Saturday, February 27, 2010

Early Spring

My girls feel cheated that we had snow only once this first winter in Oregon, while their friends back in Texas report snowstorm after snowstorm, missed days of school, and impressive snowman-construction skills. Winter still holds much of the country, while in the northwest the daffodils are up and blooming and we can go without jackets most afternoons.

“No fair,” my kids say. “It’s supposed to snow in Oregon.”

I, for one, have enjoyed the mild winter. We had one frozen week in December, but since then we’ve had very few frosty mornings. I haven’t yet bought myself a winter coat.

Reflecting on the mild winter, my friend Ann said to me the other day, “Don’t get used to it! This is unusual, you know.”

Years ago my parents moved our family from Southern California to Oregon. I was sixteen, a sophomore at Corvallis High School, when one January day it started snowing. School went on, and we watched the snow through the windows while our teacher yammered about cell structure and something called nucleotides. The snowflakes looked like feathers floating down.

Dad picked me up at the end of the day, and the snow fell heavily all through the afternoon and evening. We had eighteen inches—and I thought that was a normal Oregon winter. The snow was beautiful—but so cold. Jimmy Carter had urged Americans to dial down their thermostats, and my parents complied. I wore an extra sweater or two, but it didn’t help my cold toes.

Then came March. Daffodils framed our driveway and trees everywhere bloomed pink and white and green. Spring raindrops seemed to magnify the colors, so that a field of winter rye transformed to emerald, more truly green than I had ever seen. A Southern California spring had none of this glory, because a Southern California winter contains no frozen severity, and little loss.

And here comes March again, more lamblike than fierce this year. My girls feel cheated because we didn’t have snow. I can’t really agree with them, and yet … without the hardship of winter, spring is less a spectacle, easier to take for granted. I’ll breathe in spring, and I’ll watch the daffodils get knocked flat in a few weeks by March winds and rain. The fields will sparkle like jewels when the sun shines. I’ll try and remember harder winters as I watch spring reclaim the landscape. I’ll store up these images of spring to get me through the winters to come.

Friday, February 19, 2010

The Drive Home


My friend Jeana lives way over on the other side of town. It takes a good five minutes to drive from Jeana’s place to mine—maybe seven minutes, depending on traffic. And by traffic I mean pedestrians, because in Newberg we stop for them whether they’re anywhere near a crosswalk or not.

Today as I drove the two and a half miles home, I saw my friend Dave stand from his car and walk to his front door. His back was to me and I didn’t honk. I did grin to myself. The truth is I’ve been spying on Dave for quite some time. No, not stalking. Come on, people, this is how rumors get started! I read Dave’s book ten years ago and have reread it several times since. I’ve known his name and something of his mind (spied through the pages of his book) for a decade or so. Now I know him, his wife, his kids, and I know what time he gets home from work on a Friday afternoon. That’s worth a small smile.

Two blocks or so north of Dave’s house I passed by the George Fox University campus and I stopped my car for a jogger—Denise and Alex’s son! He doesn’t know me, I guess, because I raised my hand to wave, but this son of Alex and Denise just jogged on across the street. Alex, I should mention, is the man who got me my interview at George Fox, and now we work in the same department. Our kids are in class together; Todd teaches one of Alex’s daughters. Just two days ago Alex was walking onto campus as I parked my car, and I remarked what a wonderful thing to be able to walk to work.

“Every day for twenty years,” Alex said cheerfully.

Alex’s son jogged on up the street as I continued my last mile home. A minivan pulled in front of me, then slowed. I looked right, as I always do in this block, for the mint green house with the chocolate brown trim. Sure enough, the minivan pulled up in front of the chocolate-mint house, and as I passed by I saw Holly’s curly head through the driver’s side window. Holly was a freshman at OSU when I was a senior, and she married my roommate Shelly’s little brother about the same time Alex started walking to work.

As for our family, twenty years ago Todd and I were in Damascus. We would have never guessed what a humble sense of belonging and quiet joy waited for us in a small town in northwest Oregon many years (and many locales) into our future. It’s been a long road to get here, but now we’re finally home.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Deleted Scene: Sanaa

Here's another scene not included in the book. Todd and I, along with two other research team members, traveled to the far northeast of Syria, to the Kurdish homeland. We stayed in a small town right on the Turkish border with Syria and spent a few memorable days researching Kurds in the lush agricultural region between the Tigris and Euphrates in northern Syria.


I met Sanaa in a small Kurdish town in northern Syria, near the Euphrates. She invited me, along with my research partner, Cindy, into her home and served us hot tea in small, clear glasses. We were the first American Christians she’d ever met, and this is what Sanaa said to us:

“Islam is the worst mistake the Kurds ever made.”

