A leap of faith: excerpt from someone’s diary…(reproduced by permission)
Him : I love you
Her : I know you do…( sotto voce oh my God he does ..what shall I do? ) , .
Him: I think we should get engaged
Her : ( the guy is serious, do not string him along , be a straight shooter now – oh but how without breaking his heart? – do it now he will heal quicker) - you are catholic we can only marry Muslims.
Him: why ?
Her: these are our rules (no need to get into details)
Him: ok I will become a Muslim.
Her ( now , scared as she did not expect that ) : can you leave the Church ? won’t you be excommunicated? Have you thought about your parents, how will they accept this? I can never be the cause of an abyss between you and them.
Him: I will persuade them, plus I don’t need their permission.
Her : true but my faith and yours too teaches us to respect family ties, your mother may curse me, or you can you handle that? ( she is trying hard to put obstacles in his way, if it does not work she will make him hate her so as not to hurt him).
Him: my family are reasonable
Her : this is not right , you have to do it because you feel it and not because you like what you see. ( she needs to get out of this situation- the guy’s gorgeous eyes are searing her soul) - I am sorry this is unacceptable to me, anyway I don’t intend on getting into any relationship just now I still have to finish my studies and that is a long way off in the future. Let us continue being the friends we have always been can’t we do that ?
Him : ( deadly silence)
Her : ( looking at him and seeing raw pain, his beautiful green eyes are clouding over and there is a tiny tear forming at the corner, which spills slowly on his cheek- their eyes interlock in a glance which lasts an eternity. She is on the brink of accepting but she cannot make this sacrifice , he surprised her , even though he is ready she is not. She is too young, has no experience ..what if it is a mess . Plus she does not think of him as a suitor , but rather her friend to goof around with . If he continues pleading like this with his eyes her resolve will melt. She breaks eye contact. Their friends in the room sense the tension) Please don’t cry she says.
Their favourite song suddenly comes up as if on cue for the last dance ‘sunshine reggae’ .
Him: stay for a few minutes more
Her : I must go home…
The song ends, she gets up turns round and steps out of his life
Her: farewell
Him : ( silently crying)
She is now home.
Her : Today I broke a man’s heart – did I take the right decision ?
Her Christian friends : that was courageous of you, he will be better off this way you would have ruined his life.
Her Muslim friends : that was arrogant of you he was going to convert you would have collected a lot of ‘brownie points ‘ with God and so would he , why did you prevent him from entering Islam? You should have given him a choice and you did not, you took a decision on his behalf and you had no right to that.
End of excerpt.
She never wavered from these self established rules, but *sigh* the characteristic of youth is intransigency. Although the easy part would have been to let him convert on the spot . She did not need to dismiss him totally . She could have put him on the track, shown him the steps and people who could teach him about Islam and let him judge. That would have been fair and just. But that required a leap of faith from her part. Faith that he would like what he saw, understand and stay. Stay for the love of a higher entity first and foremost and second for this mere mortal he professed to love. She did not give him a chance to perform his own leap of faith and now will never know.
Those hurt green eyes continue to gaze from space.
They say History repeats itself and the wise should open their eyes and mind. Have we learned the lessons? We believe we did and have mellowed out. But in true karmic irony History comes crashing at our feet with a loud bang, and we are required once more to make that leap of faith we had foregone while waiting for a leap of faith from the opposite fence.
Our solace is in a simple verse; 1400 years ago God told his prophet Muhammad who had also tried too hard:
"انك لا تهدي من أحببت ولكن الله يهدي من يشاء"
It is and will always be relevant ....
13 comments:
What's it mean?
Very sad :-(.
Highlander, do you happen to know that by coincidence (?) the song you mention here, this Sunshine Reggae, it's by Laid Back and they were from... yes... Denmark.
Just had to write this...
Ever so romantic NBA
NBA, you're not being romantic, you're being melodramatic.
NBA I knew the song was by Laid Back but I did not know they were Danes...wow this is creepy kind off.
Hi Mo hope you are enjoying places in the heart ..I'm preparing the next installments soon :)
anonymous 5.05 ...you have to figure out yourself what it means..it is very simple.
Thank you Highlander. I look forward to the next installation.
ss
I wonder, why has this girl started a relationship with a man she is not allowed to marry? Friendship? Why doesn't anybody tell young people that friendship between a man and a woman is possible only if at least one of them is strictly homosexual?
However, she finally steps on the right path. Relationships between people from different cultures are unstable. I know several such cases, and all but one ended with painful separations.
I guess things are likely to be even worse when one of the partners has to convert, i.e. to abandon his self. I disliked Lina's story (if somebody is interested, I'll explain why), but one detail in it was interesting - the degradation of her husband after he renounced his self.
