Stop Being Mean to Yourself: A Story About Finding the True Meaning of Self-Love (7 page)

He nodded.

We sat for a while, not talking. When three men approached the end of the pier, we simultaneously stood up and hurriedly returned to the car.

Fateh pulled the car onto the highway. A short time later, he exited again. This time he pulled into a parking area outside a park. Fateh reluctantly and nervously got out of the car. Nazil and I followed. The three of us walked across the lot to the park entrance.

A young couple, a man and a woman, sat in their car with the door open at the end of the lot. I felt a wave of fear rise in all three of us as we passed their vehicle. We entered the park, then walked at a brisk pace through the littered, almost vacant field. The land felt barren and untended. Even the trees felt strangely lifeless.

We walked to the parks recreation center. It was closed. We stood there looking at the closed facility for a moment. Then we turned around and headed back through the park

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to the car. After fixing the seat and rolling the car to start it, Fateh pulled back onto the highway. He continued to drive away from the city toward the looming hills.

Nazil pointed to the hills. "That's where the terrorist camps are," he said. "That's where they run to. That's where they train and live.

"It used to be that when a young man grew up, he made a decision to go to college, or go to work, or go into the military," Nazil explained. "Now there are two choices. Does he join the military? Or become a terrorist? The young men of our country take that decision very seriously.

"I have two friends. They were best friends. They played together as children in each other's homes. They knew each other's mothers. As they grew, one decided to join the military. The other decided to become a terrorist. They knew, as they were growing up, what they were going to be."

Nazil paused as he struggled to find just the right words to express his thoughts. "Each became . . . how do you say it . . .
dedicated
to
his choice. When they reached eighteen, one of the men joined the military. The other ran for the hills to become a terrorist. Being a terrorist
was
his ambition.

"Just a few weeks ago, the man who had become a terrorist sneaked into the home of his friend, the one who had joined the military. His friend's mother was in the Page 52

kitchen cooking. He crept up behind her. 'I'm going to kill him someday,' he whispered in her ear. 'You know that, don't you?' Then the terrorist ran out the door.

"They think their power comes from strength. They think power comes from guns, from killing people, from hurting people. That's not power," Nazil said, shaking his head.

"I don't know what makes them do it," he said. "They must be taking drugs. People would have to be using drugs to slit throats and kill people without thinking about it."

Fateh nodded.

After driving for about half an hour, Fateh again exited the highway. We were in a seaside resort town. Nazil explained that before the days of terrorism, people had crowded to this village for luxury vacations and fun weekend outings.

Now the streets were almost deserted. Most of the shops were closed. We walked down the sidewalk for a few blocks, past the locked or boardedup storefronts.

Occasionally, we encountered people—mostly men—who hurriedly walked by us. When we did, I continued to follow Fateh's instructions, avoiding all eye contact and looking down at my feet.

By now, my role as a subordinate woman—one who didn't speak or look directly into the eyes of anyone—felt oddly comfortable, almost familiar. It ran deeper than just

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following Mafateh's instructions or trying to avert an attack. I saw that it was frighteningly easy to dance to the rhythm of a culture and—almost by osmosis—adopt its beliefs and practices as our own.

I now understood the behavior of the woman at the reception desk at the hotel, the one who had told Mafateh about me—the one who had barely spoken to me and had avoided my eyes. She wasn't avoiding me. She was following the customs of her culture, dancing to her country's rhythm.

When we crossed the street at the end of the row of shops, we found ourselves at the gateway to a park. The gate was locked. We clung to the fence, trying to peek inside. In the courtyard just on the other side of the gate, untended plants in a sprawling garden had intertwined themselves around majestic Grecian ruins, crumbling stone reminders of Greece's influence in Algeria's rich history. We stared through the fence for a while, then turned and began walking back to the car.

"This is a fun day," Fateh said earnestly. "We're having a good day, aren't we? We went to the country."

Nazil and I nodded.

