Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [108]
I wanted to resign, but thoughts of my father’s mannat came rushing back. The covenant was inescapable. It was the overriding imperative of my life. It encompassed everything, overriding all opposition. It couldn’t be rejected; it couldn’t be modified; it couldn’t be foresworn. I was an implicit signatory to a contract that was inked in my blood, my history, and my future. I couldn’t let the MSA fail. I couldn’t let the community disintegrate. Even as a fake Muslim my allegiance to Islam had to be concrete.
The pressure I felt over both the MSA and the mannat, compounding the ordinary senior-year stress, kept building up. One afternoon I hurled my Islamic ring against the wall of my room, then rushed across campus and gave my necklace and bracelet away to girls in the student center. I tucked away the thowb. The phone rang repeatedly that day, but I ignored it. I wrapped a kafiya around my head and tried to sleep.
When the phone didn’t stop ringing, I was eventually forced to pick it up.
“It’s Sam,” came the voice. He was a West Coast organizer who contacted me from time to time, asking me if I’d read his latest e-mail compilation about what was happening in the Middle East.
“Do you need something?” I demanded gruffly, not wanting to chat.
“Ariel Sharon!” he said loudly, referring to the leader of Israel’s right-wing opposition. “He’s causing trouble in Jerusalem. Trying to incite violence!”
“Who?” I had only vaguely paid attention to the name in the news.
“A butcher,” said Sam. “An Israeli war criminal. Even the Israelis admit that he was responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon—attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in which as many as three thousand Muslims were killed. He walked into the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in the middle of the Friday prayers just to show Israeli muscle in one of our most holy places!”
Sam was still talking, but I was no longer listening.
The conflation of the word “massacre” and “Muslim” had caused me to think about something other than myself. The Muslim world flickered in my imagination. I began thinking of the genocide in Bosnia, with its mass graves and organized killings; of Chechnya, where the violence against Muslims had caused me to confront Wolf Blitzer when he came to my university to show his daughter around; of Iraq, where half a million children died under President Bill Clinton’s sanctions—deaths that his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, called acceptable; of Kashmir, where the Indians occupied the land and forcibly resettled Muslims; and of the Muslim Uighur people in China, who were being brutalized by the People’s Army.
Startled out of my funk, I realized that I had an obligation, as a future leader of Islam, to step up and say something, do something, organize something. God knew how many accolades could be earned in the process. I might even be able to make the MSA important again!
I quickly read up on the current Israeli aggression and wrote an article about it. I sent it to the campus newspaper, having signed it as president of the Muslim Students Association. Announcing the affiliation was the most important thing.
Sam was pleasantly surprised by the interest I showed and made me one of his favorite points of contact. A few days later he called again, this time bearing news about Rami Jamal al-Durra, a twelve-year-old Palestinian boy who had been caught in cross-fire with his father and been killed. Sam sent pictures of the terrible scene, with the bloodied father clutching his boy in desperation. The powerful images evoked sympathy. Split into a time-lapse strip, they were ready for distribution to activists.
“Hold a vigil,” Sam said. “Invite everyone. Raise awareness about the killing of children.”
I looked at the six pictures for a long time. If I couldn’t bring the MSA together after this helpless child had given up his life in the service of Islam, then indeed I was the lowliest Muslim