The Tile of the Unexpected Impression

On a sunny warm morning in September, five of us stood with our backs to the water on the wooden deck overlooking the lake.    A soft reflection blinked intermittently through the slats.

We were full of anticipation as a young woman wearing slim blue jeans and a pale tank top walked toward us carrying a bouquet of white mums and roses – the only hint of a wedding.   A festive barrette held her dark hair off her delicate face.   She smiled.  Her gaze fixed on the reassuring and admiring eyes of the young man who was waiting for her.   We were all watching, but she saw only him.

Most weddings require months to prepare, this one had 48 hours.  The bride was visiting for a few short days.   She was deeply in love, the time seemed right, and suddenly we were planning a wedding.

There was no family nearby; just three of us to witness and a judge to preside.  With so little notice, there was no time to find a venue. We thought of my mother’s house sitting empty by the lake.  It was beautiful and available.   The cake was carefully selected from the racks at Super Fresh.  The lawn service was called and in haste had cleaned the wrong yard.   So we arrived early to sweep acorns from the landings.   I brought zinnias and sunflowers from my living room and we placed the cake, the flowers, and two gifts on a wrought iron table at the end of the deck.

The message was simple: remember to love always.   If you and your spouse need to compromise, do so happily and without reminder or grudge.   Always remember to love and be kind.   The judge’s voice wavered and tears filled his eyes.  He was thinking of another wedding in this same place.  His loving glance found my face and immediately, my tears followed his.

I was 22 and he was 25.  The organ played the Trumpet Voluntaire as I stepped into the sunlight on the lawn at this very house in my long white toile gown.   My mother was on one side and my uncle on the other.  Both are gone now.   I did not know my father then.  That would come many years later.

Three-hundred and fifty guests were seated on the grass.  They all turned to watch.   I saw only the boy of my dreams.   I did not think of us then as man and woman.   We were still a boy and a girl.   We had waited eight years to grow up, to finish school, and to get married.  We were overjoyed to be in this long-awaited moment.  We had written our vows and spoken them with trembling joyous voices through our tears.

Now 37 years later, we stood looking at each other again in this same place, under these same trees.  He stood before me in his black judicial robe with two other young people between us.   But in our minds we were once again bride and groom.   We looked into each others eyes and knew the love that would hold us together for the rest of our lives.  It was fresh, familiar, but suddenly overwhelming.

We composed ourselves with an apologetic laugh and the ceremony continued.  The judge did a wonderful job.   The bridge and groom hugged, smiled, and kissed.  The four of us applauded.   The soft movement of leaves, lapping water, and the song of a nearby blue jay provided the postlude.   We felt the presence of all who could not be with us.

After the ceremony, the bride told me the story that had spurred the suddenness of this event.  I listened intently. Years ago, she had observed the judge in the heaviest of moments with the gravity of crime and consequence surrounding him.  After the difficult deliberations were over, his wife unexpectedly arrived.  When she walked into the room, his face transformed and glowed with love and delight in seeing her.   The change in his spirit and look of love that swept over him greatly impressed the young law student.  At that moment, she thought how she wanted that same depth of love in her own marriage when the time came.   Now, the time had come and she could not think of a better person to officiate than the judge who was so in love with his wife those few years before.

In the time it took for the shafts of sun to sift through the leaves, a tile had been crafted and added to the mosaic of my life.  Although not entirely new, this additional tile had been modified to fit more securely within the design that had been emerging.

I had always known that each of us can make a significant difference in this world.   My mother had gifted me with that knowledge in my childhood through both her words and her example.  However, I had associated important influences with overt action.  On this day, I came to more fully understand that one can make a significant difference by being oneself.   Opening one’s heart can change a life.   My husband’s gentle loving look left an indelible impression.  I realized again, but in a new way, the importance of kindness, love, and sincerity.  The greatest of these is love.

The Tile of Youth

The end of the summer seemed cleaved in two.  One day the parking spots in our little seaside town were jammed and the next the streets yawned with space.    My life too had changed quickly.  It was time to return to campus.