"Yes, Fateh," I said. "This is fun."

We got back in the car. Fateh again fixed the collapsed seat, rolled the car until it started, then headed back to the highway.

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"We will drive down another road for a while," Fateh said.

He turned inland at a juncture, driving away from the sea, toward the ominous hills. After a while, he looped back in the direction of the city of Algiers. We drove past miles of expansive but desolate countryside, encountering few other vehicles along the way. Then, at a juncture where the intersecting road led directly to the hills, we pulled to a stop at a barricade.

This time I noticed I was holding my breath while I stared at the floor. I remembered the travel advisory warning about ambushes at false roadblocks. The gendarmes searched the car and waved us through.

"I love and respect my beautiful country," Nazil said after a while. "Terrible things have happened to my people. But the worst thing that has happened is that this has given them a spirit of vengeance.

"
Vengeance
,"
he said, "is not the purpose of what we are going through."

A heavy silence permeated the inside of the car. Then Nazil began speaking again.

"It is a tragedy what has happened to my country and my people. But the biggest damage is what's been done to our hearts. We don't even cry anymore when we hear of death. We have lived with the abnormal so long it's become normal. Our hearts have gone numb.

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"That is the real tragedy of Algiers."

We drove for a while, looking at barren fields and rolling hills. Nazil explained that despite the country's fertile land, Algeria now imported most of its food.

He pointed to a large, windowless building tucked into the landscape on our left.

"That is where they take the terrorists who have been captured," he said. "Once, a doctor treated an injured terrorist. The police arrested the doctor and put
him
in jail. Two men I know were arguing about it the other day," Nazil said. "One of them could not understand why they would put a doctor in jail for treating an injured man."

I noticed stretch after stretch of buildings, tenements that looked abandoned or destroyed. I asked Nazil what had happened, if this was the result of terrorism or something else. He told me that most of the vacant buildings were projects that builders had begun, then abandoned when they ran out of money.

"This has gone on for so long," I said. "Do your people still have hope?"

"Hope?" Nazil said. "Yes, we have hope. But we do not hope for an improvement in our economy. We no longer hope for more agriculture, or more art. We only hope that one day the terrorism will stop."

Fateh turned onto the coastal highway. As we neared the city of Algiers, we all began to relax. Nazil started Page 56

talking about college, about art classes he had taken, and about some of his friends from school. Soon after we reached the city limits, Fateh pulled the car to the side of the road by the harbor and told me we were dropping off Nazil. Fateh had to go to work.

Nazil told me how much he had enjoyed speaking English all day and that he hoped he had done a good job of expressing his thoughts to me.

I said he had done an excellent job and thanked him.

I pulled my purse out from under the car seat. "Can I give you something, some money for your time today, as a gift, a way of saying thank you?" I asked Nazil.

He resolutely refused. "I could not take money," he said, shaking his head. "That would be wrong. It was a privilege to spend the day with you and tell you the story of Algeria and my people. Besides," he said, smiling, "we went for a drive in the country. We had fun."

I watched Nazil slip over the ruins, then disappear into a colony of homes by the sea. As Fateh drove us back to the hotel, I noticed for the first time how tensed my body was—and had been all day. Because of Ramadan, we had not eaten or drunk anything. I was getting thirsty. I wanted a drink of water.

"There's our zoo," Fateh said, as we neared the hotel. "It's closed now, but we have the oldest living alligator there," he said proudly.

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We passed through the hotel's security barricade. Gendarmes searched the car one more time. Then Fateh parked and walked me to the hotel entrance. We stood there looking around at the guards, the barricades, and the treetops in the distance.

"Did you enjoy today?" Fateh asked.

"Yes, very much. Thank you," I said.

He smiled, and seemed pleased. I turned to him, put my hand over my heart, and
looked directly into his eyes
.
"May God help your heart continue to heal from the loss of your love," I said.

