the cassandra pages

Holy Books

"In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful," by Turkish calligrapher Hüseyin Kutlu

There's been a good deal of writing lately about U.S. abuses of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo, the recenty-published pictures of Saddam Hussein, and the incidents of the desecration of the Qu'ran, and I wanted to point out a few as well as bringing up some points of my own.

Readers of this blog know that I'm no fan of the simplistic, smug writing of Thomas Friedman, but I appreciated that he took on these topics in his columns "Normalizing Torture" , about depictions of torture on TV, and "Just Shut it Down", about the Guantanamo camp. Friedman, pointing out from his apparently eye-opening reading of the British and international press during a recent trip to London, that in his opinion the real damage of Bush's rhetoric, and clueless foreign policy appointments, is to American's image abroad (are there still intelligent readers who haven't grasped this? I guess so...) writes:

When photographs of Saddam Hussein in his underwear were printed in the New York Post and the London Sun, President Bush told the Associated Press: “I don’t think a photo inspires murderers. These people are motivated by a vision of the world that is backward and barbaric.” Then he added, “I think the insurgency is inspired by their desire to stop the march of freedom.”

Karen Hughes as director of public diplomacy at the State Department. Her mandate, when she assumes the job later this summer, will be to “promote U.S. values and improve America’s image abroad.” Hughes has no foreign-policy background and no discernible experience in Islamic matters. But never mind—she is Bush’s longtime political strategist and close friend.

On learning of the appointment, Business Week columnist David Kiley issued this caution: “One of the reasons America and George Bush’s image is so damaged abroad is that the Administration’s policy and rhetoric is so devoid of truth and historical perspective.”

I'm glad to know that now. Anyway, I guess it's good that Friedman hammers away on these points. What bothers me is that in all the talk about the damage to America's image, or to Newseek's credibility, we lose sight of what *I* would term the "real damage" - the astounding, life-altering damage to the dignity, health, and even the death of the human beings who have been the victims of these atrocious acts.  Second to that is the damage being done to soldiers who have witnessed or participated in the acts themselves, and who have been perverted or traumatized by them and will be bringing those physchological and emotional scars back into American society on their return home. Third, there is the damage to people like myself and so many other sensitive, caring human beings whose own psychology and mental landscape has been irrevocably altered by witnessing these images, reliving the acts in our minds, and considering the ways in which we have unwillingly participating or even aided them. Why can't we talk more about this, the true human cost of war and violence, rather than the fact that "American interests" have been hurt abroad, and that someone's profits will undoubtedly go down?

Another piece that is probably more worth reading is an essay by senior contributing editor James M. Wall in the most recent issue of The Christian Century, discussing recent American foreign policy pronouncements alongside the idealistic and accurate portrayal of the Islamic perspective in the recently-released film on the Crusades, Kingdom of Heaven. I haven't seen the film yet, but I've been glad to read about the vision of director Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise) and his desire to "help correct the imbalance that has led too many in the West to brand 1.2 billion Muslims as the 'evil other' in a 'clash of civilizations.'" Scott was advised by a Muslim scholar, Hamid Dabashi, a film expert from Columbia University, to help ensure the historical accuracy and fairness of Kingdom of Heaven. James Wall has been tireless in his attempts to broaden American understanding, especially that of religious leaders, about the Middle East and American foreign policy, and he's maintained a consistent and courageous point of view particularly in his writing about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In his recent post, Revering Dead Trees, Fr. Jake reflects about Islamic and Christian reverence for their holy books:

Here's what I find to be a very curious thing; that the desecration of a book could cause such outrage, or at least the appearance of outrage, while the physical abuses going on just off the Floridian coast hardly get a mention in the daily newscasts.

I understand that Islam, as well as other faith traditions, cares for their sacred texts with deep reverence. Christians honor the bible in a similar way; in a sacramental way. The words are an outward and visible sign of God's revelation.

But, they are still just books. By themselves, they are just dead trees with squiggly marks on them. The texts come alive when a living being engages them. We are what matters to God, not dead trees.

The ensuing discussion on Fr. Jake's post is very interesting, especially when the commenters talk about the use of the Bible as reverential object during liturgy. But I think some of it misses the mark, perhaps due to a lack of deeper understanding about why the Qu'ran itself, as an object, is treated with such respect by Muslims. Yes, as Jake and some of his readers point out, it is considered to be the revealed word of God - and many evangelical Christians see the Bible the same way. But that alone doesn't explain why people would riot over its desecration, and I think from a Christian point of view we can't quite get our heads around that.