Over forty students had entered the program and I was due back to advise several of them and meet the rest.   I always looked forward to this job, but this year the introductions seemed too early.  It was still August.    I wanted more time to keep my head in my writing and to play in the surf and feel the sun on my shoulders.

The new schedule was…new.   Some of the old stays, like me, were not yet used to it.  School always started after Labor Day.   But the students did not feel the difference.  This was Harvard and they were excited to get started.  The energy on campus was palpable.

I have never known exactly what to expect when I arrive in September.   I do take for granted that the students will be eager and smart; they always are.  Beyond that, the cohort dynamic is a surprise.   Every year, each group exhibits a distinctive strength and I happily anticipate its discovery.   This year, the group has energy, wit, and a playfulness that is genuine and creative (spoof on “shopping” of  courses ).   Like classes before them, they have a unique blend of intellectual curiosity and joy.

I returned to my seaside home, at the end of the week, because I am taking the semester off to write and to build a house.  However, in the few short days that I was with them, these students rustled my world.   I thank them for this and write in their honor….

Ode to Youth

The rustling of leaves                                                                                                    The energies increasing                                                                                              I begin to rustle too;                                                                                                    I can not help myself.

Branches, arms, and fingers                                                                                Play their tunes aloud,                                                                                           Each true unto itself                                                                                               The melody of species.

I feel  my own song stir.                                                                                              A smile creeping through,                                                                                          I look between the green                                                                                            To see the greenish blue.

I hear myself join in                                                                                                      To stir and feel and sing                                                                                               I sense my center growing                                                                                         The rest to quiver                                                                                                           Quake and move.

Then stillness falls;                                                                                                        The leaves are quiet.                                                                                                     Some continue to wave,                                                                                              But these are parting gestures                                                                                  For I am on my own.

No worries fill the noiseless space                                                                          I have heard my center’s call.                                                                                  The rustling has worked its charm                                                                          And youth is found once more.

The Tile of the Alternative Perspective

At a recent dinner party, I posed a question that I had heard one day on NPR.   “If you could do only one, would you rather be invisible or be able to fly?”   Almost everyone at the table wanted to fly.  Some had vivid dreams of flying and wanted to enjoy views from above.  Others were afraid of airplanes and longed to control their travel experiences.  Still others wanted to be instantly transported from one distant location to another.  Two of the group chose to be invisible.  I was one.  I selected invisibility so that I might be able to see life’s interactions in earnest without the influence of my presence.  When another person enters a scene, the prime experience is usually shifted and the chemistry altered.   I wanted to see life as others saw it and experienced it without me in it.

After everyone explained their choices, a flyer retorted, “I wouldn’t want to be invisible, because I might hear something unpleasant about myself.   That would make me very uncomfortable, perhaps for a lifetime.”  This resonated with all of us.  When it comes to hearing about ourselves, we  see through a glass darkly.  The filters are strong and the refractions often are at odd angles.  We can hear meaning where none was intended or attach so much significance to a comment to completely dash our spontaneity or dreams.   Our sense of self is always vulnerable.

I was once again  reminded of how true this can be during our recent visit to Qatar.   While attending the international Law Forum in Doha, we had the good fortune of hearing a former Minister of Oil from Saudi Arabia.  He was one of the last speakers on the last day of the conference. Although, the energy of the conference was subsiding,  a feeling of accomplished success prevailed.

On stage, the Minister sat deeply in an overstuffed armchair with his pristine white thobe and ghutra reflecting the glow of the lighting.  Behind him, projected as his backdrop, were the The Code of Hammurabi and the US Constitution, an amazing contrast of both visual form and deep heritage.  The Minister spoke with a beautiful metered cadence in perfect English.  As we listened, it became clear that his message was that there was little hope for reconciliation of differences over oil.   He explained that every time the US administration stresses the “Greening of America” it speaks against the region.   Every time the administration encourages the development of alternative energy sources, they are saying to the oil producing world “we want you to fail.”  There was sad resignation in his voice.  He continued to ask how can there be true friendship when one party has ill wishes for the other?

