We need funny stories, warm blankets, and magazines just to keep our minds from focusing on the waiting room, the gateway to chemo land. It must be different for other kinds of patients — nurses and doctors don’t necessarily remind them of death.

The first time, my mother and I walked toward the room in silence, holding hands. I’d collapsed without warning in a Miami shopping mall. Eight days before, I’d had an emergency 12-hour brain surgery to remove the softball-sized tumor wanting to kill.

The hallways were cold and quiet. The green chemotherapy sign grew closer, and our hands grasped tighter. More people arrived: an older couple, a young girl in her 20s, a young boy with his mother. Others fell asleep or watched the TV at full blast.

Only a few people in front of us — maybe it will be quick.

They called my name. Not bad — only about 45 minutes.

A hippie, peaceful-looking doctor with gray hair and blue eyes walked into the examining room. He laid out the chemo plans, like a syllabus for the semester.

“Not bad,” I said. My oncologist laughed, and gave me a funny look. He saw my lack of fear. And he introduced me to another patient, who was in remission.

I’m nowhere near remission. Most of my senses — sight, sound, taste, touch — are gone, buried beneath many painkillers and my mostly-covered head.

But every other week, I’m back in this waiting room, on alert, as if on call, as doctors are every day.

I see familiar faces and new ones, the new ones looking just like mine did on my first day. I also see people throwing up, and bald, grey, tired people, loss of life in their eyes.

I meet a guy with a similar brain tumor situation. We compare our surgery scars. We compare other things that occur to us. Attitude still has to keep on rising around life.

We’re all competing. Will I get my chemo fast, or have to wait for hours in a full waiting room? Do I have a fast nurse, or is she a bumbler? Is the IV needle–nurse going to be good, or to have no clue of how to find my vein, and give me a bruise?

I can see cancer as just a cross to carry, or to briefly battle. I think about all of this while I’m waiting. So I always hope the wait will be short.

Again I find strength in myself. Each time chemo is finished and the waiting room waits as well, I feel I’m receiving an angel’s guidance.

Robinette Pelka

When most Americans start looking for their roots, they probably begin by leafing through family photographs or talking with family members. But black Americans are reefed intricately between a montage of history books and countless unanswered questions.

As a descendent of African slaves and white Europeans, the disconnect of my roots comes full circle on the sand where I’m standing now: in Elmina, Ghana. I’m sweating, thinking of ancestors who 400 years ago were so violently deracinated from their homes and scattered around the world. Anger and sadness play tug-of-war for my unknown relatives in Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil.

But the winds of the Atlantic comfort me. I exhale, and release all the horror of past transgressions. It is only through this journey home that I can find peace. It’s my own Sankofa. That’s the word in the local Twi language for going back to your roots.

African Americans like me pilgrimage to Africa each year, hoping to bring closure to our tumultuous past. So many tourists and new permanent residents have arrived that Ghana has developed special outlets to welcome us.
“Our people really have no clue as to what Africa really has to offer,” said Jerome Thompson, 64, president of Ghana’s African-American Association. Johnson, who once lived in Fort Washington, Maryland, said he decided to move to Ghana after he discovered, during visits with his church, how culturally rich the country was. “If African Americans come over with their knowledge, patience, expertise, and work together with the Ghanaians, there’s nothing that they won’t be able to obtain here that they couldn’t do in America,” he added.

Noticing the diaspora connection with Africa, Ghana’s Ministry of Tourism and Diaspora Relations created the Joseph Project to build upon pan-African foundations in the spirit of American civil rights leader W.E.B. DuBois, who took Ghanaian citizenship, and Ghana’s independence leader and first president, Kwame Nkrumah. The project’s primary goal is to celebrate Ghana’s 50 years of independence, and to use 400 years of slave trade, colonial exploitation, and cultural economic strife as a springboard for Africa to reunite with the African diaspora.

“The diasporans are such an important part of African development,” said E.V. Hagan, the tourism ministry’s director of research statistics. “The Joseph Project is the perfect outlet for diasporans and Africans to reconcile their pasts to build a positive future.”

Capitalizing on Ghana’s appeal to African Americans also seems a perfect vehicle for promoting economic development. Some 5,000 African Americans are said to be living in Ghana.

“The AU [African Union] fervently wants to make the Diaspora a sixth region of Africa,” said Dr. Erieka Bennett, founder of the new Diaspora African Forum in Accra.

There are even plans to introduce a diasporan visa, a lifetime visa for those with African roots.
The beautiful plush landscape and black cosmopolitan feel of Accra seems to make the transition easier. And the Ghanaian community embraces the diasporans warmly.

“I feel elated that my brothers and sisters are coming back to Africa,” said Eric Nortey, 30, a Ghanaian who lives in Accra. “Black Americans are my favorites. They are intermediates between black and white. They are finally coming back to build upon the civilization that they were stolen from.”

Despite 400 years of slave trade, 210 million African lives lost, and a complete disconnect from cultural identity, the African spirit has proven resilient. As I peer into the night sky and reflect upon my experience here, something in the distance catches my eye. It’s a curious celestial phenomenon, on a canvas of green, yellow, and red: the Black Star of Ghana. The star is a symbol of hope and life — perhaps a sign to diasporans of our connection to our beautiful Mother Afrika.

