My Accidental Jihad (13 page)

When Ismail stepped into the room, I felt silly and self-conscious, as if I were in costume, but his face registered awe, not amusement. “You look beautiful,” he whispered. How could I, when there was so little of me to be seen? But when my sisters-in-law led me to a mirror, I understood what he meant: All that colorful, shimmering cloth caught the light as it fell sensually to the floor, and in the midst of it my face shone as fresh and inviting as a blossoming flower. With no other part of my body to appraise, I met my own gaze in the mirror. I barely recognized my expression: not the anxious frown of a tourist but the relaxed smile of someone who felt at home.

T
ho
ugh my in-laws did everything they could to make me feel welcome in their homes, I would never be at ease in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. Entering the country was like stepping inside the ransacked home of an abuser, where suffering was written on the faces of everyone I saw. Everything showed signs of neglect: the sidewalks strewn with trash, the potholes big enough to swallow a tire, the buildings whose gaping window frames offered no protection from the wind. Those who live in a violent home know that a separate weather system exists beneath its roof; it sits under a gathering storm cloud even when the sun is shining. Those who live under a tyrant learn to tread lightly and to sniff the air for the scent of danger: muscles quivering and tensed for flight, studying the faces of loved ones for signs of peril. In Gaddafi’s Libya, people inhaled fear along with oxygen, and as it saturated their bloodstream, it caused paranoid, racing thoughts; a disorienting lethargy; and a tendency to choke on words. There was no escape from the heavy weight of oppression.

My chest had tightened as soon as I saw the towering portrait of Gaddafi as I exited the plane. In his 1970s-era sunglasses, with what looked like a coonskin cap on his head and a flowing scarf around his neck, he loomed so high above us that we stared up into his broad nostrils on our way to customs. Ismail translated the Arabic inscription beneath the portrait for me:
BROTHER GADDAFI, OUR SOULS BELONG TO YOU.

“You must understand, Krista,” my brother-in-law Adel explained later, as we stepped gingerly over patches of crabgrass in an abandoned field near his home, “this country has been run by a psychotic leader for so long that all Libyans suffer from mental illness.” Ahead of us, Aliya hid in a small cluster of palm trees—the closest thing to a playground we could find. Adel spoke more freely in that barren field than he did in the privacy of his own home--as if his words were too dangerous to be uttered inside. “Our mental illness comes from having to tell so many lies to ourselves and others just to survive another day,” he said. Even the smallest criticisms of the regime led to disappearances, prolonged incarceration without legal representation, or torture. An enormous amount of pretending was required to try to lead a normal life.

A gaunt man with square, outdated glasses and the broad, lopsided smile of a boy, Adel was an electrical engineer who worked for the military. The best year of his life, he said, was the one he spent in the former Yugoslavia, pursuing his master’s degree. On our first night at his home, he showed us pictures of his simple, well-lit apartment in Belgrade, with its kitchen cabinets full of food; the manicured parks in which he and his new young wife strolled each weekend; the beautiful, well-maintained architecture of the city. His favorite stories about Yugoslavia recalled freedoms so familiar to me that I no longer recognized them as such: the dinner parties they hosted for Yugoslavian friends, during which heated political debates took place at the table and laughter filled their apartment until late into the night; the evenings his wife slipped out of the apartment to wander the city alone and clear her head. At thirty-six, Adel had only one dream: to experience life outside Libya once more. But like an old man who mumbles wistfully about the past, he spoke as if he knew his dream was beyond reach.

In spite of everything Libyans had lost during more than four decades of Gaddafi’s brutal reign—freedom of speech and movement, freedom to access basic goods or to improve one’s life—they remained rich in their connections to one another. The day we had arrived in Ismail’s hometown, a steady stream of friends and family passed through my father-in-law’s home, warmly welcoming Ismail and inspecting his American wife and daughter. And each day we were there, many more neighbors and relatives visited. Yet Gaddafi had turned their most precious resource against them: every Libyan knew that to speak out against Gaddafi was to put loved ones in Libya at risk, which is why even Libyans living abroad were afraid to challenge the regime. There was nowhere on earth they could escape their bondage to Gaddafi.

In the evenings Adel played me his favorite music: Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Kenny Rogers. As we listened to country music, Adel told me stories about his life. He loved to watch my brow furrow in confusion or my eyes widen with disbelief as he described life under “the brother leader.” Maybe it was a relief for him to see the truth written across my face.