Maya
Maya Lina's story is not over yet, you have to read it all to judge :) don't be quick to jump to conclusions ..often things are not what they seem they are.
as for friendship between a man and a woman hmmmm is that what you really think ? I thought it was different in Europe that on the contrary women were treated as equal partners. I'm sure many would object ...otherwise if the Western world thinks this way then can we conclude that it is not different than Taliban mullahs?
Allow me to disagree about relationships between people of the same culture...but that would be on another post ok ?
Maya, this time I really have to disagree with you. Friendship between a straight guy and straight girl can and does exist and that's great. I've always been able to have friendships with the opposite sex. Heck, we men (at least some of us ;)) are not so stupid that we'd only have that one thing on our minds at any given time!!!
And although it's generally true that relationships between cultures (countries, languages, religions, social groups etc.) end up in divorce more easily than those within the same in group, so what? Diversity is beautiful, and we should encourage people to try it at the very least.
NBA
Hi NBA,
"And although it's generally true that relationships between cultures (countries, languages, religions, social groups etc.) end up in divorce more easily than those within the same in group, so what? Diversity is beautiful, and we should encourage people to try it at the very least."
I don't think divorce rates are higher with couples from different cultures. I don't have anything to back that up, but divorce rates for white american couples are about 60%.... how much worse could it get!?
Craig, I really started to get interested in this but it seems it's very hard to find information on the Internet which looks realiable. However, this is something I found about the US:
http://www.ircruise.com/nchs_statistics.html
It shows that mixed (= between different ethnicities) marriages break up more often than marriages within the same ethnicity. Guess it's the same with different faiths as well though I don't know about for example Catholics who shouldn't divorce at all.
Also, I remember once having read a study that in Germany the least likely marriage to succeed was that between a German man and a woman of Iranian descent. But you can forget that, I don't have the facts here, so this is almost as unfounded as hearsay or conspiracy theories ;).
Maybe the US and/or Israel and/or Denmark and/or al-Qaida are behind this anyway ;).
Anyway, it's very sad. I believe mixed marriages make the world a better place, and statistics definitely shouldn't discourage anyone from trying. If they did, we shouldn't even live because in the end, we're going to die anyway, statistically, that is...
So, I'm sad for what happened to Highlander's couple.
NBA
NBA,
Craig, I really started to get interested in this but it seems it's very hard to find information on the Internet which looks realiable.
Yes, it's not very popular to talk about inter-ratial and/or inter-cultural marriages, not politically correct and all :)
In the US I'd say (subjectively) whites and hispanics can intermarry and do just as well as same race couples. Same with whites and (east) Asians. Don't have any experince with other combos, as I don't personally know any other types of couples. I was married to a woman who grew up in communist China for about 10 years and we didn't really have any cultural conflicts. We did divorce, but that was for other reasons.
So, don't give up hope on finding your Arab wife :)
I think the most important thing is for both people to be willing to try. That's all it really takes. Religion is likely to be a factor, I guess, but it depends on how seriously you each take religion, would be my guess. Not a lost cause in any case.
Here's a cool blog you might enjoy:
Leilouta
She's a Tunisian muslim married to an American Infidel! So, even that isn't out of teh question. She's very funny too.
That's interesting that marriages fail a lot between Germans and Iranians. I wouldn't have thought that. We have a very high number of Iranians near LA, where I live. Over a million. And I know marriages between Iranians and Americans are pretty common. I might even go so far as to say they are VERY common. Iranian expats seem to be closer to western values than Arab expats though, generally speaking.
Let me explain my comment about "Places in the Heart". Once I read a collection of stories by Jerome K. Jerome. There were 15 - 20 stories altogether, and 2 (two!) of them were about fragile innocent women suffering painful death: one strangled by a boa, the other smashed by a robot. I felt there was something deeply wrong about stories portraying sufferings of fragile innocent women. I was absolutely not surprised when I later learned that the famous Marquise de Sad wrote at least one such book. Now I accept stories of this kind only if they are strictly based on a true story and have a clear point.
Highlander, I of course think that women are equal to men, but I also think they are different. They are created so, and there is nothing bad about it. But in the West, women generally are accepted as equal to men only if they behave like men. We also tend to think that we can be above biology and have full control over it.
I am not against inter-culture marriages, I just want everybody to be aware that they are risky. Because, when it is too late, the thing you hear most often is "why-didn't-anybody-tell-me".
Maya
Yes I hear you Maya, the majority of intercultural marriages in Libya are succesful by the way a good example is Khadijateri ( she has a blog on my sidebar) she is American and married to a Libyan guy but even vice versa is ok here by the way.
NBA you should move to Libya :) you will be spoiled for choice.
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