Living proof

I got told a new one today by a very enthusiastic taxi driver.  When I stepped into his cap and greeted him in Arabic he lit up and smiled from ear to ear.  "I'm so happy to meet you, a foreigner who speaks Arabic like us!"  And then followed a very typical question, "But do you follow the prophet Mohammed...do you know the Qu'ran?"  What followed next was a not-so-typical apologetic, "The Qu'ran tells us everything we need....EVERYTHING we need...every situation you find today there is an answer for it in the Qu'ran."  Oh really? I politely say.  "Yes...in fact, even scientific things like... do you know the disease Alzheimers...where old people forget things?"  Oh yes I am now hooked. "The Qu'ran gives us the cure for it...something people have been searching and searching for but it was in the Qu'ran the whole time."  What is the cure? I ask.  "It's something so simple you wouldn't believe it...7 parts olive oil and 1 part cardamom spice...you have to drink it every day...you know what I mean by olive oil right, natural olive oil that God gives us."  At this point I decide to try to engage the guy in some kind of reason, "but if that's the cure why are there still people dying of Alzheimers all the time?"  "Well, you have to catch it at the very, very beginning...but if people would just listen to the Qu'ran they would have the cure for Alzheimers."

Our conversation went on and on...he telling me that I didn't understand the Qu'ran and if I would just read and follow it I would find God.  I told him I have read it.  He didn't believe me.  I asked him if he'd read other holy books, he insisted he didn't need to.  You know, I could relate to this guy because I've been there.  Raised in the Christian community, I heard numerous scientific "proofs" of our faith.  These proofs were always rock solid and yet somehow unspecified, "Some NASA scientists at some point were doing some research and they found an astronomical proof of the story in the Bible of the sun standing still."  Who were these scientists?  What exactly was the proof?  Well...of course the person telling the story didn't remember the details exactly.  Somehow I picked up the vibe that I had to share my faith and I had to share it in a way that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was real and Christ was the only way to God...because it is so easy to prove that.

I've grown up and developed a more complex view of life and faith.    Ask...seek...knock.  We're on a life-long quest for truth and purpose.  We find our calling and our place in the world.  I have no proof for any of this, but I know my story and things I can only say have an orchestrated meaning.  How did I meet my husband when I was living in Tunisia and he was living in Las Vegas and we happened to cross paths in Los Angeles?  How did I end up with a little Tunisian daughter who needed a family even though foreigners are not typically granted custody of children?  There seems to be something going on when I randomly meet someone who needs to talk about adoption because they are considering  it.  I hold their hand and share the good, bad, and the meaning behind it all.

My taxi driver friend, we cannot prove anything, God is simply too big for any of that and maybe he likes our quest.  Really, if God wanted to be proved he could split the sky, part the oceans, shake the earth and show us all the truth, black and white.  Instead he invites us to a journey of understanding who he might be and what that might mean for us.  If God is loving can I give my heart and soul to being loving even when it costs me?  What will I discover in the process?  If God created my intellect can I take risks, invent, and create believing that something amazing will come out of it all?  Will I open myself up to others knowing that my story and experiences can somehow connect to them and hold them up along the way?  I believe all these things to be true, proof or no proof.  God is in there, weaving a story between us all...what story will we as humans create on this earth?  I think the story we write with God will be almost entirely determined by how we see God.  Is God an angry powerful God who needs to be defended by arguments, apologetics, and war?  Are we God's army?  What kind of story will we write with that...a self-righteous battle.  Is God our divine creator who has compassion on the broken and who cares intimately for each of us, his children?  A different kind of story is evolving here.  And of course, I have no proof for any of this except for what I would call living proof.  We see glimpses in the prophets of our age, Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, and the quiet woman who lives sacrificially so she can care for 4 foster children.  Mercy, love and hope can triumph, I want to be living proof.   

The day it all started

My last post on international air travel reminded me of the very first time I ever got on a plane to Tunisia.  I know this is now ancient history...not the typical day-to-day blogging...but I thought it was a story worth telling.