In The Fray Contributor

In Beirut, some things never change. Legend has it that a nightclub near downtown stayed open during last summer’s war between Israel and Hizbullah, with DJs even turning up the bass to drown out the thump of falling bombs. Despite civil war and invasion, Beirut still tries to be, as it once was, the Paris of the East.

Crowded, smoke-filled cafes and haute couture fashion line the streets of Beirut’s ritzy Hamra district. Stroll down rue Hamra in the evening, and watch women in stilettos and miniskirts walk with young men in tight jeans and popped collars out on the town. Many head to the Gemmayzeh, Beirut’s nightlife district, for an evening of booze, drugs, and sex. Most like to party in the newer rooftop clubs, away from car bombs and other street-level annoyances.

You can forget you are in the Middle East at times — women in lingerie stare seductively from large back-lit ads, and young couples neck in the corners of cozy bar-lounges. It was this douceur de vivre, or sweetness of life, that drew the well-off from all corners of the Arab world and from Europe to come dance, drink, and rave with the Lebanese when the bombs weren’t falling.

If this terrace-level Beirut seems frozen in time, then so too do the streets below, but for different reasons. Away from Hamra’s lingerie models and cafes there lies a very different Beirut. Most of the city has yet to fully recover from last summer’s war and the Hizbullah-backed general strike of early 2007.

Like a fly in amber, Beirut’s twisting streets and narrow alleys feel stuck in 1974, the year before Lebanon’s brutal 15-year civil war began. Everywhere, young men in urban camo-wear and berets clutch Kalashnikovs and patrol the streets. The military has erected checkpoints throughout the country, and the slightest provocation can lead to assault or arrest.

On the road from the airport, billboards displaying a smiling woman with long, uncovered hair inform visitors that the city’s reconstruction from last year’s war was made possible thanks to Iran. The road north to Tripoli is flanked by billboards showing soldiers planting the Lebanese colors atop smoldering ruins, set in an Iwo Jima moment, beckoning the highway traffic to support the army’s assault on the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr al-Bared.

The Solidere, a downtown area lavishly reconstructed by assassinated Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, used to draw rich Gulf families — men with white robes and enormous bellies, with their wives and children in tow. Today’s Solidere lies empty, with its restaurants scaled back to lunch-only menus, and the splendid Place de l’Etoile is devoid of life but for the nearby tents of Hizbullah supporters.

My Lebanese friends throw their hands in the air when I ask about the situation here.

“What can I say,” Munir replies, exasperated. “This country is hopeless.”

Munir and his friends, too young to remember the civil war, nonetheless had their own dose of destruction and hopelessness when they lived through last summer’s Israeli invasion. And they watch as the country slowly becomes repolarized along sectarian lines, a hallmark of the 15 years of civil war.

When the equivalent of 1,000 kg of explosives tore a chunk off St. George’s Hotel in West Beirut in early 2005, taking Prime Minister Hariri’s life, the fault lines of division deepened. Later that year, on March 14th, over one million Lebanese took to the streets, demanding an end to Syria’s near 30-year presence in the country. Syrian forces left by the end of the following month, but Syria remains to many the éminence grise of Lebanon.

Mainstream Sunni politicians, some Christian groups (led by the right-wing Phalange Party, which was behind the massacres of the Sabra and Chatilia refugee camps in 1982), and other prominent business and political leaders formed the March 14th Alliance to protest Syria’s continued influence in Lebanese affairs and to promote pro-Western policies.

On the other side of the divide are masses of poor Shi’a, who are given organizational expression through Syria-friendly Hizbullah and other related groups. So Syria remains the bugbear that covers the real divisions in Lebanese society — divisions between the rich and the poor, between the terraces and strobe lights of the Gemmayzeh and the dense, packed warren called the Dahiyeh.

Munir took me to the Dahiyeh, the poor, predominantly Shi’a suburb in the south of Beirut, which bore the brunt of the bombing last year. Today one can find young armed men directing traffic, and posters of Ayatollah Khomeini and Hizbullah leaders covering the walls.

Just a year ago, however, the Dahiyeh was a mass of crumbled concrete and collapsed bridges, a city destroyed by Israeli weaponry. Hizbullah has since rebuilt some of these southern suburbs as well as a good portion of southern Lebanon. Most Dahiyeh residents are poor and working-class, and most have never even been to the Gemmayzeh. Here, in Hizbullah country, the promises of leaders in business suits, in capitals both near and far, mean little.

“We don’t want Bush here,” one resident tells me. “And we don’t want [the] March 14 [Alliance] here either. They are controlled by Bush. We just want to be left alone.” He adds, “But they will never leave Lebanon alone.”

Pessimism springs eternal in Beirut. When Irish peace activists visited recently to give a history of the conflict in Northern Ireland, they spoke of the horrors of their own civil war and of the ways in which ordinary Catholics and Protestants overcame the sectarian divide in just 10 years. But this meant little to my Beiruti friends.

“Do you know where we will be in 10 years?” Foutemeh asked, a bit annoyed. “We will be in the middle of a civil war, that’s where.”