I had never heard those meanings in the phrase “wind power.”  I had never perceived any ill will in the pursuit of alternative energy.   The thoughts of being more “ecologically responsible,” carried only positive images of a world that supported life more generously and sustainably.   As he finished, I remained in place letting his perspective envelop me.   I was sitting right there in his region of the world.    I had seen the enormous gas flare that seemed to scorch the bottom our airplane  as it illuminated an oil field as big as an American city.   His interpretations were as real as the desert itself.

As I sat there transfixed, I realized that we hear through more channels than there are languages and dialects in this world.  Although each language uses a limited number of sounds to output thoughts to others, our sense of self and our experiences provide the filters to imprint unlimited reactions on our hearts and in our minds, sometimes indelibly.  This can be true within a family or across the globe.

Presently, we can not be invisible to truly know what another has seen and felt.  We can not fly above to see what has exactly has transpired.  We can only be mindful that a totally different perspective may and usually does exist and that it can be as relevant, significant, and real as our own.

The Tile of Life and Death

There was no time.  They lay on the concrete floor of the sun room waiting. Their heads down. The ceiling above them glass.   The bombs whistled.  The earth shook…

My father, so matter of fact,  recounted the tale about that day during WWII.    He and my mother caught in a strange town, in a strange house.   There was no time for safety.

He shared his experiences, his feelings, his history.  I listened between reading his poems on war.   He, a physician and a poet, told me the context after I read this one:

Silence
The sun porch was my shelter.
Bare walls and a glass ceiling
Shielded me and I believed.
The concrete was cold on my chest
As I lay there, looking up, waiting
For the glass to shatter under
the bombs. The concrete is
cold when your heart is racing
and your skin is trying to hide.
I took comfort and hoped in a split
Second warning before I died.

There was no warning, no death
Just thundering rumble of
Undulating air under waves
Of motors on wings. Devastation.
Then silence like before creation.
Silence.

(Joseph J. Kozma, Mathematics in Color, 2009).

As I type the lines, I hope you and I will never know that silence.   I hope you and I will never need to fear the atrium.   We can listen and imagine but the story is not ours.   Only father can tell it.  At last, he is home again.

The Tile of a Dream Come True

One of the most dreaded questions I had to answer, especially when I was a kid, was “Where is your father?”  The truth was, I did not know.     Upon hearing my response, my classmates would look at me incredulously.   In the 50’s, most kids had never heard of a family without a dad and they probed in fascination, “Why not?  Where did he go?  Why did he leave?” “Didn’t he love you?”  At six and seven-years-old, I didn’t have answers for those questions either.

I remember, the day he left.  It was a clear day, in the fall, I think.   He drove me to Kindergarten.  Before I went in, he looked at me and spoke into my eyes, “I may not see you again for a long time.”  “That’s OK, Daddy,” I replied.   He kissed me.    I stood and watched as slowly the car disappeared with him in it.  Although I was five, I knew that day was different.  I knew something important had just happened.  That was it, that simple, that complicated.

Perhaps, it was because of my age.  Perhaps, it was because of the literal experience of watching my father drive away as I stood at the door of my school.  Whatever it was, I never relinquished the dream that one day he would drive back into my life just as he had once left it.   I never let go of the hope that he might be thinking of me and missing me.   These thoughts lived in my heart for over 50 years …

Life without Father

I know he’s there, like the dolphin beneath the smooth black surface of the sea.

I wait for him to breathe, looking for the tell-tale mist that would give him away.

I am wondering what he is doing, why hasn’t he surfaced yet?

How far has he come?  Has he eaten well?   Does he travel alone?

I sit on the shore watching and waiting; pretending to see a shimmer, a break in the smoothness.

Each undulation suggests his pending presence only to shrink away empty.

The sunset turns the sea into cotton-candy pinks and blues.  The wind shifts, lifting the ends of my hair.  It is time to go.

Yet I stay.   My hopes play tricks and transform my senses.

Was that a shiny fin or just a reflection?

I question my soul and his direction.

Am I in the right place?

Should I come another day?