When I was first getting to know my Muslim friends, I remember that one night we all noticed a local newspaper with an illustration of some Arabic calligraphy on the front page. Included in the calligraphy was the Arabic word "Allah", or "God." One of my Muslim friend said, "in my homeland this is considered very bad." I was surprised and asked why - I had thought she'd be pleased to see an article attempting to educate westerners about an aspect of Middle Eastern culture, and the calligraphic example itself was very beautiful.

"It's a newspaper," she said. "And newspapers get used to wrap food or refuse, they get sat on, they get used to clean things, they get thrown away. For us, the written name of God is holy and should be respected. It can appear in a book or in something that has a permanent place of honor and will never be desecrated, but it shouldn't appear in a place where it can be discarded or mistreated - because that is so disrespectful; to us it is the same as doing that disrespectful thing to God himself."

Not all Muslims would be that strict, but perhaps this puts the flushing of the Qu'ran into a different cultural light, especially when contact with excrement is also one of the very worst things that can happen, and something that Muslims strive to avoid. What we perceive here in the West has an entirely different meaning when seen in an Islamic contect - a meaning that goes far beyond a physical object, a book. And there is no way to judge that - it simply "is". Our task is not to judge, after all, but to understand.

Summer Unfurling

After a week of cold rain, the weekend was glorious here. Summer seems to have finally arrived; the leaves are fully open and the trees once again form a canopy over the streets and sidewalks. None of this stopped some Montrealers from still wearing parkas and heavy scarves - but I've seen people at the jazz festival in July wearing parkas. Maybe it's an insecurity thing? Weather trauma?

Anyway, on Sunday, St. Catherine street was swarming with tourists and scantily-dressed teenagers prowling the shops where sandals and shiny handbags and the season's candy-colored lingerie were displayed enticingly in the windows. Two very good musicians played sax and oboe duets on one street corner and I wondered if they were on-strike Montreal Symphony players slumming it, or just having fun. The gardens on the cathedral grounds had been recently planted with fuschia impatiens and acid-green hostas, and amid the plantings a homeless man leaned against one corner of the stone building, fast sleep in the sun.

We took our supper of leftovers to the park and lazed around on the grass by the lake, watching a group of boys doing tricks on their mountain bikes and three malamuts chasing a tennis ball into the water, with a pair of ducks staying nonchalantly just out of reach. A young mother played with her baby next to us; behind us a guy with a black lab read a book; in front of us two lovers smoked, drank some wine, ate a loaf of French bread and cheese, and nuzzled on a blanket, while an endless slow parade of strolling Montrealers walked along the lakeside path: older couples; an Asian grandfather with two grandchildren; a Moroccan family with an exuberant little girl in hot pink tights, a white skirt, and a headful of luxuriantly curly long hair.

After the sun set, the couple with the two malamuts borrowed a pen form the guy with the black lab, and exchanged addresses with the owner of the third dog: "maybe a home for some of our puppies", the woman told us. S he and her boyfriend stood up, and wrapped themselves in their brightly-striped serape-style blanket, heads and upper bodies completely covered. The white malamut looked on, at first confused, and then howled. The couple emerged from their tented embrace, laughed, tousled the dog's thick fur, and set off for home.

Samuel sur son lion

On Friday I spent a good part of the afternoon happily ensconced in a comfortable chair near a window at the new Bibliotheque Nationale, studying a book I'd pulled out of the well-stocked art section: Le Roi Salomon et les maitres du regard, subtitled "Art and Medicine in Ethiopia."

I'd initially been attracted by the extraordinary vitality of the drawings and paintings shown on the cover and in the color plates, but as I sat with the book I got intrigued by the text. Ethiopian medicine and concepts of healing have a lot to do with the local version of Christianity practiced in that country, which I gather to have certain antecendents in Coptic (Egyptian) Christianity - some of the artwork looked similar to some Coptic art I've seen - but which also has blended with native religion in a fascinating way. In addition to the beautiful pierced and carved metal Ethiopian crosses which many of us in the west have seen, another favorite form for religious art are painted scrolls which are rolled up and put in amulets, which are considered to be protective for the wearer.

The one I photographed here shows an Ethiopian saint, Samuel, mounted on a ferocious lion. According to my quick translation of the text, Samuel was a 15th century ascetic who lived in the deserts of Waldebba. He was thought to have had the power to subdue and calm the most powerful and dangerous beasts, and is often depicted riding on a lion. The lion is always shown like this one, with big round eyes and all his claws extended to indicate his ferocity. People pray to Samuel for protection from their own enemies.

