The Making of a Liberal, Part Four for the Grands

In the early Spring of 1977, pregnant with my third son, our family visited Big Bend State Park in Texas.  Riding a horse with my son nestled in my womb was not the most comfortable activity I've ever undertaken.  To keep him stable and safe in his watery world,  I held my body in a state of tension.  By the time I dismounted I could barely stand up with assistance.  But as the tension flowed away and blood rushed to my extremities, the beauty of the world around me came even more into focus.

  Big Bend, Texas

On our return to Houston from this trip we learned that a job was on offer in Saudi Arabia on the Persian Gulf in a place called Dhahran.  On July 19th with husband and two sons in tow and one son still finding safe harbor within, we arrived on a Pan Am flight from Paris to our new home on the Arabian peninsula.  As we flew low over the coast of the Gulf the changing depths of the sea caused the colors of the water to look as if dozens of different colored paints of green and blue had been poured in by some gigantic hand.  It was otherworldly.

 

                           The Persian/Arabian Gulf separates Arabia, the UAE and Oman from Iran

When we walked down the external and unprotected stairs to the tarmac, the engines were still oscillating and the heated air took my breath away.  Only the engines weren't on.  This was a summer shamal, a northwesterly wind raging in from Iraq...welcome to Saudi Arabia.

 

 Shamal in Saudi Arabia

                                          

Three weeks later on August 9th Andrew Neal Mangham made his appearance. My learning curve on living in the Middle East, however, had already begun in earnest.  At the very end of July with temperatures soaring as high as 120 ° F and humidity above 80%, I gathered my huge belly and went from North Camp (a collection of trailers a few miles from the main camp) to the clinic.  An old unairconditioned yellow school bus rattled up with a Pakistani driver. Ignoring the road the driver took off across the desert.  Andrew was experiencing his first of many wild and wooly rides on the sands of Arabia.  Five minutes into this roller coaster ride, the bus halted; the engine coughed into stillness; and the driver dismounted.  Laying a rug on the hard pan desert in the bit of shade created by the bus, the driver commenced his prayers while I almost fainted inside the oven that the bus quickly became.  Lesson  One-  Always have water to drink and to soak  into a towel, placed over your head.  Then with windows open and hot air blowing through the wet towel, you can experience, as close as you'll come in the outdoors of the Eastern Province, cool air giving you hope of survival.

             

                                        US/Canada Recycled Buses

                                                              

Twenty-two nationalities worked and lived on the Arabian American Oil Company compound.  A myriad tongues peppered trips to the local town, al Khobar.  National dress from countries around the world drew the eye.  Although in some ways not a melting pot, despite the variety of folks, it was still a marvelous opportunity to see and hear much of the world, to gather impressions from a word here, a gesture there, a smile, a frown, a walk, interchanges composed of broken English and broken Arabic or any number of other languages--from places like South Asia, Southeast Asia, North Africa, Europe.  I learned quickly to use my face, my hands and sometimes props to communicate.  It was always a challenge, often frustrating, but equally often fun and satisfying.  You either learned patience or you lived in a heightened state of anxiety and irritation.  I really worked on the former as the latter was just too exhausting.

 

It was in the Kingdom that I learned the importance of the separation of Church and State.  Prior to living there that notion of separation was merely a concept learned in school with little to no connection to real world experiences.  Islam and daily life could not really be separated for Muslims living in the Kingdom.  Citizens and Muslim guest workers prayed five times a day sometimes bringing activity to a halt; Ramadan, the religious month of daytime fasting, meant the closures of many restaurants during the day, or the partitioning off of hotel dining rooms so that visiting infidels could eat.  Customs, which had the approval of conservative Islamists but often without authority from the Koran, meant women went robed and veiled in public, could not drive, could not participate openly in business practices such as working in a store, could not go anywhere unless accompanied by a male member of the family.  To have a relationship with a person of the opposite sex was to court disaster and to sleep with someone without benefit of marriage could well mean death for both parties.  Women were and are often victims of honor killings.  (see Wikipedia article on honor killings.)