Some manage to bring a sardonic edge to their cynicism. En route to the Sabra camp, my taxi driver explains, “I feel strange when there is no war, no sound of gunfire. I grew up in war; bullets remind me of my childhood — they make me happy.” He adds, after a moment’s reflection, “I’m sure I will be reminded of my childhood again, soon. Here in Lebanon, all we know is war.”

When the threat of war is everywhere, it is easy to become inured to it. Groups of armed men wielding machine guns or lounging on the swivel seats of armored personnel carriers are no longer surprising or even bothersome. When a series of loud explosions interrupts my conversation with Foutemeh, she looks up lazily and says, “It is probably a bomb.”

It isn’t — the multicolored night sky attests to a firework display somewhere off in the distance. But there has been a series of explosions and assassinations in the past few months, including two high-profile attacks on parliament members. And the northern Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared lies in ruins, much like the Dahiyeh after last year’s war.

The election to replace the assassinated MPs has just concluded, and dozens of young men on motorcycles holding huge flags with a stylized cedar tree emblazoned across the front — the Phalange Party emblem — are honking their horns and chanting loudly. 

Nearby at the Metrobar, a trendy dive with soft red lighting and ’80s music, my Lebanese friends try to teach me the Debke, a traditional Lebanese folk dance. It’s quite difficult: you must move your feet to complex, syncopated rhythms while dancing around in a circle. But they are patient with me.

Every once in a while, we break from the dancing to nibble on some tabouleh and hommos, while Saseen and Hamid break into song, usually funeral dirges for fallen Hizbullah soldiers.

“We Lebanese know funerals better than anyone else,” Hamid explains, with a smirk.

The waiter arrives with a round of tequila shots, and Hamid raises his glass, with tongue firmly in cheek, to martyrdom. “To martyrdom!” we cry in unison before swallowing the cheap Texas spirit that burns all the way down. We drink late into the night. 

Outside, at dawn, Hamra streets are quiet. As the muezzin welcomes the morning with a tuneful call to prayer, a flatbed truck full of armed men trundles by. The morning headlines of the Daily Star exalt the bomb-free election of the day before.

I watch the sunrise with a young couple from Italy.

“This city is dead,” the woman complains. “We’ve been going to the Gemmayzeh the last few nights, but there isn’t much else going on here.”

They walk off, past a pair of disinterested soldiers, toward their hotel nearby. Like the few other tourists here, they came looking for the Paris of the East. They instead found Beirut.

Anand Gopal

“You are invited to a mini party,” a man said as he poured a Malta Guinness into his glass. His laugh filled the afternoon shade. “Would you like to share a drink?”

I lifted my eyes from the Scrabble game. The words “hip,” “scare,” and “rum” dissolved from my thoughts as I carried my attention away from the board to the customer who had taken a seat with a newspaper.

It was my first day working in a neighborhood snack shack in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and I’d already been invited out. I found my job when the window of our passing van framed a tiny store called First Choice Enterprise, and a sign that read “Sales Girl Wanted.” As a study abroad student from New York City, I didn’t expect to have a job, but my plan suddenly changed when those bright white letters called out to me.

Accra’s streets are clogged with Ghanaians selling all kinds of tiny goods. Women carry tins of groundnuts, baskets of tomatoes, and bins of drinking water on their heads, as they weave in and out of traffic. Men yell, “Sunglasses, good price!” Coins pass from hands of buyer to seller through the windows of cars, taxis, and the minivans known as tro-tros. If those hands are lucky, they collect more than the average of $7.40 per day. Given that economic situation, and the high unemployment here, I decided to volunteer.

In the shack, business was quieter and more casual. We passed the mornings appreciating the goodness of each other’s company, interrupted occasionally by a sale.

All the noise and action of Ghana’s small commerce can be deceptive. Ghanaians know how to peddle a meat pie, but they also know how to just be. They know how to sit with their own thoughts, to laugh, to take the time to enjoy a biscuit, or to sip a malt with the passing of the afternoon sun. They do not rush, because they do not look at their day as a series of time slots to be filled with blocks of activity. There is always time to slow down for a friend, or share lunch with a passing stranger.

I was taken on by Auntie Mary and Uncle Felix, whose titles are a sign of respect. I, too, acquired a special Ghanaian name.
“My name is Adjua,” I would say when I shook a customer’s hand.

“Ah … you were born on a Monday!” was the usual reply. Children in Ghana are named after the day of the week on which they were born.

During my second week of work, I spent Sunday morning at church with Doris, the other salesgirl, whose friend translated the three-and-a-half hour service into English from Ga, one of several local languages.

“I would like to welcome you to the service this morning,” the pastor said to me in the middle of his sermon. Smiles, laughter, and a few stray claps filled the outdoor space.

That afternoon, Auntie Mary and her family invited me to the beach, where we sat for hours feeling the silky breeze brush off the waves of the Gulf of Guinea.

“I am going to take a picture of you carrying crates,” Auntie Mary’s brother said. “It is all I need in life.” He laughed. It seemed as though I was no longer the tourist.

The following evening, Doris took me to her home, where I met her four siblings and her mother, who sells tomatoes, pickled eggs, and yams at a local stand. Doris was earning less than the roughly $2-per-day minimum wage, a common situation here.