Am I wasting my time or will I be rewarded before the sun goes down?

The light is precious and is running low yet I wait and watch

My trust and childlike dreams keep me fastened here

I pretend he sees me silhouetted against the pale sand through the darkening sea.  I pretend he cares.

As the pinks turns to purple, I remain.  He’s out there, I known, just beneath the surface.

‘08

Last year, I found my father and eventually sent the poem to him.   Tomorrow, my dad will come.   We will sit on that same beach looking out over that same shimmering sea.  We will watch for dolphins together.   Although my questions linger and may never get answered, my dream no longer floats on the wind.    It is real.  It has come true.

The Tile of the Unopened Door

On an old street in Pes, Hungary, a mustard yellow wall stretched from one corner of the block to the other.  It was the wall of an old convent school, impermeable and austere, as strictly defined as the nuns themselves.    In its center, however, was a large weathered wooden door topped with an elaborate gothic style portico.  High above the portico was a statue of the Virgin Mary.   The other alcoves where once statues watched the young girls come and go were now vacant and hollow.

The wood of the old door was almost splintered from the years of sun and rain, the bottom more weathered from exposure than the top.    I had been in this exact spot before, 39 years ago,  with my mother and then fiancé.  I now returned with that same finance, turned beloved husband, my son and daughter-in-law and our little granddaughter.   Little had changed but all was different.

This door, comfortingly, was the same.  The strong wood had held over the years.  It was beautifully carved into eight panels, two of which displayed the ancient monogram, a symbol for Christ, IHS.  Above and attached to each H was a cross with rays emanating from it. Was this the very door my mother had used to enter the convent church and school each day as a young girl over 75 years ago?   The school was still in operation and I could almost hear the voices of the girls giggling as they ran and gathered at the start of each school day.   It was summer now so the voices had stilled and all lay quiet.  But, I felt my mother’s spirit here.   I could imagine her in her uniform and short cropped brown hair.  I could imagine her speaking in Hungarian with lively animated hands about some insect she had found, a book she had read or just the beauty of the day.

All my life, I had lived close to my mother.   For the last 37 years, we lived just one mile apart.   Every spring, my mother insisted that we drag two large potted Oleanders outdoors and every fall we hauled them back into the heated garage for the winter.   I never fully understood the obsession with these plants.  Each year they grew bigger and heavier and were more difficult to move.   Yet every year we continued the ritual.   Now before me, I could see two large potted Oleanders guarding either side of the door.   They looked just like mother’s.  As a matter of fact, I saw Oleanders everywhere throughout southern Hungary.   As I stood there, understanding tugged persistently at the edges of my memories.

We didn’t have much time on that visit to Pecs.  So I stayed for just a few moments in the doorway and ran my fingers over the door.   The wood was dry and old.   I didn’t know for sure if my mother had ever touched that door but I liked to think that she had.  I imagined her, a school girl, stretching for the high handle and pulling down on the lever to gain entry.   As my fingers traced the indentations of the carvings and felt the smooth patina of the brass handle, I was able to reach through time, going back to a period before I was born.   I was able to connect with the mother I never knew but had heard about so often from her very own lips.    I was able to connect with the 85 year-old mother I knew so well and feel the mirage of her touch.  Although the door remained solidly and firmly closed, for one brief moment it opened to a world long gone and renewed the visions that will live in my mind forever.

The Tile of the Camel

The thought of riding a camel in the dessert was exhilarating.    We set out early in a four-by-four and left the city of Doha.   The roads around the city were new and broad and the morning traffic was congested with small cars and trucks.  Doha is built around a series of ring roads and the rotaries are a festival of vehicles weaving colors around a May Pole.  For better or for worse, our group was typically provided with a police escort with swirling red lights which wreaked havoc and backed up traffic in all directions around each of the rotaries.  On this day, however, only six of us had ventured out to see the dessert so we blended in and our car slipped in and out of the traffic like a local.