But the symbolism goes further than that. Ethiopian biblical scholars mention a line from Revelation, "Behold, the lion which is of the tribe of Juda, the root of David, has overcome..." (Revelation 5:5) This, they say, refers to Christ, because he has conquered the devil through his divine wisdom. Christ, they say, is called "lion" because of this victory, and "lamb" because he was sacrificed. "The lamb refers to his humanity, the lion to his divinity."

The Ethiopian emperors inscribed this line from the Bible on their seals. In doing so they Christianized the ancient royal symbol of Ethiopia -- which was the lion.

As for myself, I was happily reminded of many hours spent in the university library as an undergraduate, poring over French and German accounts of archaeological expeditions in Greece and the Near East for my thesis. I'll try not to go on and on about it, but I really do love being near this library.

Augustine called human beings “a great deep” (grande profundum), and if we mean anything at all by the word “Being,” it is that Being is a great deep:

"If by ‘abyss’ we understand a great depth, is not man’s heart an abyss? For what is there more profound than that abyss? Man may speak, may be seen by the operations of their members, may be heard speaking: but whose thought is penetrated, whose heart is seen into? Do you not believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?"

from On Presence, Variations and Reflections, Ralph Harper, Trinity Press

Note: For many years, I kept a collection of quotations from things I was reading that I wanted to remember and think about. Like the journals I kept for years and years, the quotation collection has languished since I started this blog. But the other day I went back to it and looked through and decided there were a lot worth re-reading and maybe sharing (with a very humble nod to whiskey river, whose collection and sensibility regarding quotations exceeds anyone's) so from time to time I'll post one here, under the category of "They Said".

Baguettes et Fleurs

With the exception of one sunny day, this week has been cold, rainy, and pretty miserable - like most of the northeastern Atlantic coast. So I've been happy to find a few cheerful scenes here and there - this windowbox outside the local bakery, and the gardens no one seems to notice at Parc Lafontaine, full right now with blue forget-me-nots, orange and yellow tulips, white anemones, and pulmonaria in every color.

Never having lived in a city before, I'm entirely new to the idea of urban parks and how one relates to them. Because we live close by, it's easy to walk over to the park anytime, and while there are always people there, often there aren't many and I can have a sense of solitude and growing connectedness with this new place in my life. Yesterday I sat on a big rock near the lake and watched a pair of mallards swim back and forth, checking to see if I'd brought them a  snack (I hadn't, but will next time). I had a conversation with one of the many very tame grey squirrels, talking him right up to my feet, and explored the really lovely and pretty extensive shade garden that's planted on the back side of the Theatre de Verdure, the open-air performing venue on the western side of the lake. All the grounds around the theater are landscaped, and even the edges of the lake have been planted with iris, water hyacinth and other large-leaved semi-aquatics I don't know, but it's all very low-key and seems to go rather unnoticed by the population. For myself, it matters a good deal.

If this weather keeps up, though, I'm heading for the library!

Allergic Reactions

Sometimes I think readers get the impression that my life glides smoothly from rich city streets, to patisserie windows, to moonlit summer idylls perfumed by apple blossoms: a progression, as it were, of beautiful, fortunate, poetic moments. And while it’s true that I have a great deal to be grateful for, my life actually has just as many ups and downs and difficulties and sadnesses as most people’s. Nor is it the case that I don’t notice the sordidness and suffering around me: in fact it’s because I’m overly aware of it, because it wounds me so deeply, that I try to cope by turning toward what is, as my father-in-law often says, “the good, the true, and the beautiful”. On the other hand, I don’t want to be dishonest here.

A vignette: five miles and a world from my friend’s house where the musical evening took place, I came out of the giant supermarket with my bags of groceries, one day last week, and across the expanse of asphalt saw a woman loading her minivan with her own bags of groceries. The back of her car was festooned with “Support the Troops” magnetic ribbons. The woman was overweight, with bleached short-cropped hair and a hard face, and as she emptied her shopping cart her young son could be seen crawling around the inside of the minivan. “Get in your car seat!” she barked.

“I don’t want to,” he said.

“Get in your car seat right now!” She shoved the last bags into the back of the van.

“I hate my car seat! Why do I have to get in it, I want to ride in the front.”

She slammed the door of the van and screeched at her son: “Get in your seat this minute or you aren’t going to McDonald’s!”

