Pillow Talk Around the World

From a distance, you look like my friend

even though we are at war...Bette Midler (Julie Gold)

Long before I moved to Atlanta and wandered into my first blues joint, I was a Carolina girl.  I had big hair, big cars and a big tendency to find myself in funny situations. Or maybe I convinced myself they were funny.  Those were some tough years, but a sense of humor did get me through.

At age 20,  I had one of those "love at first sight" experiences - an 18-year old Palestinian who had just arrived and was getting his first taste of America.  Seriously, it was like one of those scenes in a movie when boy meets girl, eyes lock and you just know that nothing will ever be the same.  And it wasn't.

I don't know who was more naive.  He taught me how to say I love you and hairbrush (hair has always been important to me) in Arabic, and I taught him how to kiss.  Not that I was all that experienced. I was a late bloomer when it came to intimacy. But I do remember that we were young and pillow talk consisted of his stories of growing up in Beirut, Lebanon...bombings, studying by candlelight and poor vision at a very young age as a result, Yasser Arafat making his rounds to check on everyone, his mother struggling to raise three sons alone because his father died in his 40's, his mother worrying every time her sons left the house.  Forget the history books or the news, he took me there.  I could only share a life in rural South Carolina and my earliest memories of desegragation...riding my bike through corn fields, marching bands, my mother's health food store on Main Street, climbing trees and then crying for my mother to get me down (coming down is always the scary part).  And somehow it all made perfect sense that we were together at that time.  People are just people right? 

We were both so caught up in our own little world that the consequences caught us both off guard.  Did I mention that he was a virgin and we made a baby the very first time?  I said we were both naive didn't I?

The next two years were interesting.  The oldest brother was flown to America to oversee this situation since he was the man of the house.  I will never forget oldest brother.  He was very stern as he lectured me about his people.  Needless to say, I got my first real taste of culture clash...something I had never considered.  He told me they didn't do these things (really?) and that there were required classes in abstinence.  I wasn't much of a smartass then, but I remember telling him that little brother obviously skipped his. It was the weirdest experience of my life.  I can still see him standing in front of me, all serious and pointing fingers.  I was too curious and incredulous to say much. I was taking it all in.  There was an Arabic man outside my classroom door in Greenville, South Carolina...lecturing me.  I half wondered if Arafat was on his way to save my little Palestinian from the wicked Western whore!  I didn't argue with him, I intuitively knew better. 

I knew that his family was going to make him come home and that was that. 

My parents kept our precious little girl so that we could spend one last night together, and the next morning he took a taxi to the airport and I got up and got ready for work.  The sudden separation was worse than the flu and all the sickness was in a race to come out, as quickly as possible.  But I got over it and focused on raising a daughter.

Something was awakened in me by that connection and my spiritual journey began, for that experience was on a level of existence that knew nothing of segregation, religious wars and walls. These things seemed irrelevant.

Actually, it has always seemed irrelevant to me.  I can't stomach the media with its graphic and glorified production of what's going on in this world.  We watch in horror and disgust, then change the channel.  And if we talk about it at all, we take sides.  If you ask me, money isn't the root of all evil...it's taking sides.

Duality exists because of these sides and walls are a manmade construct.  Bridges are far more useful.

KS:  How do I get past this wall?
RL:  Silly girl, stop climbing...walk!