As we traveled, the road narrowed, the rotaries disappeared, and buildings became fewer, opening to expanses of dusty beige land that I knew was what Doha looked like beneath its construction.  Several miles out of the city, we passed a major building project where an entire new community was being created in what currently looked like the wilderness.  A long continuous caravan of trucks loaded with building materials entered the compound while an equal caravan was exiting heaped with dirt.   Both lines of trucks kicked up dust to the point that the air was gritty and beige.  One wondered how anyone could work in the heat and the dust.

A mile or two past this bustling effort, I saw the first of many free-roaming camels eating dry short stubble sticking out of lifeless earth.    One had to look hard because despite his size, the camel blended into the surroundings like a white hare in the snow, but in this case a beige hump in the sand.  As the landscape continued to empty, we saw several camels on either side of the road roaming and eating invisible vegetation.   I could barely imagine my bucolic life with green grass and black and white cows grazing on the side of country roads.   What a contrast!

With time, the earth became less compact and sand began to swirl.   The wind picked up and blew the sand over half of each lane, bestowing the white stripe with more significance than is customary.  Intermittently, we had to use our windshield wipers to be able to see.  Then suddenly the road ended.   There was nothing but sand and dunes before us.  The driver did not slow but continued as if driving through parted seas.  Very soon on the right, we saw a large water truck, a huge canvas stretched between wooden poles constructing a makeshift tent, and three camels with men looking like Bedouins. Yes, this was a tourist attraction of sorts, but one knew for sure that no tour buses came here.

The camels were resting with their long legs folded mysteriously beneath them.   Two had crocheted multi-colored muzzles.    It looked like colorful prayer caps had slipped down to cover their mouths.   They appeared to be peaceful, if not bored.  We were quickly told who was to ride which camel.   The camel assigned to me had no muzzle.   I took that to be a good sign; I preferred to assume that I had the camel with a good disposition.

Getting up on a camel requires a tight hold.  My camel was docile and sat quietly while I scrambled up behind his hump.   The saddle had rather large wooden handles that made mounting much easier.  It also gave you something to hold on to when the camel stood.   Camels stand by unfolding their hind legs first.   That throws the rider forward with a jerk and then almost in the same motion they unfold their front legs whipping the rider back again.   One had better hold on.   Once erect, the ride is very smooth.  The camel takes most of the brunt of the journey.

What amazed me most while riding was the camel’s feet.   My previous experience with large riding-animals was limited to horses.   In looking down the leg of a horse, one sees a hoof.   It is hard, clearly defined, and unyielding.   It strikes the ground with both noise and imprint.   In looking down the leg of a camel, one sees a totally different phenomenon.

The camel’s foot is unique.  It is soft and very wide, a malleable divided pad.   While elastic, it is simultaneously tough and impermeable, formed from keratin on the bottom and covered with golden fur on top.   It amazed me to watch as the camel’s foot gave and conformed to the sand beneath it.  I wanted to reach down and touch it.  I appreciated the assurance that it could traverse even the deepest sand and would not sink.  It would conform, yield, and work with its environment, all while attaining its goal of transport.  This experience of being dependent on an unmuzzled even-toed ungulate in the dessert made me think of my own footing.   Do I strike the ground as I carry my load making noise and leaving imprints behind me or do I work with my environment gently, quietly, and with accommodation?

We did not walk far or long.   The ride was just that – a ride.  When we returned, the camel stopped and dropped rather suddenly to fold his front legs beneath him, throwing me forward.  Then he folded his back legs, righting me again, and settled into his resting position.  I climbed down with new respect.

As I left, I continued to think about the camel.   The uneducated eye can not tell where a camel has walked.  The footprints look like natural undulations in the sand.   How do I traverse this earth?   What marks are left behind as a residual of my having passed by as I attain my goals?  The camel made me think about this.  It offered yet one more tile to my mosaic of life.

The Tile of Unguided Learning

In my experience, traveling has always been a terrific teacher. Our travel to Qatar was no exception. This time, however, I experienced a type of learning that was as new and contradictory to me as the country itself.

Doha is growing fast. It is a city under construction. Each morning, waves of hot air carry the pulsing sounds of bulldozers as the sun rises.  Doha is not yet a city of or for tourists.