I find this sort of thing completely debilitating, and if it hadn’t been such a complete American cliché, I probably couldn’t have found a drop of humor, albeit black, in it. The problem I have is that I do notice; I notice even more now that I’m moving between two places. The box-store parking lot is my life, just as much as the beautiful evening with old friends. So is the family of Asian immigrants who run the sushi take-out kiosk inside the supermarket, working so hard that J. and I joke that they sleep under their counter. So is the creepy old man at the fish counter, who I can hardly bear to speak to, or the butcher with permanently red cheeks from his life spent half-inside the walk-in meat refrigerator; so are the hippies who come down from the outlying towns to buy books as have a rare espresso at the bookstore, and the endless parade of mothers in their SUVs and gun-toting rednecks in their pick-ups. In the city, it’s the readers on the park benches and it’s also the shivering girl I gave some change to today, sitting miserably on St. Catherine Street, whose dark eyes I’m not forgetting. And it's the astonishment of seeing city steps covered with drifted pink petals from a formal planting of flowering trees: a beauty entirely different from Vermont

The past few days I’ve felt crummy: I’ve had a bad headache from, I think, my usual spring time allergies: the dark side of all those blossoms. But it’s also from too much stress, too much breathing-in of the suffering that goes on around me and the impossibility of finding solutions. I wish I could just hate it and push it away; dismiss without compassion the woman barking at her child. But what made her that way? As much as I despise a world in which beautiful dark-eyed girls end up begging on city streets and small boys, bribed with fast food, learn early to cherish the fat-drenched moment when the unhappiness around them seems to abate, I’m unable to find release either in judgmentalism or escapism. As Merton said, we’re meant to hold both the dark and the light. I wish it were easier.

Madame X

Ever since Language Hat provided the link a few days back, I've been meaning to make note of the Wikipedia article on family names in various countries and language groups.

Although I think I could count on one hand the number of times I've been called "Mrs. J." in the United States in twenty-five years of marriage, since coming to Quebec I've (almost) gotten used to being addressed as "Madame" and "Madame J." by anyone who is being proper and formal and knows both my husband and me. But in spite of this formality among our neighbors and professional acquaintences, we also noticed (and were confused by the fact) that none of the women in our building seemed to be listed by a shared name, even though we were pretty sure they were married: instead all the couples gave both their names. The Wikipedia article gives the explanation:

...in France and Quebec, name change upon marriage is no longer recognized. Those who wish to change their name upon marriage must follow the same legal procedure as would be used under any other circumstance. Otherwise, although one may use a married name, one's legal name remains unchanged.

According to a geneological research site, this is true even for names on gravestones, because Quebec follows French Civil Code, in which women are legally identified by their maiden names. (Digging a little deeper, I came across one article that said this is still true in the State of Louisiana as well.) The listings of women by their birth names (the politically-correct term preferred by feminists, I gather) in French Canada goes all the  way back to the first census in 1666, conducted by none other than Intendant Jean Talon, who gave his name to my favorite Montreal market.

A Musical Evening

No, this beautiful old Steinway isn't mine, but belongs to the friend - let's call him A. -with whom I was playing music last Friday evening. When I arrived at his house - an old Vermont farmhouse, out in the country, at 6 p.m. - there were swallows playing in the meadow and daffodils and pink bleeding hearts blooming in the yard, and the light was beginning to get lower and even more beautiful. The high valley where A. lives is one of my most favorite places, and over the years J. and I occasionally fantasized about living there, but nothing suitable for us ever came on the market, and now prices have gotten exorbitant. I'm always happy for an excuse, or an invitation, to visit.

Our plan was to play for an hour, and then J.would join us for dinner. We went right to the piano, which is in one corner of A.'s living room. We played through three Handel sonatas, taking one break for me to rest my lips and for A. to stand up and stretch. It's been nearly three decades since I've played chamber music, or played flute with anyone else, and it was transporting to play wth someone else, and especially with this dear old friend. Our run-through wasn't a very polished performance, but it was a great deal of fun. When we finished it hadn't been quite an hour, so I suggested that we play some four-hand piano, and we worked through some Mozart, in the laughing but also serious way we used to play together. We had a glass of wine in hand when J. showed up, a little after seven, and then we sat down to a simple dinner of steamed mussels, French bread, salad and a tarte we'd brought down from Montreal while the sun set over the far meadow, turning the clouds red and then a deep slate grey.

After dinner A. showed me two Scarlatti sonatas he was practicing, gave me a copy of the sheet music, and burned me a CD of a Horowitz recording that contained both. The three of us sat on the couch, catching up on old mutual friends, recent travels, our various music composition and photography and writing projects. And then we said goodbye, and stepped out into the Vermont night.

