Letter To An Old Friend

Dear America,

I know we said we’d keep in touch after I left, but of course we knew that would be easier said than done.  All things considered, I think we’re doing a good job staying connected.  Anyways, I hope you’re doing well.  I just had a conversation with a new friend about you.  I had no idea that so many people here would be so interested in you.  Remember how you used to quote Anchorman and say, “I’m kind of a big deal?”  Turns out you are!  People over here, they ask about you all the time.  

So I thought I’d write to tell you about the conversation I just had.  It was weird – this conversation.  The whole time I felt like I was speaking on your behalf.  I talked for like an hour in an I-think-I-speak-for-both-of-us kind of way.  I don’t know if you would have agreed with all the things I said, but I didn’t really have a choice since you weren’t here but I was.

Anyways, I said that you and I both agree that Media is a liar.  Now I know he is your friend and all, and you probably wouldn’t have said that.  But I bet if you and I switched places, and you were here and I was there, you’d see it my way.

Okay, so maybe I didn’t really speak for you.  Maybe what I said was more along the lines of what I wish you would say. I know you’d prefer to speak for yourself, but you weren’t here, so I had to speak for you.  Abu Ahmed and his friends were sipping coffee at this table in a sunlit coffee bar, and they wondered how you felt about them. And they're really cool guys.  

So since you and I are such good friends, I wanted to present you in a positive light to them.  Just like everyone else in the world, they had already talked to your boy Media, so I was thinking that maybe their perceptions of you might be distorted. 

This guy Abu Ahmed – he’s an Arab.  Ha, I suppose that’s redundant.  I could have just said, “You see, Abu Ahmed.  Period.”  You would have known he was an Arab by his name, huh?  You don’t need to see anything else to place him geographically right? Abu Ahmed = Arab.  He’s this really soft-spoken guy with dark eyes and an ornery grin.  Super chill dude.

Wait…Let me back up.  I know you want to hear about Abu Ahmed, and I will tell you about him, but I’m going to nudge him down the ladder of paragraphs here.  We have some other stuff to talk about here on the top rungs, and besides - you’ll meet up with him later when I’m telling him and his friends that you’re not really like Snookie or any other cast member of Jersey Shore.  Ha.  I bet you can’t wait for that.  By the way you can blame Media for that.

Before I tell you about this Abu Ahmed guy, I want to talk to you about something kind of serious – I want to talk to you about some of the things you said to me when you found out I was leaving for the Middle East.

I remember that you were concerned for me, America.  You said you were really worried for my safety and all.  Also, I think you kind of just liked having me around so you just said some things to make me second-guess my decision to leave.  You said things like, “How come you are going to the middle east?”  But the way you said Middle East it was like you hadn’t brushed your teeth in a couple of days.  You asked, “Is it really safe there?”  And that question - about it “being safe” - you said it like you knew it wasn’t safe and that I was being naive for not acknowledging that fact. 

You also said that I shouldn’t go to a Muslim country.  It was like you were scared of Muslims, and I get that.  I really do.  I remember 9/11.  And I used to listen to your friend Media even though I never really liked him.  And what he said about Arabs wasn’t very flattering and sometimes it was scary. But wait until you meet Abu Ahmed and his friends.  They’re not scary at all, especially sitting at a round table in comfy chairs making sipping noises and laughing.  

We were sitting at this coffee shop together, me and Abu Ahmed, and he was teaching me some Arabic words.  He tapped his finger on the table and said “Towela.”  The Arabic word for table is towela. That reminded me of something. Remember back in the day how you used to call those things Arabs wore on their heads towels.  I suppose I laughed at that back then, but now I feel a little bit guilty about it, because my friend Abu Ahmed had one like that on his dome, and it actually looked kind of cool, and I can’t imagine calling it a towel with him sitting there.   

We also used to make that joke where we said that Dirka Dirka Jihad thing.  Remember that?  I laughed at that because it was from a funny movie, and I didn’t know any Arabs back then so I figured that was pretty harmless. I definitely wouldn’t do that here because it was kind of a dig on Arabs and most of them are just like Abu Ahmed.  Maybe when you come to visit me what I’m saying will make more sense.   