It is almost as if Doha is too busy to recognize the presence of its few curious guests. It does what it needs to do and no more. There was not a single postcard to be found of any of the city’s sites, except those of the Ritz Carlton tower provided by the hotel itself. The drivers were silent. Many could not speak much English. At night, as we passed lighted gleaming white buildings with various symbols like a large flag of Qatar, a bold sign with large gleaming gold Arabic characters, or a sign in English that read the Museum of Islamic Art or The Pearl, I knew I was seeing significant landmarks but no one explained their importance or how to access them as we drove along. No one ever explained anything.

For the first time in my adult life, I reverted to being a naïve and unguided learner. I vaguely remember that at age 8 I learned to ride a two-wheel bike without a mentor or guide. The bicycle was much too big for me- an adult bike. No one made any adjustments and no one gave me any guidance. The bicycle and gravity were my only teachers. Basically, I learned to ride the hard way but I also learned perseverance, courage, and problem solving. So guideless learning is not all bad, but it is difficult.

My trip to Doha made me think of the children who rarely, if ever, have a mentor or guide outside of school. I thought of the children who have to figure everything out for themselves in a world that barely recognizes their existence.

When one faces a new world without a guide, one looks at the world differently. I knew I was on my own in a place that was totally unfamiliar so I focused much of my energies on orientation skills rather than on deeper understanding or enrichments. I had to be able to get back to my starting point whenever I ventured out. I could not assume there would be someone from whom I could ask direction. Knowing where a building was was more important than knowing what was inside that same building.

I passed statuary without ever learning its importance or purpose. I admired its beauty but remained ignorant to its meaning. I went to the desert and saw a big sea but I did not know at which sea I was looking. The adults around me didn’t know either. The one adult who did know our precise location didn’t speak English. So I admired the big sea without orientation.

As an adult, I knew I was missing so much. I appreciated my mother and other adults in my childhood who had constantly volunteered information without solicitation. They cloaked me in facts, explanations, and interpretations. Now, all of a sudden, I stood intellectually shivering in the heat of the desert. In Qatar, learning had become very personal but elusive and difficult. I knew how to get from one end of the Souk to the other but I did not know how wrap a turban, or how to arrange one’s hair under a hijab, or where the dates had been grown, or why it was OK to hang lingerie in the store window. I did not know exactly what I had eaten at most meals. I did not know what anyone felt about us.

As I boarded the plane to leave at 3:30 A.M, I felt too light. I didn’t even understand how an airport could offer flights that departed in the middle of the night. Where were all the insights I usually took away with me? I was so very far behind where I might have been if only I had had a guide.

The Tile of Contradiction

I had never traveled to the Middle East before.   The prospect was absolutely fascinating.  My life’s mosaic was  missing several pieces about the many different cultures of the world and this was a region I knew little about.

It took 23 hours to travel from Philadelphia to Doha, Qatar (partly due to a connection cancellation enroute).  We arrived at night.   The lights made both the air and land glow with a golden hue- it was clear that the desert held a reflection even in the darkness.

Our driver spoke little English and we were not greeted with the usual, “Is this your first time in….”   We were not told bits of information like “This building is….”  or “This is a great shopping area…”   We rode in silence past a gleaming city of lighted windows that was dotted with more cranes than I had ever seen, except in Shanghai the year before.

We had come to attend the Qatar Law Forum. The young country was in the process of setting up a legal system based on the rule of law.   The sessions included the Chief Justice’s of numerous countries, including England, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, South Africa, and Uganda; princes like the Prince of Jordan; foreign ministers like the Minister of Finance and Economy of Qatar and the Former Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources;  and members of the United Nations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.   There were 400 in attendance most of whom were dignitaries from all over the world.

This conference and what I learned from the two-day event contributed yet another tile to my mosaic.   But the Tile of Contradictions had come from breathing the air, seeing the desert, sleeping in the Ritz Carlton, walking through the Museum of Islamic Art and the souk, eating dates and humus, hearing the groans of camels, and feeling the softness of  fine silk woven into a handmade rug.

