A Time to Give Thanks

It was to be a quiet Thanksgiving, alone in the mountains of North Carolina. For days I had traveled south from West Virginia along the spine of an ancient mountain chain, camping in the eastern foothills of the Appalachians, but for this Thursday I wanted something more than a tent to keep me warm and so I chose to stay in a tiny house, still in the woods, with a private bed and a shared kitchen; the perfect place to celebrate an imperfect holiday.

But just the night before I found myself miles from Asheville snuggled up to sleep in a tent not necessarily meant for this season, but I was under a moon that was full and a sky filled with stars. It was far from warm, I was far from home, and yet there was no place in the world that I would rather be.

That morning, as always in nature, I woke at first light, but I was not the only one up at this hour. Someone was outside of my tent. I could tell by the crunch of their footsteps on the frosted ground and then the sound of the zipper being opened on the front flap of my tent.

“Hello?” I called out to whoever it was on the other side of the thin wall between us.

“I am so sorry. I am so so sorry,” came the muffled voice of a woman. “I have no idea what I was thinking. You must think I’m a lunatic.” Truth be told, I did not know what to think. Still new to camping, I was grateful she was not a bear or another animal of the night. Besides, the moon had long set and the time for lunacy had past. Or so I hoped.

With caution, I crawled out to see this strange hillside companion. Before me stood a woman with ten less years in her eyes. Around her shoulders a red blanket was wrapped. It was frayed at the bottom, but solid the rest of the way through and was doing its best to shield her from the cold cold morning air. After more unnecessary apologies she told me her name was Lindsay and she had slept in the hobbit house with her boyfriend less than one hundred yards away. Smoke billowed from the terra cotta chimney and I wondered why it was that she left the warmth of her Shire-like sanctuary to awaken me at so early an hour but then again perhaps she, like Frodo, felt the need to get to Bree.

In the pastel dawn, frosted with signs of winter to come, we watched the sun climb over the blue ridges, talking about the things you talk about when everything that is superficial is stripped away: our greatest loves, our greatest fears and our greatest hopes. For almost an hour we stood waiting for the temperature to rise like the sun, but it stayed below freezing and we stayed where we were for just a little longer.  

To say goodbye, I offered her a copy of my memoir, Mosaic, and she, in turn, gave me a gift certificate to the local grocery store. She told me that whenever she has been on the road, the people she has come across have been generous with her and she wanted to pass that generosity on to me.

For that is what we as travelers do: we share our passions, our stories, and our kindness. And I will never forget the kindness shared with me on this Thanksgiving morn.

With her generosity, I went to the market and got a traveler’s feast: steak and Brussels sprouts and potatoes that were sweet. The hours that remained of the day were spent in the mountains, finding waterfalls that I had been chasing my whole life. 

When the light began to fade and darkness came to take its rightful place, I made my way to the tiny cabin in the woods to spend the night giving thanks for all the days that had passed thus far on my journey and for all of the days to come.

Once there, I slowly prepared the meal that would not have been had it not been for the kindness of a stranger. When there was no more steak to be had and the Brussels sprouts remained too many, I gathered my plates to wash in the sink thinking of all of the things I wanted to do with this silent night, but the lights of a car shined into the kitchen and the sound of closing doors broke what quiet there was.

From the darkness into the light arrived three young men, each with a headlamp around his head. They smiled as they entered as if they were old friends who had come to visit from so very far away. They introduced themselves and sat in the chairs and couches that filled the room. Their skin was the color of copper and cinnamon and they moved with the mannerisms of men whose youth still resided inside of them and was in no rush to escape into the adulthood that one day awaited them. Two of them were engineers who had been roommates in college and the third was a friend from home, but their home was much farther away than my own. Khaled was from Bahrain and now lived in Manhattan, Bender was a Saudi who was to begin his Ph.D. at Duke the following semester, and Samer was Palestinian by birth, but called Pittsburgh his home.

For the whole of the night we spoke of all of the things that you are not supposed to speak about in polite company: religion and politics, America and the Middle East. We even touched upon love for as the years continue undeterred by any conceptions that I may have of time, I want the mistakes of others to be less than my own when it comes to matters of the heart, but who am I to teach what I am still learning myself?    

If someone had told me that this was how I was to spend my Thanksgiving, I would not have believed them or, at the very least, thought the collision of these fates impossible. And yet here we were, four souls drifting into each other’s lives on a night of giving thanks. For hours we spoke without pretense as if this was not our first conversation together as it certainly will not be our last. There was laughter. There was understanding. There was peace.