Throughout college there seemed to be a continual whisper in my ear that I would end up in the Arab world.  It was an interest and a hunch that I couldn't shake.  I wrote both my freshman year research and my senior year research on building understanding between East and West, but the day that I actually had to get on a plane and journey to an Arab country was completely overwhelming.  I had a Fulbright grant that I was completely unqualified for yet somehow received.  I had a plane ticket, and I had an address for a fellow Fulbrighter who was already living in Tunisia and said I could stay with her, I had my book-knowledge of Arab culture...and that is all.  Oh, and I had the info from lonely planet that Tunisia had western-style toilets which really calmed me down way more than is reasonable.  I said goodbye to my parents at Portland International Airport; I knew they thought I was crazy but they were trying to be strong because when you get a Fulbright grant you don't say no to it.  I turned and walked towards security and had a rising wave of fear that I'd never felt before.  What was I doing?  Well...it is only a year...and you can survive anything for a year, right?

I passed through Rome on my way and in the Rome airport they decided not to let me on the plane to Tunis.  This was because I didn't have a visa to stay the year.  I had letters stating I was studying that year and we had been told we couldn't get a visa until we were actually in-country.  That didn't seem to matter...they were not letting me on the plane.  I began to pannick and yes, I did cry in the airport.  My Fulbright friend had only my arrival details and I realized I didn't have a phone number for her; so if I missed this flight into Tunis and missed her picking me up I would have absolutely no one; no one to call...no where to stay...no idea what to do.  The gruff Italian airline employee boarded the entire plane and then called a supervisor.  I don't speak Italian but I could tell she was saying something like this, "I have this idiotic American girl crying at my gate.  She wants to go to Tunis but she's too stupid to have the right visa to go....I don't know what to do with her."  They decided last minute to let me on the plane...2 hours later I set foot in my new home.

The Tunis airport is over-whelmingly teal.  Teal walls, teal desks, teal, teal teal.  It's also smokey...and there are no-smoking signs everywhere.  And gosh....this place is an inferno, I may never look presentable again at the rate I'm sweating.  First impressions.  Fulbright girl's boyfriend picked me up and decided to take me directly to his parent's house.  His parents were upper-class Tunisians who seemed to be very influential in their community.  They welcomed me and decided that to entertain me they would put on a video of their daughter's high school graduation party.  Tunisia follows the French school system and inorder to graduate students have to pass a very rigorous exam called the BAC.  The BAC basically determines their entire future course of study.  Families wait on pins and needles to see the results and then throw spontaneous parties to celebrate.  This one was....special.  And shocking.  Eighteen-year-old girls strutting their stuff in tiny bikinis and boys chasing them.  Alcohol everywhere.  The video turned to the pool where couples were....being couples and then someone in the room laughed, "yeah, her dad is the one shooting the video."  And suddenly this became kind of funny and kind of shocking as he started zooming in on all the bikini girls' boobs.  I'm in the Arab world?  Suddenly I realized I was going to have to set my preconceived ideas down and start observing from zero.  I had spent the last 6 months of my senior year of college researching pretty generalized Arab "cultural rules" and how not to offend.  What I was experiencing in that living room was something else....Tunisia was its own creature and I would have to meet it on its own terms.  My head spinning from exhaustion and a bit of shock..I was whisked away to a cafe in the little town of Sidi Bou Said, a cliff-top overlooking the Mediterranean.  We sipped mint tea with pine nuts....I somehow remembered the Arabic word for the tea and I have ordered it ever since.  My Fulbright sister told me, "There's one phrase you should learn right away in case you need it....you can say F-off in Arabic by saying this..."  I locked that one in too...not that I really intended to use it.  It just was emblazoned in my head after that along with the mint tea and the gorgeous turquoise of the Med.  Welcome to my new life.     

On getting places

Travel: it's such a mixed bag of excitement and exhaustion.  We went home to Portland for the holidays and had fun just chilling with friends and family.  One day Mike told me, "You know, I think if we lived here I'd really miss the adventure of every day in Tunisia."  I had to agree, you never know what humorous, crazy, or just plain beautiful thing is going to pop out of nowhere when you're living out of your element.  That is for sure one of the biggest draws to me about living abroad.

But to live abroad and to see you friends and family from time to time requires one very painful thing: transatlantic air travel.  No matter what you do to ease the blow, a 13 hour time period trapped with several hundred other people in this weird floating alternate reality is just something to be endured.  This time was no exception.  In-flight we had already had several adventures...from kiddo spilling her drink on me to her throwing up on herself.  The flight crew seemed to be in this happy yet unhelpful kind of daze: I appreciate that you are being as nice as can be...but can you please remember that seat 20A is having an emergency and you're supposed to bring a towel?  Whatever, LAX-Istanbul was long...long...long but we survived.