It is difficult to summarize what one learns from such an exotic and high level trip.   Most the tiles  in one’s life mosaic are summaries, distillations of experience.   They are not chronologies and diary entries.   So I had to try to distill the main take-away from this marvelous experience.  I concluded I had come to understand why this part of the world is often referred to as a region of contradictions.

Contradictions were everywhere!  I was told to dress “modestly.”   In the strictest interpretation, that meant that I was not to have any part of my skin showing, with the exception of face and hands (that meant wearing socks, too).  Ok. I could do that even as the temperatures sizzled at 110 to 120 degrees F.    Shopping in my small rural home town, in preparation, was a challenge but I found appropriate garb.  Wearing it made me felt a bit doughty, totally unattractive, but respectful.   In contrast, at the co-ed pool, women were allowed to dress as they pleased.   Most of the bathers were Westerners and several wore bikinis.  We were told to wear our bathrobes in order to approach the pool and, of course, to use the pool entrance.

Children played in the playgrounds at night in the relative cool of darkness.   Even at 10:00 p.m.,  the parks were crowded, teaming with little hands and feet climbing jungle gyms and swinging.  All being accomplished under the watch of  mothers in their hajabs. Black silouettes against the city lights.  The grass was covered with blankets and picnics and the sidewalks were crowded with strollers.  The day’s activities were all alight in the darkness of the night.   When the sun appeared, all was gone.

The contradictions continued in the natural world.   The soil was a hard beige conglomerate.  The hotels had planted patches of closely sheered “putting greens”  around their towering forms.  Many bushes  sidled up to these greens.  In their struggle to survive, they had few or no leaves close to their stems.  Yet, amazingly, their tops were covered with bright pink flowers.

From my window, many stories up, these small carpets of green and pink were clearly defined and ended abruptly at the farthest reaches of the sprinkler.  Their boundaries were being quickly reclaimed by the hot beige earth.    As my eye traveled further,  I could see that at the farthest edge, across the path, on the other side of property, flowed an amazing wide light turquoise tributary.  The color was generated by bent rays reflected from  a sandy bottom.   The tributary was available for swimming, had a dock with lounge chairs , and beckoned.  I went down to it.   When I  touched the water, despite the inviting cool shade of green, it was actually hotter than that in the pool.

On the second day, a strong wind blew.  Seeing ripples dart cross the pool made me anticipate that the heat would be kinder this day.    I walked down.   As I swam, the wind swept over me.  My head was aloft and dry.  My hair blew in all directions.  I swam with sunglasses to protect against the intense glare.  A gust whipped the heat up around my glasses and baked my eyes as if they were in a convection oven.  They became instantly dry and sandy.   My previous experiences  had always been that wind on a hot day would refresh and cool.   Here it only stirred the embers to bake more efficiently.

The contradictions continued in the desert.  As we drove out of the city, the desert was quick to move and cover the road.  I felt the intruder.   The dunes created mountains of sand.   We rode a four-by-four to their thin tops and slid sideways fishtailing our way to the bottom.  ( I feared we were doing horrendous ecological damage but I did not know this before hand.)  We had to climb with speed in order not to get stuck.   Then suddenly, at the base of a giant dune, stretched a deep blue sea.  We could see Saudi Arabia on the other side.  The water was a welcome sight.   The wind had whipped the sand to cover our teeth and dryness was thorough. The water looked so refreshing.   One of our group rushed to feel its wet coolness.   Another quickly grabbed her arm.  “Stop,” she yelled through the wind.    She pointed.   The edge of the wet sand was covered in jelly fish.  I later also read about stone fish.   These fish look like stones but when stepped on are venomous and require a trip to the hospital.

Through my travels, I realize that I  have encountered only a few of the contradictions of the Middle East.  I felt, saw, and experienced what I had known only intellectually,  mounds of black ink coming to life.    I now will never watch the news in the same way again.  I will think of families with even greater latitude, acknowledging their rich complexity.  I see wind, earth, and sea anew.    I realize that contradictions may not always tolerate resolution, but they often may accomodate acceptance.