Doris’s youngest sister showed her friendship by putting her hand in mine as we walked along the dirt road, lit only by the kerosene lamps of merchants selling smoked fish and grilled corn. Welcoming me into their home, her family accepted me into their lives and showed me what it means to be Ghanaian. The next morning, as the hazy sun found its place in the African sky, Doris and I returned to work, and prepared baskets of biscuits and crates of Coke for customers who would stumble across the shack — maybe inviting us to another mini party.

Sarah Elizabeth Lynch

Sachiko must be considered “different” here in Japan. She works in the male-dominated research and development section of a major automobile company. Her interests include English, Hollywood movies, and fast cars. She wears dark, thick-framed glasses that cover most of her round, childlike face. She could easily pass as an elementary school student, but was taking an adult, basic-level English class I was teaching.

One day, she stayed behind to ask me a question. She could hardly put two words together. But no matter. After my having taught English for more than 10 years in Japan, my teacher instincts fill in those pesky prepositions or pronouns that often make even the more advanced students cringe with fear. It’s amazing how ideas can be conveyed without these trimmings. Such bare, stripped-down sentences deliver more impact to what the speaker wants to say.

“Very sorry. I have question. What do you say, ‘don’t touch me’ in English?” she asked, in broken, uncertain English.

I asked what she meant. And she began to tell me a story in a pidgin mix of English and Japanese about what had happened to her.

It was at an art museum, she said. While she was examining a print, a man came up to her and began stroking her on the buttocks. She pleaded with him in Japanese to stop, but he continued to harass her, and then began touching her breasts with impunity.

I asked why she didn’t scream out for help or run away, but she only said she didn’t want to make trouble, and therefore endured the harassment. Then she told me it was not the first time. Her pleas in Japanese were always ignored.

If her pleas were in English, she said, everything would change. She’s seen the movies — the Western women on celluloid who take no shit from anyone. Even if the guys who touched her didn’t understand a word, it wouldn’t matter. The English would be enough to send them scurrying away.

The language has the potency of a karate chop to the head. The economic and military superpowers of the English-speaking world were to thank for that. And an appreciative nod goes to Hollywood as well for making English the world language. Thank God Johnny Depp was endowed with a native English tongue.

The dialog in our classroom’s English textbook always seemed dead to me: a utopia on paper where everyone wants to be your friend, where a “Hi, how are you?” will make you the instant life of the party.

Finally, here arose a lesson that was practical, one a student could finally use and benefit from, as opposed to the American middle-class values instilled by those textbooks.

After some hesitation, I finally wrote “Get the fuck off me!” on the blackboard, and began teaching her the unsubtle nuances of the word “fuck.”

She read the words slowly, deliberately, and in monotone: “Get … the … fuck … off … me.”

The softness in Sachiko’s voice sounded as if she were reciting “Mother Goose” to a group of children. “Fuck” never sounded so sweet.

English, especially “combative English” (for lack of a better term), was all about stress, I emphasized while pointing at the word “fuck” on the blackboard. This, I said — tapping at the word — is where the stress should lie.

Even if the intended listener didn’t understand, it wouldn’t matter. The strong vocalization of the one word alone would do the job. Even the formation of the sound of the letter “f” looks intimidating. The raised upper lip reveals the front teeth while the lower lip is tucked underneath. Any such articulation that bares a set of teeth brings us closer to our primal instincts of survival. If that isn’t enough to scare off a predator, the hard, menacing sound of the “k” could be the coup de grâce.

Sachiko repeated the phrase on the blackboard with more emphasis, more confident about what she had to do. While most of her classmates talk about learning English to learn about other cultures, to have an advantage in the workplace, and to meet Westerners, Sachiko won’t be making new friends with this newly acquired phrase. She said it to herself a few times, and even began to sound a little menacing.

For her, it’s just a sound, a magic word. She knows it’s swearing, but she’s unaware of the hatred, anger, and confrontation that its English speakers intend to express when using the word. You could say baka yaro until your face turns blue, but more likely than not, you wouldn’t get that same tingling in your stomach as you would from saying “Fucking idiot.”

English sells. Or rather, the likeness of English sells. In Japan, the language is hip, even if you don’t understand what is being said.

Sachiko thanked me and practiced the phrase over and over again under her breath as she walked out the door. She’s finally mastered it. She’s armed — with a phrase that will embolden her.

Hauquan Chau

For about 24 hours in Polk County, Iowa, same-sex couples were allowed to apply for marriage licenses. Below is a letter sent by Pam Lee and Beth Beglin of Coralville to their friends and loved ones.

August 31, 2007

Dear Friends, Family, and Co-Workers,

Pam and I wanted to share our accounting of a very unique day in our life, most notable for the support of some very special individuals and the wild swings of emotions we experienced. We chose this co-authored story as the easiest way for us to share this event, despite the fact that you may not know any of the individuals involved (other than us). We also thought it would help us keep faith that at some point in the future, we will actually celebrate our legally valid marriage with you.