Take his story of purchasing a car. One Friday afternoon, an announcement was made at the military office where he worked: any employee who wanted to purchase a vehicle must bring a down payment of two thousand dinars to his or her supervisor the following Monday, because the government was expecting a shipment of cars from across the Mediterranean. Like most of his colleagues, Adel had nowhere near enough money, so he spent his weekend frantically contacting friends and family, securing small cash loans for this rare opportunity. On Monday morning he handed his supervisor a thick envelope stuffed with cash.

Two years later, when the long-awaited car shipment finally arrived, he spent a day at the port watching other government employees drive away in gleaming new Volkswagen Jettas, until there were no more cars to be distributed. A year after that he was summoned back to the port and presented with a shiny red Tata—the Indian version of a Yugo—a car not much bigger than a golf cart. He never asked why it took more than three years for his car to arrive or why some colleagues who paid the same amount as he did received a Jetta. To inquire about the injustice would have been unwise.

As his story drew to a close, Adel began to laugh at my shocked expression. His wife, Fauziya, joined in, and so did Ismail. They held their foreheads and chuckled, their laughter increasing each time they caught my gaze, until their bellies shook and their eyes watered. Pretty soon I was laughing, too—but my amusement was barbed with guilt and sorrow, because I knew it wouldn’t be long before I would return to my hometown, where car dealerships lined the freeway and I could purchase almost any make or model I wanted for no money down. Adel and his family would remain in Libya, with his tiny Tata locked up in his garage, this car he could not afford to drive except on special occasions because his only investment in his family’s future was to sell it as a rare commodity in Libya.

Gaddafi followed me everywhere I went—peering down from billboards lining the highway, dangling from the rearview mirror of taxis, accosting me in hotel lobbies and restaurants. Each street was marked with Gaddafi’s signature green: doors, lampposts, window frames of otherwise stately buildings that recalled Italy’s colonial presence. At a museum filled with artifacts of the Roman Empire, I found a marble bust of Gaddafi standing conspicuously beside one of a Roman emperor. One day, as we passed a large mural bearing his profile, my daughter turned to me abruptly. “Is that man a movie star?” she asked, pointing to his cartoonish face. Then she screwed up her face with distaste. “I’m glad we don’t have that movie star at home, Mom. He’s not handsome at all—and he doesn’t look funny, either.”

Later, Ismail translated as I shared this story with my mother-in-law. We were seated on the floor drinking syrupy green tea; only the four of us were at home. Her hand flew reflexively to her face to hide her smile, and then, for the only time during our visit, she fixed me with a severe expression. In a forceful whisper, with her finger pressed to her lips, she admonished me to never, ever speak this way in Libya again.

When Ismail asked me what I thought of his homeland, I tried to choose my words carefully, knowing how much he loved this country and its people, how desperately he wanted me to see its beauty. He’d told me stories about the pristine beaches of his hometown, but all I saw were decrepit buildings along a littered coastline. He’d told me stories about celebrations that filled the streets, about falling asleep to the sound of drumming and chanting, about women who cooked feasts big enough to feed an entire village. But I saw only barren homes, empty cabinets lacking basic necessities, and subdued women. So I learned to lie. I never admitted that the country he loved existed only in his imagination or that I could not find a moment of peace in Gaddafi’s shadow or that his family’s desperate generosity filled me with sadness. I never told Ismail that under Gaddafi his homeland had become a prison, and that as long as he remained in power, I never wanted to return to this country. How could I tell him I would not allow his children to maintain a relationship with their Libyan family?

Ismail’s passport was finally returned to us. After Ismail had spent weeks inquiring with government officials, his brother showed up one day and handed it over, never explaining its disappearance or how it had arrived on his doorstep. The day before we left Libya, Ismail’s mother and sisters sat in a tight circle and wailed as if they were at a funeral. Their tears flowed on and on, and I knew that as much as they loved us, they were grieving for themselves as well. The next day we would pack our suitcases, flash our passports, and soar away to a different world, abandoning them to this one. Though I tried to conceal my feelings, I couldn’t wait to leave; in spite of their extraordinary hospitality, ever since we had arrived in this country, I had felt increasingly desperate to escape.

The morning of our flight, Adel and Fauziya stood outside their home, their arms crossed against their chests, their shoulders curled inward. I did not want to say good-bye, so instead I told them I would see them in Europe one day; that we would reunite in the former Yugoslavia and they would guide me through the streets of Belgrade. Adel smiled weakly, and then he reached out for Fauziya and clung to her as if, without her support, the slightest wind could topple him.

