REFLECTIONS
by Jan Carlsson-Bull
October 20, 2002
Layla. It means "night" in Arabic. One autumn night after I returned to the dorm from a long stretch of studying in the library, my roommate, Layla Barakat, presented me with a gift. It was this stole, glistening with silver threads. My eyes reflected my delight in its beauty, and Layla’s gleamed, warm with the knowledge of my pleasure in her gesture. The occasion was Ramadan, the month-long holiday when Muslims throughout the world observe the revelation of the first verses of the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammed. It is observed by fasting from dawn to dusk and by inner reflection, self-control, and the giving of gifts. Because it is driven by lunar cycles, it falls variably on the calendar from year to year. The first day of Ramadan this year is November 6. The holiday will conclude on December 5, with the appearance of the new moon.
The setting of this long-ago Ramadan was the American University of Beirut, where I spent my junior year of undergraduate study. The year was 1962. Go ahead. Do your math. Mathematics was the major determined for Layla by the opportunity for a government scholarship awarded by her native Iraq. Baghdad was her hometown.
It was a mild autumn evening when I came home to this unexpected gift. The breezes of the night wafting through our open windows, the steady rhythm of the waves, and the whiff of salt air greeted Ramadan as it had for centuries in this port city on the far eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Layla and I had arrived at this highly cosmopolitan university from vastly different cultures, from variant assumptions about what our future lives would hold, from divergent religious perspectives, but there we were, roommates and friends.
I have thought so many times of Layla, wondering what became of her, if she returned to Iraq and married and had children, if she found gratification in her not-quite chosen field of mathematics, if she’s still alive and, if she is, how heightened her senses must be at this time as they surely were eleven years ago at the onset of the Gulf War and perhaps on so many other occasions during which times I took safety quite for granted. I don’t take safety for granted anymore. Most of us don’t.
That all is fair in love and war is a falsehood of the first magnitude. War is as personal as love, as easily susceptible to delusions and betrayals and myths. Yet only love can prevent war and other acts that violate our common humanity. I mean the reflective persevering love that is willing to gaze deeply into those pools mirroring layer upon layer of what lies beneath love’s surface, the love that casts deep into the shadows of that pool and recognizes the shades of good and evil that bind us all. It is this love that holds the past realities and future promises of public policies premising war as the last resort, the very last.
Whatever war will be launched over the succeeding weeks or months, it will be ultimately personal. It always is. Yes, I know the arguments for and against. And I’ll do everything in my power to prevent it, because I’m convinced that somewhere between the worth and dignity of every person and the interdependent web that is our global village there are policy alternatives that preclude war.
Through all the analysis, all the reflection, all the uncertainty, and all that will transpire, I am drawn to this stole as a suspension bridge that links what was once possible between friends and what is yet possible between nations. Its tensile strands of silver still shimmer with the warmth of Layla’s smile and tell me to summon all possible courage to ensure the safety of my far-off friend. Peace. Shalom. Salaam.
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