
"I believe the US and Canada are very good societies and that the general public are very good people. But now that [the US] has broken its own laws, Muslims are fleeing back to their own countries. These are doctors, engineers, architects - people who helped build the society."
But Khalil is most worried about young Americans, whom he sees as particularly vulnerable to anti-Muslim sentiment. Education about Islam's true beliefs, he says, is needed to teach non-Muslim American young people to exercise tolerance.
"The young generation have heard so much about the bad side [of Islam]," he says. "We need to educate society again."
Conservation soon turns to Iraq, and the possibility of war. "It's just to get control of the oil fields," he says. "They couldn't find any weapons of mass destruction. And even if they produced some for their own defense, that's their right, like Canada or the US."
At the end of our talk, he excuses himself to pray, bowing his head to tray table in front of him. I turn my eyes up toward the flight's movie screen just in time to catch Goldie Hawn trying on a particularly form-fitting sweater. It seems likely that I'll see more such contradictions before my trip is over.
Amman Airport
Nabil Khatib, a driver who often works for Cameron and his wife and colleague Nicole in Jordan, meets me at the airport. It's the first time in my life I've been met by someone holding up a sign with my name on it, and in a new country, after 16 hours of travel, it's a welcome sight.
We chat about the weather (it's a pleasant 65 degrees F) and Boston's bonechilling winter soon comes up. "Ah, but Boston is nothing like Chicago, or Detroit, or Madison, Wisconsin," says Nabil.
Madison? That's my hometown. Nabil, a retired airline pilot, often flew into Chicago and would drive up to Madison to visit his son at college. We soon start talking about our favorite places to eat.
"Do you know the restaurant where they make the chicken wings?" he asks.
"BW-3?" I reply.
"Yes! That's it!" he says.
Everyone says it's a small world, but this strains credibility.
|
RSS feed