I remember your friend Media used to tell stories about Arabs getting hauled around in the back of flat bed pickups with guns strapped across their chests.  He’d talk about how they hid in caves and yelled out commands.  There would always be dust and sand blowing around in his stories.  No grass or trees.  Flies would land on dudes and they didn’t bother to brush them off.  Ha.  Gross.  Anyways, after all that stuff he said about the Arabs, it’s no surprise you expressed concern for me.

But it turns out you shouldn’t have been scared for me, America.  I appreciate the sentiment though.  I really do – but the truth is there was no need for concern after all.  These guys are actually really nice.  There aren’t any swarthy men with guns in truck beds.  I haven’t seen anyone in a cave, and there are actually trees and some really nice grass here.    

If I tell you something, can you keep it a secret?  Of course you can, that’s what friends are for.  I’m just being honest here – I’m a little surprised about how chill these people are too.  I didn’t expect them to be gun-packing killers like Media made them out to be, but I thought they’d at least hate you.  After all, as much as I never really liked Media (even though he’s your friend), I did hear his stories, and I figured there was some truth in it. 

But here’s the deal, America.  Almost all Arabs are really gentle and generous and understanding, just like Abu Ahmed, that guy I was telling you about earlier.  It’s like, if you were here, you’d want to hang out with these people. But I’m not really sure they’d want to hang out with you yet, because mostly what they know about you is from Media. See, he’s already talked to them. 

And that’s what Abu Ahmed and I ended up talking about at the coffee shop mostly – we talked about you and Media.  I don’t really like talking about people who aren’t around to defend themselves.  I hate gossip.  But that’s what we did; we talked about you and Media.   Actually, we talked about you and Media after Abu Ahmed insisted that the waiter bring me a big soft chair from the other side of the room and then twisted himself into a social pretzel to make sure I was the center of the conversation. 

I was like the only native English speaker at the table right?  You should have seen it, America.  I bet I looked really funny there, a white guy with spiky blonde hair sitting at a table with a bunch of Arab men, some of them in those things we called towels.  Anyways, I think it would have been real easy for Abu Ahmed and his friends to pretty much ignore me.  Or at least engage me with a brief introduction and some pleasantries and then ignore me.  But it didn’t happen like that.  This dude went way out of his way to make me feel welcomed - to feel like a part of the group. 

But when I think about it, America, that’s probably NOT what we would have done if we were drinking a beer at a long wooden table at our favorite watering hole and in walked Abu Ahmed.  I mean we would have said hello right?  I think so, but then what? Would we have bought his drink? Probably not.  Would we have started ignoring him in favor of people who could speak our language and people we had stuff in common with? I bet so.  Especially if it was me and you and Media at that bar together.  I can see it now.  Media’d probably start making fun of Abu Ahmed right there.  Of course, it’d be in English, so he wouldn’t understand, but I could see that happening. 

But that’s not how Abu Ahmed, or most Arabs operate.  They are like the most genuinely welcoming people.  So even though he didn’t speak any English and my Arabic is complete weak sauce, he and his friends made sure I was the pivot on which the conversation turned.  There was some hand gesturing for clarity, and one guy who spoke both languages did quite a bit of interpreting, and somehow we talked and it was really interesting.

We talked about how every group of people has some rotten spots, but that Media makes entire societies look like that one brown spot in an otherwise tantalizing piece of fruit.  It’s like the Middle East is this juicy red apple but it’s got one little brown spot the size of a nailhead on it.  Then Media drones on and on and on about that nailhead-sized spot and forgets about how delicious the apple actually is.

You know how I’m always using metaphors and stuff, right?  Well, here’s what I was thinking about at the table when we were talking about stuff.  This isn’t what we talked about exactly, but it’s what I was thinking about in my head.