In the morning we shared a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, coffee, and the remains of my solitary feast. When we had finished they apologized for not having anything to give me, but I had remembered the hospitality that I had experienced when last I was in Palestine and I wanted nothing more than to return the kindness here in my country.

Just before we were to go our separate ways, Bender, the Saudi Arabian, stood in the corner, sorting through the books and games that were on the shelves. When he turned around he held a book in his hand and asked if he had told us about this book. It was Bridge to Terabithia. I knew this book well. I had read it almost three decades before at a time that I needed it the most. It was the book that taught me that I was not alone in the loss of my best friend as a child. Other children knew of this ever steady grief and other mothers comforted their children in the ways only they know how.

But his connection with this book was less full of sadness and more full of joy; a family still together, a friendship still intact. “This is my sister and I’s book except that she is Jesse and I am Leslie. She studies film in Saudi Arabia and has met the man who made this book into a movie.”

I smiled the smile you smile when you know for certain that there is no such thing as coincidences. In New York just the month before I had met the very same man and at this very moment he had in possession my own copy of Bridge to Terabithia that I had kept for almost thirty years. It was to be signed by his mother, Katherine Paterson, who had written this book for her son who had lost his best friend, her son who now makes movies.

I shared with him the story I knew of Bridge to Terabithia and told him that I, too, had written a book of my own, which I had given him (and Samer) as a parting gift for the gift of presence they had given me. Holding my book in his hands, he regarded the painting that is found on its cover full of blues and yellows and reds. Ever the engineer he told me that when colors are pulled apart, they too become mosaics, just as moments such as this become mosaics, filling our lives with beauty and richness and light.  

They left not soon after. I watched as they drove to other destinies, leaving this part of their fate behind and as the mist descended over the hills of Carolina, I thought to myself:

There is magic in the mountains.

There is magic in everything.

All you have to do is believe.

This Is No Time For Silence

Fifteen minutes they say, not for the first time and certainly not for the last. It is a Friday during Ramadan and we wait for the bus that will take us from East Jerusalem to the West Bank. Fifteen minutes extends to an hour and that hour slowly becomes two. Perhaps here where lives, like people, are separated by walls, time is just as easily divided and can only be measured in the smallest of increments.

As we wait, we watch as thousands of Palestinians descend upon the Damascus Gate in the hopes of arriving at Qubbat al-Ṣakhrah in time for the midday prayer as IDF soldiers with rifles held at the ready, their fingers only inches away from the triggers, flank them on each side.

When all have entered the city gates and the adhan wails from the muezzin and for once this world grows quiet, the buses begin to arrive one by one and I clamor aboard with my mother and we take our place among other mothers and their daughters, men with and without their families, and children that in these moments are children no more, and drive in the direction of Bethlehem.

The bus lets us out steps away from the West Bank. The wall, almost as old as it is tall, rose before us in thick slabs of grey concrete punctuated with watchtowers, barbed wire, and soldiers dressed in riot gear.

My mother cries as we stand in front of the guarded gates.

This is not what she expected.

This is more than she feared.

When the gates finally open, with the flashing of red lights and the moan of metal separating from metal, we walk into the West Bank and are greeted by the shouting of men hoping to sell their fruits, their trinkets, their toils to the world outside of these walls and the arguing of other men hoping that they will be the ones chosen to be our guide within their city walls. It is here that we find Marwan, a young Palestinian taxi driver, and the three of us make our way to his car parked near the entrance to his city.

“Welcome to my big prison,” he says as we shut the doors to his black sedan, the windows rolled down, the radio low. I meet his eyes in the rear view mirror. They are brown like his skin and his hair and despite the anger in his words there is softness in his voice and in these eyes that now plead with mine: Look at me. Look at this. Holding his gaze I see that our ages are not far from one another and I sense that there is no distance in our thoughts. There is no difference in our dreams.

He starts the car and drives both towards and away from the madness, pointing to all of the tourist attractions along the way:

Here is where Bansky painted his first song of protest.

There is where the angels, they were heard on high.

Here is where Christ the King was born.

There is where they build the illegal settlements. There is where they have electricity. There is where they have clean water.

Here is where we sometimes have none.

He stops the car on top of the hill that overlooks the land beyond these walls and we climb out to take in the world in which we now find ourselves. We do not stay long, but before we shut the doors once again I imagine him here in the darkness waiting for angels, dreaming of freedom.

As the sun begins to hide behind the hills of Palestine he takes us back to the gates that remain locked not from within but from without. Bittersweet we say our goodbyes and he disappears like a ghost into the gathering crowd and we, there for only one day, are able to escape just hours after we arrived, leaving behind Marwan, leaving behind all who must spend their entire lives behind these walls.