We were surprised, admittedly stunned, after yesterday’s ruling by Polk County Judge Robert Hanson striking down Iowa’s marriage laws limiting marriage to a “man and a woman,” thus paving the way for same-sex marriages in the Hawkeye State. The decision was sweeping in its breath, invalidating the law on both a due process and equal protection basis, and at every level of judicial review, from strict scrutiny to rational basis. We just didn’t think it would happen here, in the heart of the Heartland, in Iowa, at least not yet. Coming home from an evening fundraiser for Community Mental Health, Pam and I re-read the decision, and then I proposed. Admittedly it wasn’t even close to romantic, but I have to say I really didn’t expect a “Maybe.” After almost twenty years of sharing our lives, I thought we were past the “tryout stage.” We went to bed thinking, “Did this really happen?”

Those of you who know me well know that I am not an early morning person. It’s all I can do to make our 9:30 am start for our Sunday morning coffee klatch. But this morning was different. Wide awake at first light, Pam and I reached a mutual decision, “We should do this.” Knowing a judicial stay was only a matter of time, we sprang out of bed, grabbed the computer, researched Iowa’s marriage requirements, and printed an application, which we began to immediately complete before coming to our first dilemma. Who wanted to be the “Groom” and who wanted to be the “Bride,” as those were the designated categorical descriptions contained in the application? Frankly, we had never considered it before. Could we cross out “groom” and both be brides? Would this invalidate the form? Are we really having a discussion about this? Would the sanctity of marriage be ruined with gender-neutral language?? Okay, flip a coin. Beth is the groom, Pam is the bride.

First bridge crossed, we worked our way through the rest of the form. Who requires a form to be completed only in upper and lower case printing? Who asks for State, County, City, Address, and Zip Code, in that particular order, on any required form? Three shredded copies later, and an early morning phone call to confirm the spelling of Pam’s mother’s middle name, Francis with an “i” or Frances with an “e” (it’s “e”), and we were ready to go. Now we only needed a witness! That decision was easy, as there was no other person we would have wanted to ask but Sally Cline, our long time friend and neighbor, and someone who has shared many late night bottles of wine with me discussing marriage and gay rights. Our 7:00 am phone call elicited a momentary pause, especially when I asked Sally what her plans were for the morning. “Well, I had eventually planned on getting into work at some point, why?” “Well, Pam and I wanted to know if you would be our witness for our marriage application as we can’t think of anyone else that we would rather have.” Dead silence. “Hello? Hello?” Only when I heard Sally’s emotionally choked reply, “I would be honored” did my own eyes begin to well as I realized our marriage was an actual possibility. “We’ll meet you at the Johnson County Recorder’s office at 8:00 am,” I softly choked back, hoping that we would be able to process our application without the necessity of a trip to Des Moines.

“I’m sorry, but the Judge’s ruling is valid only in Polk County. You will have to go to Des Moines to apply for a marriage license,” explained Johnson County Recorder Kim Painter. Pam and I exchanged glances, and said, “Let’s go.” First stop was the Johnson County Courthouse, where Sally validated our marriage application by affixing her signature as a “disinterested” witness, confirming our identities in front of Teresa, our office notary and legal assistant, and quite a few of my fellow co-workers.

We were not quite sure who was more excited at this sudden course of events, all of my coworkers, or Pam and I. Just as Sally was about to sign our application, Iris stopped the proceedings, said no marriage could take place without flowers, and proceeded to Meredith’s office, where she grabbed Meredith’s “Welcome back from your maternity leave” bouquet, divided it in half, wrapped and taped the stems in damp towels, and handed us our floral arrangements for the signing ceremony. Meanwhile, Janet was closing file cabinets and doors so we would have a better photo backdrop. Co-workers snapped pictures for us as Pam and I traded signs of “Bride” and “Groom” while flashbulbs popped. We later did tell Iris that this Irish-Catholic/Buddhist Unitarian couple would gladly hire her, the Jewish American Princess wedding planner, for our actual ceremony. Andy gave us newly printed MapQuest directions to the Polk County Administration Building, we hopped in the Miata, and bolted.

Flying past golden cornfields, Pam and I talked and planned the entire ride to Des Moines. We made our invitation list, discussed possible dates for a reception, began picking music, and even went so far as to consider the actual details of the ceremony we would hold for friends and family after our courthouse marriage. We became so excited about a possibility that had been long been closed to us. Imagine having the same legal protections as every other citizen in a committed relationship! We couldn’t fathom it.

Arriving at the Polk County Administration Building, we walked inside towards the Recorder’s Office, traversing a long hallway occupied by several TV crews and cameras. As soon as we approached, they said “Lesbians!” grabbed their cameras, and quickly began filming. Okay, they really didn’t say “Lesbians,” but all the rest is true. Pam and I felt like we had “GAY MARRIAGE” stamped on our foreheads. Guess it’s a good thing we are “out.” We had our application signed and notarized, and headed to the Polk County Courthouse with an application to waive the three-day waiting period, which required a judge’s signature. Our plan was to get the waiver signed, file it, receive our marriage license, and head back to Iowa City to be married that afternoon. We requested to see Judge Rosenberg as he had signed waivers for other applicants, and we were seated in his courtroom, just outside of his open office door. We vaguely heard the judge on the telephone, and after hanging up, he invited us into his office. Pam and I introduced ourselves, explained our request, and heard the judge say:

I apologize for having to give you bad news, but I just spoke with Judge Hanson, who authored yesterday’s decision. He just informed me he has issued an immediate stay of his ruling, pending appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court. I am so sorry.