Touching down in Istanbul was a bit of a surprise, the miles and miles of dense apartments were covered in several inches of snow and snow seemed to be blowing at an impressive diagonal.  I soon learned this was a big snow for Istanbul, one they were not prepared for and so all flights were grounded.  So we joined THE LINE.  THE LINE was a weird alternate-reality conglomerate of people from all countries and walks of life who were suddenly thrown together and desperate to get a hotel voucher from Turkish Airlines.  THE LINE sucked about 1.5 hours of your life...if you were lucky, sometimes it sucked a little more.  We were one of the lucky ones, so we thought, until we got to the front of the THE LINE only to find that THE LINE was a ploy to divert some of the passengers from the THE TRUE HOTEL LINE which was actually downstairs.  So we began our waiting a second time.  At least now we were camped out in the general vicinity of Starbucks, so while waiting was painful, I could imagine that I was just chilling out and writing in a coffee shop...this is something I like to do, right?  Kiddo basically went into outer-space land and started singing in this high moanful tone and dancing around; none of the other passengers were alert enough to notice her.

We were told the problem was busing passengers to hotels in the snow.  We waited until our name was called another 2 hours later and then we joined a group of about 30 rag-tag travelers who were to be on the next bus.  Finally...relief from the wait...and we started driving, and driving, and driving through the dark snowy city.  Istanbul is so vast it is overwhelming.  I had this feeling of being one small speck passing through millions and millions of day-to-day realities.  Nearly an hour later we arrived at our hotel, The Golden Age.  Really, I'm not joking.  The Golden Age seemed to be something from the 60's cocktail parties preserved in unchanging detail.  Dark wood, gold flashy trim, smoky reception area.  The Golden Age was now home to a third version of THE LINE, a mob of completely wasted travelers and their suitcases.  They called out names from the front desk and we jumped when ours was finally called.  A bell-hop decided to help us by leading us down a dark hallway and then putting us in a service elevator.  The service elevator didn't have a door, which freaked kiddo out, and so we we saw each of the 6 floors below us pass by and arrived in a linen closet surrounded by towels and garbage cans.  We found our way to the hall and then tried to open the door of the room written on our card...was that 6302?  An old man in a wife-beater opened the door....ooops.  Must be 6303.  And in we go.  Room 6303 was a long skinny room with three twin beds spaced about 3 feet apart from each other running the length of the place.  Kiddo plunked herself down in the middle bed and passed out.  Mike and I climbed each climbed into our own twin bed, he at the door-side and me at the window-side of the room. I was just spacing-out staring at the snow and the mass of apartments outside when Mike said, "Happy anniversary babe!"  Oh yes....that IS what day it is....the 8th of January, 3 years ago we said I do. I guess it's easy to forget when you're in the twilight zone called trans-atlantic travel.

The next morning we woke up and got to see snowy Istanbul in the daylight on our bus ride.  Bridges, sea, small alleys and endless apartments looked so peaceful covered in white.  Back to waiting at Starbucks.  I bought a mug since the place and I seemed to have shared some kind of experience.  That afternoon we got on our 2 hour flight to Tunis, home.  When we arrived and stepped out of the airport we were greeted by a warm glowing sun.  We all basked in it.  One of the many reasons we live in Tunis.  Why do we go through this kind of stress to live somewhere so far from home?  Living at home is easy in so many ways...family close, a way of living that you intuitively know and understand.  I can't really answer the question of why travel calls and why we answer.  But we do, and we're willing to endure a lot to live this life in our home-away-from-home, Tunisia.

So I begin

So many ideas and thoughts fly through my head on a daily basis.  Most of the time they flutter about and seem to disappear before I can anchor them to anything.  A blog...something I tried before and dropped.  I keep thinking I need to try again.  Why did I give it up last time?  Living in Tunisia post-revolution means our internet didn't work reliably for 6 months straight.  When it took me 5 hours to upload a photo it was easy to be discouraged.  Also I realized that my focus was too narrow: I was blogging as a way to build our new photography business.  In reality, most of what I think about or want to write about is related to images but not necessarily wedding day photos or newborn babies.  I want to explore is what it means to live cross-culturally in dramatically changing times, what it means to create, and what it means to unexpectedly become the mom of a 6 year old little girl.  So many things I want to explore and find answers about; and a blog seems like the right format to do that.  Will I be able to keep up?  I'm not totally sure, but something in me tells me I need to give it a try!