We return to the city lost in thoughts that are thousands of years old. Thoughts like this: In Jerusalem there is no need to go to Yad Vashem to see just how cruel one man can be to another.

In the days that follow we travel to Haifa, we travel to the Dead Sea, we travel to Tel Aviv having cautious conversations everywhere we go for to say too much we might be accused of things that we are not guilty of and to say too little and we become guilty of remaining silent when it is this silence, like so many other things, that must be broken.

The week passes as slowly as it does quickly and by week’s end we say our goodbyes. She departs the day before I and I am left alone in a place that I might not have stayed had she not been there, had she not offered her lungs so that I may breathe, her hand so that I may still stand, and her heart because mine, for those days and the days ever since, had been broken. If it were not for my mother I would have left had she not given me life once again.

When it is my turn to leave I do not linger and although I might not ever return, I am now ready to return with my words and these words will cry out for freedom. 

In Istanbul I Was Happy

It did not rain while I was gone. Not for eighty-six days. And yet I still remember the day when the floods, they came. But they were floods not of water, but of happiness; floods that I never knew to exist, floods I never thought possible until the day that I arrived in Istanbul.

It was the end of June. Summer had only just begun. It had been almost three months of traveling and it has been five months since and yet I can still remember my coffee in Istanbul. I remember the ceramic cup in which it was served with blues more blue than the Bosphorus laced with red and white and a handle so delicate that I had to lift it up from its rim in fear of shattering its beauty. I remember the flakes of coconut that fell from the Turkish Delight onto the saucer that matched this cup and the sweetness that they contained.

If I close my eyes I can still taste this coffee on my tongue: strong and bitter and almost as hot as the sun that shone without clouds in the sky. I can still hear the language of the land being spoken all around me and the call to prayer that echoed from Asia to Europe and back again across the sea and across my soul, which until this moment had never before known this peace. I remember how I used to stand still and listen and remind myself to breathe for in these moments my very breath had been taken from me, every other emotion but happiness had been taken from me and I wanted none of them back. Just this. Just happiness.

If I close my eyes I am back in Istanbul and I am happy.

In Istanbul I was happy.

The Burden of Hope

“Why are you going there?!?” she asked when I told her of my plans to travel through the Levant and spend a significant amount of time in Turkey. This was only to be a small portion of the journey I was about to undertake, but it was these regions, the ones where peace often seems an impossibility, which apparently alarmed her the most. 

“It is so dangerous.” She continued as if her words were going to deter me from departing on this pilgrimage that I spent years dreaming of and months planning.

They did not.

But the thing is, I could have listened to her, I could have believed her, just as I could have believed that America needed to be made great again or that the world was flat, but I have learned, sometimes with ease and sometimes with difficulty, not to believe all I have been told. Besides, watching the news here in America one learns all too quickly that acts of terrorism are not merely relegated to the regions in which I intended to travel, but are also being carried out randomly and devastatingly across American soil, mostly by citizens of this country.

So with all of this in mind I offered to her my own safety concerns regarding my own country after which she just repeated again and again, “It is not the same. It is not the same. It is not the same.”

And perhaps for her it is not the same for sometimes the enemy within is so much easier to ignore than the supposed enemies without. But I did not leave America because of enemies. I left America because in this life I have been burdened and I have been blessed with this thing called HOPE. It is a burden because it might render me naïve when faced with the realities of this world, but it is a blessing because in the face of these realities it allows me to persevere.  And this hope was what called me out into the world because for the shortest amount of time, in the wake of last November, I had lost my hope and I feared that it might never return.

And so in April of this year I set out on a pilgrimage haphazardly tracing the Templar Trail from the Levant to Santiago de Compostela in the hope that this hope, thought to be lost, might be found somewhere out there in the world, even among the ruins.

And while this journey first led me to India, it was in Lebanon where my pilgrimage truly began. Only two people I know have been to Lebanon before. One, an Israeli soldier with the special forces sent to fight against Hezbollah during the invasion of 2006. The other, an American friend who found herself in Lebanon at the very same time admiring, from a rooftop, all of the pretty fireworks exploding in the distance, only to be reminded that these were most certainly not fireworks and that if she were to stand just a little closer she would learn that these so-called fireworks are the furthest thing from pretty.

Now I could have brought with me to Lebanon my fears, but that is not why I went. I went by myself, alone as a woman, quitting her job to pursue even greater passions: that of writing, that of learning, and that of speaking to strangers. I went to listen, to learn, to witness, and to be made aware of all of the realities that exist that are so very different than my own so that I might understand this world and its people just a little bit more.