None of us dreamed that morning that Adel would leave Libya in only a few short years. The last time I spoke to him, over the crackling of a faulty phone line, he told me he had been ill for quite some time. Several Libyan doctors had failed to diagnose his cancer, and in spite of the country’s massive oil wealth, Libyan medical facilities were not equipped to provide the treatment he needed. He spent the following months navigating the Libyan bureaucracy, filing paperwork for a travel visa, awaiting permission to travel, and preparing to undergo chemotherapy abroad. By the time he finally arrived in Jordan several months later, found an apartment, and began treatment, it was too late for him. Just before he died, he’d been trying to get back to Libya to spend his last days with those he loved.

The morning we left Libya, we said good-bye to Ismail’s family in the crowded living room of his parents’ home. Only his father followed us out to the narrow dirt alley behind his house, where a taxi idled beside a concrete wall, waiting to take us to the airport. He was wrapped in a long white cloth like a toga, its bright white hem floating inches above the mud. He had just returned from the mosque. He put his hand over his heart to say good-bye and then, as we squeezed into the backseat of the taxi, he leaned down at the open window and began to chant in a low murmur. “He’s praying for our protection,” Ismail whispered beside me. His blessing hung in the air between us, and I imagined it drifting back out the open window and staying behind with our loved ones in Libya.

III

Homecoming

A
month after we returned from Libya, an ultrasound technician handed me a small black-and-white picture of a baby with a tiny penis. I squinted at the hazy image, then turned it sideways and reexamined it in the bright light of the hospital corridor. Until that moment, I had felt like a babushka doll, hiding within me a smaller version of myself. I had imagined tiny ovaries growing next to my own, a tiny womb somewhere inside of mine. I was raised in a family of four girls. When my sisters and I are together, we speak a private language composed largely of different pitches of laughter that causes our exasperated father to demand to know what’s so funny. I am most at home when I am sharing clothes, secrets, and a bathroom with other women. So when I became pregnant for the second time, I looked forward to giving my five-year-old daughter a sister. It was difficult for me to accept that I was carrying a boy.

With the women in my family I felt porous—as if I absorbed their thoughts and feelings through my very own skin. They did not have to tell me they were angry or excited, nervous or depressed; I could feel it in the way they held my gaze, in the spaces between the words they spoke. Five years after her birth, my daughter and I remained tethered to one another by an invisible cord through which her moods coursed straight into my bloodstream. But with men it was different: their skin coarse and impenetrable, their expressions blunt or inscrutable. I stumbled into moments of intimacy with Ismail that were startling and unexpected; no sooner had I felt them than I began to feel the loss of him as he retreated back into his separate world. It seemed we were always in a state of approach or retreat, moving toward or away from one another, our intimacy a moving target.

A few weeks after we discovered I was carrying a boy, Ismail and I invited a friend to dinner who casually asked us if we intended to have our son circumcised. To me, the answer was obvious. We had just prepared a detailed birth plan with our midwife, outlining a strategy to cushion our son’s transition into this world: the lights in the birthing room would be low; my baby would rest on my chest immediately after birth; he would stay with us at all times in the hospital. Why would we go to such lengths to minimize trauma and then subject him to a painful and unnecessary procedure? As I shook my head, I was astonished to see Ismail nodding on the other side of the table. It had never occurred to me that he might have a different opinion, though it should have, since he’d been raised according to Muslim traditions.

But Ismail had reinvented himself when he had moved to the United States; he’d cast off the outward signs of his background—the style of dress, the diet, the language—and transformed himself from a traditional North African Muslim into a progressive middle-class American. He relished his new freedom to openly date women, to jog down the street in running shorts, to protest the government. But some traditions can’t be discarded as easily as a wardrobe or a cuisine; not even Ismail knew that circumcision was in his blood until he discovered he had fathered a son.

Ismail had rejected those aspects of Arab culture that seemed most oppressive. He had explosive arguments with his father in which he defended his sisters’ right to choose their own husbands, and years later he admonished those husbands to help their wives with the household duties. While the rest of the men sat waiting to be served, Ismail insisted on working side by side in the kitchen with the women in his family. He was skeptical about the oppressive aspects of American culture as well: debt, for example, which he feared would make him an indentured servant to corporations. He objected to American standards of feminine beauty, which encouraged women to develop eating disorders or have plastic surgery to conform to the culture’s unrealistic expectations. He refused to be defined by his job, and he struggled to maintain a balance among work, home, and community. Given all of this, I found his position on circumcision as nonsensical as demanding a dowry for our daughter on her wedding day.