Before we left Iowa City this morning, we knew this was the possible, even likely, outcome of our marriage attempt. We knew we had limited time, and that an appeal and stay could occur at any minute. We honestly thought we had steeled ourselves against such a disappointment. Yet, when it came, it hurt, more than we could ever have imagined, and more than we can ever express in words. Deflated, we thanked Judge Rosenberg, and walked silently back to the Administration Building, handed back our notarized application“ with the required fee, and now have a file stamped “marriage application pending”, awaiting a decision by the Iowa Supreme Court. When that will come is anyone’s guess, as is the eventual outcome of the ruling. In the meantime, 21 Iowa same-sex couples were issued marriage licenses that will not be accepted, and a male couple comprised of two Iowa State students became the first and only legally recognized gay marriage in Iowa.

It’s funny but when something isn’t legally permissible for a class of individuals to which you belong, you can fool yourself into believing it doesn’t matter all that much. However, when something so fundamental as being treated equally in the eyes of the law as every other citizen moves into the realm of being a real possibility, it is incredibly difficult to return to one’s previous state of denial when that possibility is quashed. Marriage, and its attendant rights and responsibilities, matters, at least to us. For almost 20 years, we have gladly shared in its responsibilities. Today, we were hoping beyond hope to finally avail ourselves of its accordant rights.

Pam and I left the Polk County Administration Building, driving to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. Ironically, it is the same restaurant we dined at two-and-a-half years ago after I was deemed morally fit enough to be admitted to the Iowa Bar, and sworn in by one of the same justices who will now decide whether I should have the same rights as every other Iowa citizen for whom I can legally advocate. As we unsuccessfully attempted to blink back our tears, we tried to focus on what we will always remember from today, the love, support and excitement of our friends, family, and co-workers. Thank you, from the very bottom of our broken hearts.

Beth and Pam

ITF Magazine

A few years ago, I took a personality test. A hundred “yes” or “no” questions, such as Do you require structure (yes), Do you keep your thoughts to yourself (no), Would you like some level of fame (duh). The last question was fill-in-the-blank: Describe your self-image. I got stuck on that one. How can you sum it up in a single word? Writer, teacher, Democrat, Chicagoan, and on and on. How you fit all that into an inch-long fill-in-the-blank is beyond me.

But then I moved to the Czech Republic.

I teach in the fiction department at Columbia College in Chicago, and I am a faculty member in its study abroad program in Prague. I teach the works of Franz Kafka, drink wine in cafés, sit around being obnoxiously literary, and yes, it’s just as great as everyone says — so much so that in 2004, I decided to stay. I went on sabbatical for the fall semester, sold all my stuff, and stashed my car at Gramma’s. My boyfriend, Christopher, and I rented a furnished flat on Belgitzka in Namesti Miru, a primarily expatriate community. Our landlords were Yugoslav, a French couple lived on the second floor, and the only decent Mexican restaurant in the city was across the street. Had I, at that time, been asked to fill in my self-image, it would have been easy: I was an American.

Prague is a true fairytale, all castles and churches and curving cobblestone streets—hands down the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. But as you know, beauty attracts, and every summer, tourists overrun the city. Many are American, and they — ahem — we are easy to spot.

I’d be writing in a café, sitting next to a table of girls. I could tell they were American because of 1) the accent and 2) the pants. Great fuckin’ pants, those American girls, with their credit cards, full-on makeup, and loud voices: “Are you ser-ious?” They’d flip through entertainment guides, go to the Roxy later, and talk about Doug calling last night from Ohio. “He’s, like, coming to visit in November and I, like, cannot wait!” they’d say and then reapply their high-end lip gloss — always MAC or Chanel, those American girls!

I’ll pause to marvel at my own hypocrisy, sitting here in my Ralph Lauren. How am I different from those girls? Certainly I can answer that question, but what about the Czechs? To them, my image was the same as those girls: We were American.

“You are not American,” said my waitress at Cartouche, a restaurant where Christopher and I ate nearly every week.

I assured her I was.

“No, Americans — they talk like this,” she said, and then, in pitch-perfect Valley Girl: “What you mean I must eat potato! You know how much the carb in potato?”

Looking back on it, I should have been flattered that she didn’t think I sounded “American.” In the moment, though, I was drunk on Frankovka, and all I did was laugh.

“You eat here long time,” she said. “Why you in Czech Republic?”

I told her I was teaching Kafka, the writer whose picture happens to adorn every T-shirt and coffee mug in the city.

“Io, Kafka. He was bug,” she said, referring to his story The Metamorphosis, where Gregor Samsa wakes up as a giant cockroach. “You smoke the water pipe? Tomorrow you come my house. We smoke water pipe. Okay? Bye bye.”

This was Marketa, our first Czech friend.

We needed one. The war in Iraq was going strong, and the campaign for the U.S. presidential election was well under way. Foreign anti-American sentiment was high, and some of my students had sewn Canadian patches onto their backpacks as a precaution. 

We met Marketa in her studio apartment. A mattress sat on the floor. The table was a piece of plywood laid across a crate. Candles were everywhere, and she pointed out the different countries where she’d bought them: Tunisia, Morocco, France, and Croatia.