In Arabic, the word for this region is Mashriq meaning the “place of sunrise", the name is derived from the verb sharaqa, which means (شرق) "to shine, illuminate, radiate" and "to rise" and it was my hope that this land would do the very same thing to my soul.

I touched down in Beirut on the 8th of May and as I left the airport it was not in the rising, but in the setting of the sun over the Mediterranean that I first glimpsed just how beautiful Beirut could be and as I rolled down the windows to take in my new surroundings the scent of jasmine so profusely permeated the air that I wanted to stop the cab just to beg spring to stay forever for this is what spring does to a soul: it gives it hope.

But you soon learn when zigzagging through the streets of Beirut that all is not beautiful. Even twenty-seven years after the end of the war, there are still buildings riddled with bullet holes, shattered windows, broken glass, and houses never to be lived in again, some still with laundry hanging from their balconies.

And so it is that on the streets of Beirut you find yourself standing somewhere between beauty and destruction trying to make sense of it all, which can’t be done all on your own. It must be done with one another; this is how we get through it all. Because alone, those first few days in Lebanon were just too much: too much war, too much destruction, too much sadness, too much, too much, too much.

As days progressed I grew more and more brave and began to seek out those conversations that would help me to understand just how resilient we are as human beings even when faced with our own destructiveness. 

And I spoke to everyone. I spoke with John who owned the shop on the corner whose family arrived from Armenia to escape the genocide. I spoke to Mohammed who was born Palestinian, but not in Palestine. I spoke with Syrian refugees who told me time and again that the beauty of Lebanon was nothing compared to that of Syria. And I spoke with Lebanese who remembered the war. How could they forget?  They too believed that everything was too much, but they had such a way of saying it that rather than allowing your heart to be broken further, they set your heart at ease.

These conversations continued as I traveled through Jordan where I spent time with Bedouins who shared with me their views of the world. They told me what they thought about religion and love, war and Daesh. And not a day went by on this journey that I did not speak to someone new and learn about their lives, their dreams, their hopes, and their histories.

In Israel the conversations grew more difficult because the confrontations became more apparent: in walls and settlements, at bus stops and in taxicabs, and even at the holiest of sites. It was enough to bring tears to my eyes and take the breath from my lungs, so much so that I felt a suffocation that I have never felt before and hope to never feel again. These were the days when I learned that sometimes too much is just that: too much.

But no matter how difficult these conversations became I still continued to seek out these ever so necessary exchanges for without these encounters with near and distant histories, without being made aware of just how ugly this world could be, I might never have been able to see its beauty either and as time wore on in these travels I learned what other things could also be too much and, at the same time, never enough.                

Before departing for Turkey I was left to wonder how it is that both are possible; how can too much and never enough be sometimes one and the same? How can I walk down the streets of Beirut and in one moment see what is left of a hotel that still rises high above the city despite the holes in it that were never intended as entryways and in another receive a flower from a complete stranger just for saying hello as I passed? How can I stand with my feet in the River Jordan and know that for some that this is the closest that they will ever come to the other side? How can a concrete wall divide the world?

Perhaps it is because this whole region lies on the seam of two worlds, a seam that can just as easily be ripped apart as it can be sown together and perhaps it is only by titillating on this edge between that which is light and that which is heavy that somehow we find balance in our lives.

Now, had I allowed this fear of the unknown to eclipse my excitement for it, I might have kept my eyes closed and not seen all that must be seen when traveling throughout the world: war and genocide, oppression and grief, sorrow and sadness. And, more devastatingly, I might have kept my heart closed and not felt the other side of it: the intensity of life, its beauty, its light, and its grace, and with such a closed heart I may never have opened it to a happiness that I never knew existed until the moment I arrived in Turkey when my heart swelled just at the sight of Istanbul.

A city, too, that lives on the edge of past and present, east and west, modern and everything but and for the rest of my journey I continued to dance along this edge, even going so far as to walk five hundred miles across the north coast of Spain to reflect upon it all. And it was there among mountains and somewhere beyond the sea that I learned that it is only here, in the place where balance is found, that there is no burden that cannot be borne, not even that of hope.

What Comes After

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”

 Roald Dahl

There are some histories that cannot be forgotten but there are ways of remembering that heal the wounds of the past rather than inflict the old torments of time upon those who have suffered and long to suffer no more.

Rwanda is one such place where the light that now shines from this tiny heart of Africa is often eclipsed by the dark history of genocide.