“Why on earth would you want your son to be circumcised?” I asked Ismail, unable to suppress the judgment and incredulity in my voice. Our guest had left, and we were in the kitchen. I was loading the dishwasher, and he was wiping the counters.

“Because it’s what the men in my family do,” he replied curtly.

“Yes, but
why?”
I turned to face him and crossed my arms over my chest, awaiting his response, but he refused to meet my gaze. Instead he kept his eyes locked on the counter as he wiped in slow, thoughtful circles. He had no answer. My practical husband, the scientist who trusted reason more than intuition, the one who had shaken off so much of his oppressive background, was inexplicably tied to this particular ritual from his past.

Ismail believed that the truth was verifiable and that disputes could be resolved by studying the facts. When we disagreed, he often prefaced his strongest argument with the phrase “The bottom line is . . .” He said these four words with absolute confidence, as if he were standing on rock-solid ground. I found his certainty maddening. To me, the truth was not solid, but liquid: it slipped easily through my fingers, reflected the light in different ways, and took the shape of the countless perspectives that tried to contain it. Because he liked to back up his arguments with data, Ismail often concluded with “I’ll send you some links.” The next day he’d email me his online sources.

And so in my efforts to protect our unborn son’s penis, I borrowed his strategy. I printed stacks of articles about the drawbacks of circumcision for Ismail to read, confident that once I’d educated him, he would change his mind. He piled these articles by his bedside and read them one by one, his brow furrowed, while I lay in bed beside him, studying his face as he read.

“What do you think?” I pressed him after he finished an article that detailed the pain of the procedure and the future potential for diminished sexual pleasure. He put the article down and rubbed his eyes.

“I want my son to be circumcised,” he said simply, shrugging his shoulders.

“In Arabic we call it
tahara,
which means ‘purification,’ ” he explained. “For Muslims, this is a way to follow in the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad. It is an honor and a rite of passage.”

“Should my son also follow in the Prophet’s footsteps by being illiterate? By having multiple wives? By sleeping on a rough mat and giving away whatever coins he finds in his house at the end of each day?” My voice was rising; the conversation was deteriorating rapidly.

No scientific study or public-health message could change Ismail’s mind. Circumcision was what men in his family did, and he needed his son to be a part of that lineage. He made me feel that if I prevented the procedure, I would be breaking one of his last and most important connections to his heritage.

Part of me wanted to honor my husband’s wishes. Over the course of our marriage, Ismail had accepted many of my idiosyncrasies: my difficulty with apologies, my desire to sit down and write rather than clean house, my need to disappear alone into the woods to clear my head. He didn’t ask me to back up these behaviors with data. Instead he watched our daughter when I disappeared. And when I returned, rather than waiting for the apologies he deserved, he broke the tension by reaching for my hand. He accepted me in spite of the fact that I confounded him, and I felt I should do the same for him. But I also wanted to protect our son.

One day, as we were leaving our couples therapy, I offhandedly asked our secular Jewish therapist if he’d had his own sons circumcised. “Of course,” he said without hesitation. But like my husband, he could not provide a clear explanation for why he had done so, though he did offer that the circumcised penis was more “attractive.” He and my husband nodded knowingly at each other. Ismail and I had spent many hours in this therapist’s office, and this man, so adept at analyzing the subtle ways in which we caused each other pain—our tone of voice, our choice of words, our avoidance—now spoke as if cutting away the most sensitive part of a baby’s body made perfect sense and required no further consideration.

At the end of one of my last prenatal visits, just after my midwife had finished measuring my belly, I asked if she knew where I could get my son circumcised. I may as well have asked her for a cigarette. She stared at me long and hard, as if she suddenly didn’t recognize me. Then she began to tell me in slow, measured tones that the procedure was not medically necessary. She pointed out that it was no longer covered by some insurance policies; by the time my son was in high school, more than half of his peers would be uncut. She talked about hygiene and sexual satisfaction. She even told me about support groups for men who mourned the loss of their foreskins and about kits men purchased on the Internet to help regrow them. She asked me to consider this decision very carefully.

