A Letter Home

Hi Honey

I feel like I’m faced with cramming a book into a letter. The attack of 9/11 came as no surprise to me. I’m one exhausted ghora. Teaching English to spoiled landlord’s kids at the International (Lahore) was a kind of futile exercise. Trying to get the poor kids healthy and in school was a battle with the local landlords; the only time I’ve looked down the barrel of a gun. An American doing what they should be doing embarrassed them. Four years in the subcontinent would exhaust anyone. I look back, divided. I saw hopeless gulfs in understanding. I saw the very best of men and the very worst. It’s a land of extremes, with a widening gap of rich and poor. It’s a land where women dig their own grave, burned, shot and stoned, yet continue to overindulge little tyrant boys, both rich and poor, to be more dangerous adult versions. Corruption is learned. It was so strange to see little male toddlers allowed to slap the faces of their ayahs, sisters and mothers. They’re allowed to destroy household goods with impunity.

Destruction is power. No boundaries. They’re denied nothing. All they have to do is rage for what they want and it’s given, fine-tuned to adulthood. She is property. A thing. He’s been taught so. He’s a little landlord in the making, whether rich or poor, power is everything. Every proposition is all-or-nothing. Alas, we always become what we fight most. Amidst the spoiled tantrums, I saw strange compensatory phenomena. When you disrespect the feminine, as a man, you become like a theoretically inferior kind of ‘woman’. They argue at the drop of a hat. Allegiances and alliances shift like sand. Intrigues abound. They hold hands in public while their sisters and mothers are confined to the house unless covered. The most interesting sight is that they squat when they urinate.

You always know when you’re up against a primitive all-or-nothing, whether it’s an individual or a culture. Heads, you lose. Tails you lose. You cannot win. The deck is stacked. I’ve learned blood is thicker than water, and culture runs deeper than religion. In America we know nothing of culture. Ours is a relatively young experiment in pluralism and a coming together of cultures and religions forcing us to examine concepts like tolerance and open society. What’s emerging from the East is cultural bifurcation and crisis costumed as religion.

Islam itself represents a problem at this point. It's finally found a deadly collective projection for the devil - Sheta'n - America. I watched it progressively taking shape. Jihad is the "inner struggle" against evil. Muhammad (PBUH) used the word 'metaphor/ allegory’ over 120 times in the Quran but it's lost on a population jerked around for centuries by thieving (Muslim) landlords (Hindu in India). - The Bhutto's, Shariffs, the Khans, Vajpayees, et al. Finally, when you look at the desolations of Pakistan, Iran, India, Iraq, and Afghanistan, you see there's nothing left to steal. It's been sucked dry. The collective is neurotically divided. The people can't hate the landlords. They'd get killed. They exert iron control, local control at every level. Each landlord has invisible 'kingdoms', informants and 'soldiers' and 'know when the sparrow falls'. Any dissent is easily and quickly crushed. Elections, taxes and cash tribute are delivered to the Landlord in power, at the head of state, whether Saddam, Vajpayee or Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan and India hate it all in each other. Kashmir is the beautiful kite - the prize phatang - and like two boys fighting over it - would gladly destroy it rather than relinquish it to the other. All-or-nothing. By itself, it was beautiful, representing religions living peacefully without quarrel, now a broken and colorful memory.

This is where the Talibanization took over. Oxymoronically called Fundamentalism. The first real threat to the Landlords - bin Laden's Wahabbism, is the austere repressive form of Islam, slap-happily carried on by the Taliban. I watched it spread like wildfire throughout Lahore. The Mullahs are becoming the New Landlords. The Old Landlords quickly aligned themselves with the most powerful Mullahs, most skilled at fiery public speaking. It was funny to watch Benazir Bhutto hook up with the Dr. Tahir ul Qadri Empire. It's like a snake-oil road show. Benazir sets them up, ul-Qadri knocks them down. The crowds go wild. Other landlords went for more conservative JUI, also pointing to the Devil in the West. American politicians could not even come close to the manipulatively skilled Mullah/Landlords. They've been doing it for a thousand years. I'm reminded as I watched Benazir only last night on American T.V. extolling the virtues of America, while only a short time ago saw her in Lahore, with the anti-Western ul Qadri Road Show.

The time was ripe for a savior to show them where their personal evils were to be projected, ironically, a (Saudi) landlord-to-end-all-Landlords. Symbolically schizophrenic, he's a marriage of both Landlord and Mullah into a transcendent whole, further symbolized by the literal marriage of his daughter to Afghanistan's 'Super Mullah'. He gladly accepted "harraam" American weapons with which to kick Russian Ass in Afghanistan, then, he suddenly became very 'pious'. Now even an Islamic "scholar", issuing fatwas. Strike America's WTC towers. Now the way is paved to the Saudi Throne and the spigot of Saudi Oil. Now for the Saudi Royal Family... after which he can be both Asia’s Super Landlord and Super Mullah … office in Mecca. From there he can inflame and mobilize the 140 million Muslims in India, perhaps with captured Pakistan nukes, delivered by our Little Landlords, pawns in a caste system headed by the new Saudi Saviour.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia and North Africa have blown chance after chance to reconcile themselves and to finally carry their religions as a torch for the world, instead, a blasphemous all-or-nothing club with which to beat it, all to create a world feudal system. Shouted down are the great Sufi saints who came to balance the joyless Wahabism. They taught us to never trust a man who doesn’t dance... or sing.

Sorry if I sound pessimistic, honey. Like I said, I’m exhausted. As you know we

adopted Yasmeen and brought her home. She’s an American now. I haven’t the heart to tell her she’ll not likely soon see her mother, brother and sisters, if at all. It can only get worse. I’m committed to raise and educate her as a Muslim while she’s denied the right to exist as an American. The all-or-nothing and lose/lose have followed us home. More later.

Love, Dad