There comes a time when even the hardiest of reasonable interlocutors throw up their arms and give up on trying to have a dialogue with certain people.
Most of us ran into this problem as children when we tried to convince a skeptical mother that it was indeed the dog that ate the cookie. The mother has decided that you are the guilty party and no amount of protest is going to change the situation.
Resignation sets in. If this condition persists, then “normal” life will take a twist into the Heathcliff domain as narrated by Miss Bronte.
The heat wave that is making our summer more than memorable is not making things any easier. Nerves are already taut and tempers are on a fiery edge. The sensible will try to disengage and keep out of rational and irrational discourse altogether. If only it were so simple!
I have been receiving a spate of strange e-mails from Saudis filled with venom. I’m used to that in some measure, but the source is usually from abroad. I am accused now of not putting the occasional bad word about “Satan” in. It seems that these people believe it my duty to trash the US with or without reason. I try to explain (in private) that I am neither an ideologue nor a theological freak. I also am not inherently anti anything or anyone. I allow myself the conceit of believing I belong to the liberal/humanitarian approach in writing and am not a graduate of Gobbles’ school of journalism.
None of my protestations are doing any good. The more I proclaim, the less they understand. I left the matter there but the e-mails kept coming.
We in Saudi Arabia have been complaining ad infinitum about the lack of understanding and misrepresentation that is now our daily fodder from the United States. We scream and screech on the pages of this and other papers in response. Our overfilled passion parlors encounter more accusations. Obviously, there is no dialogue. While it is wrong to generalize about the United States since its size, power, diversity, and openness dictate otherwise, I can safely venture to say that we here are solidly in one camp or the other. Both local camps, however, demand that one trashes the United States. This seems to be the rule to which I was naively oblivious.
I decided to take a break from it all and read poetry. What should I encounter as I opened the collected poems of John Keats? Have a look:
Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
A paradise for a sect, the savage too
From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep
Guesses at Heaven.
I picked up the pen again — the portable keyboard to be exact.
- Arab News Opinion 14 August 2003