NOTHING COULD HAVE
prepared me for the sight of my newborn son naked, his penis curled like an inchworm on the bright red apple of his swollen scrotum. The skin of his genitals was glistening and raw and appeared so paper thin that I worried it would tear at the lightest touch. It seemed to me like a defect: such vulnerable organs exposed rather than shielded beneath muscle and bone, and for the first few days I avoided touching these parts of him entirely.

But before long I became intimate with the male body in a way I never had been before. As a young woman I’d regarded men’s bodies as a dangerous neighborhood I rushed through in the dark, heart pounding, eyes closed tight. Once, in my early twenties, after I’d had a lover for several months, I’d caught sight of his penis in the morning light and gasped in alarm. “You’re not circumcised—I can’t believe it!” He’d replied with equal alarm, “And I can’t believe it took you so many months to discover that!”

With my newborn son, Khalil, I came to know the male body as precious and vulnerable. I was falling in love with his soft apricot ears, his tiny red toes, his sweet, milky scent—and, yes, his penis. Intoxicated by a mother’s love, I saw every part of him as perfect. One day, sitting in a cafe with Khalil curled against my chest, I looked around and thought: each man in this room was once this small and pure. My eyes grew damp as I studied the barista pouting over the espresso machine, his faded jeans slung low on his hips; at the elderly man in the corner hunched over a newspaper; at the gregarious college boys clustered at the next table. I felt a surge of tenderness toward them all.

My arguments with Ismail about circumcision were the only dark shadow in the early weeks of Khalil’s life. Our discussions unsettled me; normally compassionate and open-minded, Ismail became like a stubborn patriarch. When I offered what I thought were compelling reasons to forgo circumcision—the trauma, the risk, the unnecessary violation of our son’s body—he stared blankly at me, as if I were speaking a foreign language. Up against hundreds of years of Muslim tradition, my arguments felt flimsy and disposable, like cheap plastic up against concrete. I was being worn down. Inside my head I heard the voices of my own ancestors, especially the women, whispering that there was no other option than to submit to his male authority, that a wife’s role was to honor her husband’s will.

One day a mother on the playground told me that her two sons had been circumcised by a wonderful Jewish doctor who had come to their home, used anesthesia, and allowed the father to hold their baby during the brief procedure. She said that he was very skillful. “In fact,” she added in a confidential tone and with a touch of pride, “several doctors have commented to me about what a good job he did.” I wondered what an exceptionally well-circumcised penis looked like.

But I was encouraged by the idea of doing it in our own home, that my son would not be strapped onto a “circumcision board,” which looked like a neonatal torture device. So one morning, with my sleeping son curled against my chest, I called the doctor the woman at the playground had recommended. A receptionist answered the phone.

“I need to make an appointment for a circumcision,” I said nervously. “I was hoping . . .”

“Can you please hold?” she replied in a bright monotone that made me wonder briefly if she was human or digitized. The line clicked and then tinny, vaguely familiar classical music was piped into my ears. I ran my fingers along my baby’s back and toyed with the idea of hanging up. A moment later she was back on the line, thanking me for my patience.

“I’d like to schedule a circumcision to be done at my home,” I said nervously. Her reply was brisk.

“Is your son Jewish?”

And then: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but our doctor only performs house calls for Jewish babies. If you’ll hold for just a moment longer, I’ll schedule an office visit.”

Sitting on hold, cradling the phone between my cheek and my shoulder, I looked at the baby sleeping at my breast. Khalil was too young and pure to belong to any religion. He was
all
of them. But I was exhausted by this conflict that had hovered over my marriage for months. I wanted to accept Ismail as he had always accepted me. And I needed to put this discord behind us. If this was going to be done, I wanted it done quickly. When I was connected with the receptionist, I made the first available appointment.

The doctor’s office was located in a complex that also housed a tax accountant and a real-estate broker. We arrived early. I stood glumly behind two others in line waiting to check in. Each step forward added to my misery. When it was my turn, a ruddy-faced receptionist with pink lip gloss smiled sweetly up at me.

“Don’t worry, mama—your baby will be just fine,” she reassured me in the same soft southern accent I had heard on the phone. I nodded, my eyes welling with tears, but her words were no more comforting than an inscription on a Hallmark card. On the wall behind her hung a framed picture of George W. Bush, along with an inscription thanking the doctor for his contributions to the Republican Party. In the movies, bad things happened in dark places, with skewed camera angles and ominous music playing in the background, but in real life suffering was often perpetuated in locales like this waiting room with its soothing music and color-coordinated furniture.