During this time I attended a gathering of people in a Palestinian's private home.  There were a large number of such people, mostly from the professional class, who immigrated from Palestine and the ongoing conflict with Israel.  I asked an innocent question about how they felt about life in Saudi Arabia.  The question was greeted with silence.  The silence extended.  Finally a woman said Palestinians do not discuss such topics with others even in the privacy of their own homes.  There was I learned in time a constant fear that their safe haven in KSA might end if it was learned they had said anything negative about life there.  Innocent abroad that I was, I was dumbfounded taking for granted the right to speak my mind on any topic.  The Right of Free Speech on that evening took on meaning that no textbook had ever afforded it.

Because men and women in KSA could not and most often still cannot interact except with family members, chaperones or after marriage, the sexes do not know how to relate to one another.  It was and is a toxic brew that leads throughout the world of Islam to the abuse of women.  I tried to excuse the situation with an old notion promulgated in some class in college, that if a society thrives, prospers, then what goes on in that society has a certain validity despite some negatives; for in the end the species propagated.  I eventually called bullshit on this argument.

The place of religion in Saudi  Arabia had a profound effect on me.  I became disenchanted with all religions seeking any that were not birthed in violence or used violence to spread.  Never found one.  I was more than willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

In the final few weeks of our time in Saudi Arabia in 1981, we learned that a pre teen girl had been raped by an uncle, impregnating her.  She was killed for bringing dishonor to the family.  That was the straw for me.  There are those who will argue that this is not in accordance with Islam.  Perhaps.  I'm no scholar of the Koran.  But the so called honor killing is a custom grown in the fertile soil of Islam and the religion must, in my opinion, bear some, if not most, of the blame for such barbarity.

All of the foregoing said, there are glimmers of change throughout the Arab world.  Enlightened young people, fathers and mothers who want something different for their sons and daughters are beginning to speak out, to question the assumptions of elders or those who are the more conservative members of the community.  To do so is often to risk all: one's reputation, career, family, even one's life.  It is exceedingly slow this change.  Incrementalism (not found in the dictionary but recently used by President Obama) is like the speed of light compared to the glacial changes within Islam.  But still my ten years in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are filled with memories of beautiful people who tried to hold with grace and calm the tensions between their religion and the changing world around them.  They continue to fill me with hope.

And I shall always remember one student of mine, Mohammed Sultan, who held up five fingers of his hand and said in halting English--"Note they are all different, these fingers, as are we Miss Gail."

 

But back to the 'making of a liberal'.  I have no statistics or studies to reference, but I believe it is fair to say that liberals are more comfortable with the separation of Church and State. It was and is the most conservative and authoritarian viewpoints that hold sway in much of the world ruled by Islam.  Individuals, men and women, court prison or death if they defy the tenets of their religion or break with the customs evolved over the centuries under the tent of Islam.  Their world never saw the Magna Carta, the Enlightenment,  the American Constitution, the Declaration of Human Rights.  In America, despite all our problems, we feel confident that we can promote change without inviting separation from our heads.  We may not succeed, but we have a plan within which we can act without fear--our Constitution. 

It  has been said that the history of our nation can be read as one long struggle to extend the liberties set forth in the Declaration and the Constitution to EVERYONE in America.  From the beginning it is fair to say that it is people of liberal/progressive thought who have extended rights to poor people, black people, female people, gay people, minors, the Other.  And the work is far from finished.  But we have a set of instructions, a document that is only a little over 200 years old that guides us.  It is and should be a living document, words that take on new meaning, in new times, reflecting the evolution of our humanity without undermining the foundation:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

My sojourn in Saudi Arabia forty years ago and my time in the UAE at the opening of this century helped define me.  So yes I am a Liberal and --finally say to the world --proud of it.  As Molly Ivins once said, "Fish gotta swim; hearts gotta bleed."  And there are still way too many days when my heart bleeds for those to whom social contracts have not extended the rights and liberties that are their due.