And yet, emerging from the shadows of war is the story of artists in Rwanda. Theirs is a story of creation after destruction and of salvation after struggle. It is a story of hope lost and hope found, of life unraveled and life restrung. It is, after all, the story of art.  

But to begin their story in the beginning is to reflect upon what was rather than what is. To begin at the end is to strip this story of its sweetness. Therefore this story must be told in its ripening, which is to say, somewhere in the middle.

This is perhaps why artists work within mediums, in order to somehow resolve the age-old conflicts between light and darkness, life and death, beauty and ruins, past and present.

Stripped of all that had once been these conflicts were made raw throughout and in the aftermath of the genocide. Sometimes words cannot express what has been lost and it is the visual artists of the world that must find new means of communicating all of the sorrows and all of the joys that they hold in their hearts. It is with cameras, canvases, paintbrushes, and photographs that the artists of Rwanda are able to express both their remembrance of the past and their hope for the future.

*****

 In a nation where 50% of the population is under the age of thirty it is no small wonder that many of the Rwandan youth are pursuing art. That few of them are as of yet, tricenarians makes this story all the more miraculous.

 Not all were present in Rwanda in 1994.

 Some lost their families. Their mothers. Their fathers. Their sisters. Their brothers.

 Some families remained intact, forever expanding to include cousins, nephews, and even those unrelated by blood.

 After new families were formed in orphanages and within the walls of art studios founded upon the profound beliefs that art can heal, that art can transform, and that art can bring salvation.

 In recent years the number of art studios has increased from one to many throughout the city of Kigali and as each studio continuously plants their roots and spreads their wings, they have become sanctuaries, a place to retreat from the outside world and explore the realm within.

 That these studios also serve as homes for many of these artists indicates the unbreakable bond between art and life; the two cannot be separated. 

 More recently these studios have grown to include community centers that provide a safe haven for children, drum and dance troupes that carry on the cultural traditions of Rwanda, and creative collaborations with the restaurants and hotels in Rwanda that reveals an infusion of art and living that not only delights the senses but overwhelms the heart.

There is Inema Art Center, Ivuka Arts Studio, Uburanga Arts Studio, and Yego Art Studio, to name but a few. Their names, in succession, mean a blessing, rebirth, beauty and simply yes. All unique in their appearance and similar in their purpose, they are dedicated to the ferocious pursuit of art for the sake of art, for the sake of life, and for the sake of Rwanda.

Walk into any of these studios in Kigali and you are greeted by a confluence of rhythm; heard over the speakers that emanate blues and jazz and seen across canvases that splay the kaleidoscopic colors of this country. There are the burnt sienna’s of the clay earth, the yellows of the African sun, blues like the shadows of twilight, and greens like the skins of unripened mangoes or the leaves of trees that know no other season but spring. And then there are the reds and oranges like the fires of passion that burn ever so brightly in the hearts of these young artists.

These are the colors of hopes and dreams. These are the colors of Rwanda. 

Tony Cyizanye, artist and owner or Yego Art Center reveals: “I paint in color so that the whole of Africa is not seen as darkness.” Standing in the presence of the vibrant works of art that are on display at all of these studios leaves no room for doubt that these Rwandan artists are intent on letting their lights shine.

*****

All of these artists speak of happiness as if it were commonplace. It is the happiness that swells up and spills forth from those that have the audacity to follow their dreams. But these dreams do not come easy for there are no art supply stores in Rwanda, just as there are no art schools. Here easels and frames are made from recycled wood, paints are acquired from countries outside of their own, and canvases are not always cotton or linen.

 Ambitious, autodidactic, and inspiring, these artists are the pioneers of a Rwandan culture that has been reshaped, reawakened, and reborn through art proving that although art may have yet to change the world in its entirety it has changed the lives of all of these artists in Rwanda and will no doubt influence generations of artists to come. 

*****

Since the genocide, the metamorphosis that has occurred in Rwanda from a nation all but destroyed by war to a cultural destination serves as a reminder that it is not always demonstrations of humanitarianism, those acts that explore the question of what can you give to a people who have lost everything or have returned to a place that has lost everything, that enable a people to overcome even the most tragic of tragedies.

It is the less demonstrative demonstrations of humanity, made by those courageous enough to seek out the answer to what people are able to give of themselves after they have lost everything, that is the true mark of the human spirit, for there are lessons to be learned from those who survive, those who persevere, and especially from those that stoke the embers of creation refusing to let the fires fade.

Eventually may we learn that from hate comes love, from war comes peace, and from art comes everything.