“One time, I wait on your president,” she told us, pouring wine into teacups. “He was here for party, and I am catering. We must keep our arms like this,” she clasped her arms at her sides, “so his soldiers can see our hands.”  

“His soldiers?”           

“Secret Service,” Christopher said.           

“Yes, and he just sit there all night with look on his face.” She set her expression in a creepy joker-type grin. “He is really … what’s the word …

She flipped through the Czech-English dictionary. “No, here,” she said. “He is … ray-deck-oo-lush, no, LUS, ray-deck —”

“Ridiculous.”           

“Rideck … ah, my mouth does not do this word. Here, there are more.” She looked back at the dictionary. “Laughable. He is laughable, yes?”           

I wasn’t sure how to respond. Back in Chicago, among my liberal friends, I would’ve said the obvious: “Yes, he is laughable.” But sitting in Marketa’s living room so far from home, an unfamiliar confusion grew in the pit of my stomach. How could I feel both pride for my country and disdain for my president?

Marketa interrupted my thoughts. “There is election soon in your country,” she said. “For which do you vote?”

“Kerry,” I told her.

“Good,” she said. “Now we may be friends.”

Our friendship with Marketa had two main parts:

1) She took care of us. When Christopher and I got food poisoning, it was Marketa who explained to the pharmacist what we needed. We’d get text messages that read my Megane, tomorrow is state holiday so the stores they will be closed so shop today, please.

2) We dispelled her image of what “America” was.

“Chicago is dangerous,” Marketa said over beer and foosball. “There are gangsters.

“There are gangs,” Christopher told her. “They’re not like Al Capone.”

“What are gangs?” she asked.

This happened over and over, these words in the English language that I’ve never had to explain because I’ve always lived them. But, lived them how? What is a white, middle-class girl doing explaining Chicago gang culture?

Gang culture is a part of America. So are farming, and Republicans, and Xbox, and factory work, and millionaire CEOs, and all the things I can’t understand myself, let alone explain.

That really came to a head after the election. Our Czech friends would ask, “Why do the American people vote for this man?” It forced me to think outside my shock, anger, and political affiliations. I’d say, “There are some people in my country who feel differently,” and in trying to explain how “those other people” felt, I’d like to think I understood a little more about my country.

On the day after the election, Marketa sent us a text message: Oh no!  I would like to cry! Shit! I don’t understand people who want to have so bad president! Don’t be sad please, I am sorry about your bad president and I still like you.

While she still liked us, many others just saw us as Americans. On the day Bush asked the Czech government for soldiers to replace Americans in Iraq, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 came out in Eastern Europe. Christopher and I attended a post-screening discussion, and it became very clear what Czechs thought of our government. I felt more and more confused and disconnected: How could I be homesick for a place that was pissing me off so much?

Shortly before we returned to Chicago, Christopher and I were walking through Old Town Square, warm from the wine we had at dinner. It was a beautiful, cool night. Every A-frame and tower-top lit the sky like a theater set. In the center of the square was a huge crowd, at least 100 people, all of them singing “Another Day in Paradise.” In the middle of it all was one guy and a guitar, which he played badly, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the song, a single, stupid song that every person — whatever their nationality — knows the words to, and in that moment we were all together, all of us singing (even me, and I hate Phil Collins!). There were little kids, and older people, and couples holding hands. The woman next to me was wearing a sari, and she smiled, and we sang, and I wasn’t confused or disconnected that night. I was part of something greater.

The day before we left, Marketa gave me one of her candles. “Don’t worry about being American,” she told me. “It is more important that you are my friend.”

If someone were to ask me now what my self-image is, I’d still say Writer. Teacher. Democrat. I’d also say American. What I’ve got to come to terms with is what that means for me. But if there’s room for only one word to fill in the blank, I’d put: friend.

Megan Stielstra

From the back of a small white van, a man named Muhammad sold rojak in takeaway containers. The shopping mall on the other side of the parking lot boasted a KFC, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks. A big McDonald’s did a lively business one block away. But Muhammad usually had at least three or four customers lined up at his truck, waiting for him to scoop their orders from his assortment of plastic tubs.

The mixture of cucumber and pineapple chunks included various pieces of jicama, mango, apples, bits of puffy fried tofu, and bean sprouts. The sauce tasted strongly of shrimp paste cut with sugar, hot chilies, and lime juice. A generous sprinkling of chopped peanuts completed the dish.

Like most Malaysians, Muhammad thought a white person like me would not like rojak. “Spicy,” he warned me politely. It’s not for everyone.

Few people in the United States know anything about Malaysia. Why should they? The peaceful Southeast Asian country is half a world away from either one of our shores, its history obscure to us.

“They’re Buddhists there, aren’t they?” a university colleague asked me as I rushed around the office, making last-minute preparations near the end of 2004 to leave for an eight-month stay. No, he must have been thinking of Thailand.

Scuba divers, however, know Malaysia — its clean, white sand and clear, tropical waters. Europeans fly down for beach holidays. Saudis come during the hottest part of the year, Western-looking men in jeans and polo shirts, with multiple black-robed wives in tow — they find both the Muslim culture and high humidity welcoming.