Imagine your boy Media is sitting alone on a deserted island, okay.  And imagine he hasn’t eaten in like 10 days and he’s dying of starvation.   Then all of a sudden, a big, red and juicy apple drops down from the sky.  He’s saved, right?  No.  He’d die of starvation. He’d die just sitting there holding that apple because he’d be so focused on the small brown spot where the apple got bruised in the fall that he’d forget you can actually eat an apple and that it’s really good.

That is what I was thinking in my head, but outside my head we were talking through translations about how super-small groups like the Taliban or the cast of Jersey Shore often end up smearing the image of an entire region or country.  Sure, those minorities are just tiny spots an otherwise perfectly good piece of fruit, but they’re all Media talks about.  Ha, I just realized I’m probably using that whole apple metaphor because of the old quip, “one bad apple spoils the whole bunch.”

It’s like how every friendship has a few little hitches here and there, but you can’t focus on those.  Those hitches are the brown spots.  Your friendship is the apple.  You have to focus on the good stuff to make the friendship work.  But that’s not how Media is; he focuses on the bad stuff. 

Okay, I know you hate to talk about this - but we have to talk about it.  No one ever likes all of their friend’s friends, but seriously, I don’t like him.  Media.  You keep saying he’s cool, but I don’t see it. I know I harp on this too much, and I’m assuming you still like him and you guys probably still hang, but seriously.  I’m not into him, and I think he’s like half pathological liar, half attention whore.

It’s like he has been saying Arabs are gun-toting terrorists riding in flatbeds chanting death to infidels just to get attention.  But Abu Ahmed isn’t like that.  I mean, he just met me and then he paid for my whole tab.  But I suppose stories like that don’t really get you much attention.  And that’s all Media wants.

I suppose I had some friends like him when I was younger too, but either they grew out of it, or I quit hanging out with them.  Here’s the deal, America.  Your friend isn’t just twisting the truth about the Middle East.  He’s also going around the world saying you are like the cast of Jersey Shore so that the world sees you and thinks you’re like Snookie or the Situation…

See how I ended that last paragraph with an ellipsis?  I like those.  I really do.  Dot Dot Dot.  It means stop reading for a second and think.  I thought it was an appropriate place to put one because I thought it would be a good place for you to pause and think…I dig thoughtful pauses. 

I was thinking maybe you’d want to stop and think about what I said for a second,  because I’m meeting people from all over the world here, and a bunch of them think you’re a booze-pounding, thoughtless heathen who beats everyone up and lives in a tanning bed.  They want to talk about you, because your friend Media is always talking about you, and making you sound crazy to them and making them sound crazy to you.

And there you are, America – intelligent, thoughtful, hard-working, and I’m trying to speak highly of you, but there’s your friend and he’s always talking louder than me, and the world thinks you’re half Situation, half Snookie!...

I put that ellipsis there because it’s another good place for a thoughtful pause.  You were probably like, “What?!  Me? Snookie?  Why would they think that?!” Well, think about it. (I suppose I could have just put dot dot dot to make you think about it).  Your so-called friend talks about that one rotten spot on you to the rest of the world so that’s a big part of what people think of you.  You can’t blame them for thinking that’s how you are.  

We do the same thing.  It’s just like how we used to kind of think all Arabs were crazy and we made mean jokes about them.  It’s just because that’s what we kept hearing from your friend.  Listen, I know I’m really taking some digs at your boy Media.  Sorry. I hope we can still be friends. 

Anyways, then there’s Abu Ahmed with his kind smile, his enthusiasm for teaching me Arabic words, the social gymnastics he’s pulling off to make me feel welcomed to his land, and Media would never pay a lick of attention to him.  He’s too boring, and I suppose if Media were telling a story about Abu Ahmed, no one would listen for very long.  And that’s the problem.  The more he embellishes, the more people like him and pay attention to him.  Okay, I’m done railing on your friend. 

Like I said, I hope someday you can come visit me here.  I’d like to show you how great this place is.  Plus, I think it’d be good for people here to see you.  The real you.  Not the part of you that Media likes to tell them about, but the real you – the you that loves learning and the you that innovates and creates.  The you that understands people and wants to help.  The you that I will always tell people good things about, no matter where I am.

Your friend,

Adam Showalter