It's hard to explain the quality of such a night, or why it means so much to me. The best I can do, perhaps, is to say that it felt -- whole. The friendship, spanning nearly thirty years; the mutual love of the music and the joy, even at this point in life, of sharing a new discovery, a new few transcendent phrases; three lives spent around art of various forms; the rooms filled with memories -- and then the night, the extraordinary quality of an early summer Vermont night: its dampness, the smell of the cool earth, the fading light still bathing the horizon behind the dark rounded shape of the hills and illuminating the faces of small white and yellow flowers, while moon and stars calmly arch in the darkness overhead. It will be gone by the end of June, this freshness that only visits us for a few short weeks: this time of flowering, not of fruit.

Creating Place

Billowing white clouds in a blue sky, flowering apple blossoms perfuming the air, buzzing with bees; unfurling ferns; courting orioles in the tree branches: today was a spring-in-Vermont cliche. And I loved it. We worked outside in the afternoon: mowing, raking, weeding the perennial beds and moving some plants. Afterwards, as the light got lower, making the white crabapple tree glow as if from within, I sat down on the back porch and watched, feeling the peace of this garden space infuse my winter-weary heart.

On her blog, Jean has been writing movingly about places and the difficulty of feeling at home. Because I've been making reluctant decisions about my garden, which has been a project for so many years, and is really a big part of my self-identity, I'm especially sensitive to those questions right now. And I agree that this midlife period is especially unsettling: the physical place most familiar - my own body - is changing, and I have to find ways of accepting that, even when some of those changes don't always feel very acceptable.

With all the transitions and changes in our life this past year-- the relinquishments and downsizings, the traveling and comparing, the considerations of living in much smaller, less labor-intensive spaces, and a change from a more rural, self-sufficent lifestyle to an urban one where public spaces take the place of private ones -- something like the garden becomes more emotionally weighted and more symbolic. As I pulled weeds there this afternoon, I also thought about how much time we've spent in recent years in retirement homes and hospitals with our aging parents, and how I can't help but conflate our own downsizing with our own eventual aging, even though I hope those actual decisions are still quite far off. I feel vigorous and in the prime of my life, and yet it's impossible to ignore the fact that our priorities are changing, and that there is no longer the illusion of having all the time in the world.

Creating physical environments that feel simple, peaceful, comforting and beautiful has always been a priority for me, but it hasn't been until recently that I've understood just how much of this has been driven by an almost monastic desire for personal peace in the midst of a world that feels more and more alien and chaotic. Over the years, we've done that mostly through our own effort - sewing the cloth, sawing the wood, and tending the seeds - not by spending money. I'm realizing more and more that this is a consciously-developed quality of personality much more than it is something instrinsic about a particular place, but when one doesn't move for thirty years, you begin to think it's the house, not the people who live in it, so to speak, and therefore something that you could lose. Un-learning this idea has been important, and not especially easy, and though I'm clearly not through with it yet, the process is resting more easily on my spirit.

A Squeaker

I'm merely an observer and student of Canadian politics, but I've followed recent events pretty closely. There was a crucial vote in the Canadian Parliament today which Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin considered a referendum on his government, beleaguered for months by scandal. The vote was an amendment to the Liberals' proposed federal budget, which called for adding $4.6 billion in social program spending and delaying corporate tax cuts. If his party lost, Martin said he would call for early elections. The opposition to the Liberals has been an alliance of the Bush-leaning Conservative Party, headed by Stephen Harper, and the Bloc Quebecois. As the vote neared, people began to get shaky: if the Liberals fell, not only would this mean the Conservatives would have a chance to form a government - a prospect many Canadians find extremely scary, even though the Liberals are not liked  - but the Bloc Quebecois might well feel empowered to try another referendum in the province on Quebec independence. Feeling that federal unity was at stake, a key MP switched parties a few days ago, making the vote outcome likely to be very close.

And close it was; late this afternoon the votes of the three independent MPs created a tie, which was broken in favor of the Liberals by the Speaker of the House. I appreciated the coverage of the vote and the links at Chandrasutra about Canadian politics, especially this list and relative position chart (scroll down toward the bottom of the page) of the various Canadian political parties.

As a bit of an aside, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) report included the following startling sentence, which I leave for my American readers without comment:

A Liberal MP agreed to sit out the vote as a courtesy because cancer surgery was keeping Conservative MP Darrel Stinson away from the House of Commons.