Islam came to the lands occupied by Malays certainly before the 14th century, and maybe as early as the ninth century, 200 years after the death of the prophet Mohammed. One sees evidence of Islam everywhere, from the halal Chinese restaurants that serve no pork, to the sarong-clad boys on motorbikes converging on mosques each Friday afternoon. The official state religion is Islam, and the country has an official doctrine of tolerance and religious freedom.

I met Maria and her family in Kuching, a city in East Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. They enthusiastically introduced me to paper dosa, a gigantic crispy pancake imported from southern India. Maria’s daughter was waiting to hear whether she had won a place in the university, a process based on academic testing, controlled by the national government. Why should she worry? I asked, assuming that because the family is Iban, one of the native tribes of Borneo, the girl would be assured a place.

“You’ll get a place. You are bumiputera,” I said, using the word assigned to all Malay ethnic groups, regardless of religion.

“We are second-class bumiputera,” Maria said dryly. “We are not Muslim.”

The winds of the southwest monsoon brought Arab and Indian traders to the Strait of Malacca hundreds of years ago. The Chinese merchants came in on the winds of the northeast monsoon. During the inter-monsoon season, the traders waited in port for the wind to turn to blow them home again, their ships laden with pepper, cloth, gold, tin, products of the wet forests, and sinuous inland rivers. In the meantime, they mingled — with each other and with the Malays, Javanese, and Sumatrans who lived there year-round.

Great Hindu civilizations flourished there — Srivijaya and Majapahit — empires never mentioned in my American schoolbooks. Much later came the Portuguese sailors, then the Dutch, and finally, the British.

I went on a trekking excursion in Borneo, and there was one Englishwoman in our group, a nurse in her early 30s. As we sprawled on a beach by the Sulu Sea, shaded by leaning palm trees, she said, “I’ve always wanted to visit Borneo. It’s been my dream since I was a little girl.” I mulled over the idea that a child in England, born almost 30 years after the end of World War II, had grown up on stories of the exotic lands once controlled by the British Empire.

My friend Kiranjit was born and grew up in Kuala Lumpur, the national capital. She lives there still. Of her 12 brothers and sisters, all but two have moved abroad, either to Australia or to England. Their parents were Sikh, immigrants from India.

“Why should they raise their children in a place that doesn’t want them?” she said, explaining the exodus. Even more so than Maria’s daughter, their chances of winning places at a public university are low.

On another day, I visited Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and met with a group of lecturers. “You know, people have their loyalty to their home country,” a UKM professor told me as we drank coffee and munched on curry puffs. “People like your friend Kiranjit — of course, her real home is in India.” When I explained that I had a different impression, the professor was quite surprised.

I felt exasperated by his assumption that my friend was allied with a country she has never lived in. “She’s Malaysian,” I said. “She speaks Malay and English. She doesn’t know any Indian languages.” He seemed pleased by the idea that my friend identifies herself as a Malaysian — but also a bit perplexed. I was reminded of the expression on the face of Muhammad, the rojak vendor, as he watched me smile after I had chewed and swallowed the spicy fruit salad.

Chatting with that group of Malay professors, I wondered whether the fabulous rojak culture of Malaysia had yet to be digested by their generation, the generation born in the years just before and after independence. They ate it, drank it, served it at their own dinner tables, but they seemingly did not realize that it is the variety of flavors and textures that makes their country great. When the rojak does not include mango, I really miss it.

Before 1957, there was no “Malaysia.” On the Malay Peninsula and on the island that foreigners call Borneo lived various groups of people with strong ethnic or tribal identities. Sultans controlled, more or less, certain geographic territories, but borders are hard to draw inside jungles, and even harder to enforce. Chinese immigrants worked in tin mines. Indian immigrants tapped the rubber trees on plantations. Malays, under the British policy of “divide and rule,” took jobs in the civil service. As in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America, the recipe for Malaysia followed a European logic.

My friend Siti closed the door to her office, unclasped an ornamental pin near her throat, and removed her hijab, the Muslim head covering which the Malays call tudung. She pushed at her hair with her fingertips. “It gets so hot, Prof,” she said. She told me that she did not wear the scarf until she was married, and she did not ask her daughters to wear the scarf, but rather left the decision to them.

“All this scarf-no scarf business — we didn’t have that when I was young,” Siti said. “Then we were all in school together, Chinese and Malay, some Indian girls too. And we went to each other’s houses, lah. We didn’t think anything about eating in the Chinese girl’s kitchen. Her mom made us some mee, lah, and we just ate it.”

This August, Malaysia will celebrate the 50th anniversary of merdeka, their independence. They have been inventing a new nation for 50 years. They started with a diverse collection of cultures, beliefs, customs, and languages, but that’s hardly new. Their country is the product of several hundred years of collaboration and trade, extending from the western edge of Arabia to the southern tip of India (and Sri Lanka) and onward to the eastern edge of China.

The great beauty of Malaysian culture comes out of this mixing of people, in which they maintain the pure flavor of their ancestors’ religions, languages, clothing, and customs — like the separate fruits in rojak — but at the same time, they are transformed by the sauce, the spicy-tart flavor that brings all of them together. If they try to separate, to reinvent a purity that vanished centuries ago, I worry that they will lose the unique strength they have gained from being mixed.

Mindy McAdams