The Kurds trace their heritage to the ancient Medes of the region. They converted to Islam as a people during the time of the Crusades, under pressure from the Ottoman Empire. Islam requires even non-Arab believers to read the Koran in Arabic, to pray in Arabic, because Arabic is God’s language. When Kurds pray to Allah, they recite their prayers in the language of their conquerors.

Kirmanji, not Arabic, is the language a Kurdish woman speaks to the baby at her breast. At the time when I lived in Syria, my Kurdish friends hid Kirmanji literature in their homes, because it was illegal to read or write in Kirmanji. At their Nuroz festivals and at weddings the Kurds recite poetry and sing songs in Kirmanji, so that their children won’t forget the language they are not allowed to read or write.

Sanaa told us that her sister would be married at the end of the month, that there would be dancing, and singing in Kirmanji, and music played on the tanbur, a stringed instrument beloved of the Kurds. Family members would honor the bride and groom by reciting Kurdish love poems, though the books they came from were illegal to print and distribute in Syria.

“The mullah came and told my father not to allow alcohol or pork at the wedding—and not to spend money on the feast, neither food nor drink, for that would wipe out the blessing,” Sanaa told us.

And she went on, “But the wedding must be Kurdish. We will feast and sing and dance. On that day, we will forget about Islam.”

In the northern part of Syria, called Kurdistan only in whispers, the Kurds still hold tightly to their songs and poetry and music, teaching these things to the next generation in quiet courtyards and inner rooms.

I pulled out my memo pad and wrote down Sanaa’s words as we sipped our tea. I didn’t want to forget.

Then the Call to Prayer broke our silence, invading the air around us. This was the same recording—the same male voice I heard broadcast five times a day, the same voice that called out from every mosque in Syria. In the old days, muezzins used to climb the minaret to chant the call to prayer for their community—but now the muezzin simply presses a play button. Or maybe the recording is set on a timer nowadays and there isn’t a real muezzin at all.


Allahu Akbar

God is Great

and Mohammed

is his prophet

Five times a day we heard the Call to Prayer, and I found that I was beginning to understand the Arabic words.

Hayya sallah

Rise up to pray

Sanaa spoke in a low voice, “But no one is praying.”


Wednesday, February 3, 2010

My Eldest Daughter

Most mornings I get up early to write. And when I say early, I mean it. As in, hours before sunrise. While I wait for coffee to brew, I often walk to the front of the house to gaze out the library window. I love looking out into the dark, at the warm circles spread by streetlamps over the rain-slick street.

Lately, the library shades are drawn when I enter the room. My eldest daughter closes them in the evening: she doesn’t want people looking in. My instinct is to turn on the library light at night and leave the window bare, to let the world look—into this room, at least. I’m proud of this room. The walls are lined with books. When friends come to visit for the first time, they tell us that seeing the library through the front window is how they know they’ve come to the right house.

This same daughter who likes the shades to be closed used to beg me not to write about her. She was a little kid then, years ago. I wrote what I needed to write, hoping that by the time I published a book, she would have matured enough not to mind appearing as a literary character. But I always wondered, even worried, that I’d publish and she would forever resent me for it.

She turned fifteen the year I signed a contract on Through the Veil. We were in the midst of packing and moving and shifting our lives from Texas to Oregon that year, so I didn’t have time to consider the fact that things I’d written about our family—about my daughter—would soon be perfect bound and sitting on our bookshelf.

The kids started school and I went back to a regular writing schedule in September. I started a blog. My daughter, this same young woman, joined a writing group and started writing with and for her peers. She read my blog and didn’t seem to mind that I wrote about our family life—so long as I told the truth and didn’t embarrass anyone.

Then I remembered about the parts of Through the Veil my daughter didn’t know I’d written, the parts about her.

I handed her the manuscript, with several chapters flagged. “I did write about you,” I confessed. “Nothing embarrassing. And I can’t change it. I want you to read it before it comes out in the book.” She took the manuscript pages from me and closed the bedroom door.

When my daughter came out, her eyes shone—not with tears, but with something that looked to me like pride. Like she had enjoyed reading of our life in Jordan. “I remember this stuff,” she said, “but like in a dream. It’s so weird to read about your life and feel like it was interesting.” And so my teenaged daughter gave me her blessing.

This morning when I got up early, I saw the drawn shade in the library and my instinct was to go and yank it open. But the sun hadn’t come up and anyway who is out on the streets to look in? I’ll raise that shade later. All in good time.