Fateh looked at me. I saw and felt a strength in him I hadn't before seen. "I will pray that Allah is gentle with you, too," he said.

Fateh went to the hotel's employee entrance to report for work. I returned to my room. I was scheduled to be back in the lobby in one hour. Fateh had arranged several other events for me, including attending a holy Ramadan feast with a Berber family tomorrow evening to break the fast after sundown. My day tour of the Algerian countryside had ended.

Once in a while—not too often—a person crosses our path who, despite tremendous obstacles and pain, has managed to retain his or her identity, values, integrity, and faith in God—whether that person calls God "Allah," "Jehovah," or "God." That person knows what he or she Page 58

believes and holds fast to those beliefs despite enormous pressure to do otherwise. And that person's decision to honor his or her values has little to do with what that person has received from life or from God. Although that person has not gotten what he or she has longed for, hoped for, desired, or deserved, he or she has not turned on God, or upon others.
He or she has not turned on himself or herself
.

There is a glowing power in that person that is irrefutable.

Being in that person's presence, even for a little while, changes us. We now have a paragon, a model, a jewel exemplar by which to gauge ourselves. We may not always live up to those standards, but we will forevermore be conscious of when we are falling short. And those few moments with that person will help us remember who and what we are striving to be.

That's what happened to me, in the heart of the vortex of terrorism on January 27, 1996, on my day tour of Algiers. I met a young man named Nazil. He told me the story of his country. He told me what he believed. And I saw a light that shone so brightly I would never again be the same.

In a land where people had lost their freedom and power, he had found a way to be free and he understood the meaning of power.

A true warrior had crossed my path.

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''Did any of these people you met in Algiers give you anything to transport? Anything at all?'' the Cairo interrogator demanded.

"Yes," I said. "They gave me some gifts."

"Show them to me now," she said.

I unlocked my suitcase, which was sitting on the large platform table between us. I showed her a pink, handembroidered Berber gown and a color poster of the
Casbah d
'
Alger
.
Then I showed her my prized possession. It was a white cardboard yearatatime 1996 calendar. The names of the months and the days were inscribed in French. On the top of the calendar, above the months, was the national emblem for Algeria. It was also the emblem that had, by chance, become my personal seal for this trip—a crescent moon and star.

The woman interrogating me paused from her questioning for a moment and studied my itinerary.

"You were originally booked on a flight from Cairo to Greece. That was to be the last leg of your trip. Now it appears you have suddenly changed your plans and instead are flying from Cairo to Tel Aviv to Los Angeles. Why would you spend so much time in Algeria and Egypt, then at the last moment cancel the part of your travels that would have been such a
pleasant
vacation?"

"Oh, that," I said. "It surprised me, too. Let me explain."

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chapter 5

Blackout

I unlocked the door to my hotel room and flopped down on the bed. My time in Algiers had filled up quickly. From the moment I met Fateh, I barely had time to sleep.

He had arranged two other tours for me besides my tour of the countryside. I had seen the highlight of Algerian night life—a barricaded indoor shopping center where cars lined up for miles waiting to be inspected by the gendarmes before entering. I had seen the city by daylight, riding through the narrow, winding streets that Page 62

led mysteriously into barren marketplaces and the
casbah
,
streets conspicuously lacking the presence of women, streets fortified for battle by ramparts of armed guards.

I had just returned from the home of a local Berber family, neighbors and friends of Fateh. They had invited me to partake in a holy Ramadan feast at their house, to give thanks to Allah and break the day's fast after sundown. The family had not spoken English. Although I had no idea what I had eaten, the food was delicious. After the meal, they had handed me their family photo albums. I leafed through the pages, perusing a personal pictorial history echoing the same themes I had come across at the Museum of Man in Paris—birth, marriage, family, religion, and, just outside the windows of the French tenement where I sat, the threat of death. Then, before I left, the family had plied me with gifts. "
La Berber tradition
," they had said, joyously placing present after present in my lap.