Final entry, Reentry

I am already back in New York, soaking my soul in the rain and blooming under the grey skies. When I got off the airplane at JFK I was overjoyed to be welcomed by a cold drizzle. Just what I wanted. Water=life. But before that, before the endless hours of movement and waiting that conveyed me home, finally, there were the lasts. The last pomegranate juice, the last trip to the souk, the last ride on Pele (my horse), and hardest of all, the last goodbyes to the students. One brought me a bag of cookies. Another, a stuffed animal. Where will they be in 5 years, I wonder with the hungry anticipation of my own homecoming. Doctors, I hope, all of them. But I know some will not make it—through the program, or maybe even through this life… I hate to even think those thoughts, but my favorite student went home for the summer holiday. He is Iraqi, and his family lives in Bagdhad. When the American media reports the deaths of Iraqi civilians in the newspapers, they of course never name the victims. Who would know them? And so I wonder, and worry, about Mohammed Jwad. He can’t go outside of his house. Ever. Once a week his family sends someone to the store for supplies. Some summer break, huh?

Getting to know the Arabic students was one of the experiences I am most thankful for from my time in Doha. What an opportunity. An American getting to talk to young, intelligent Iraqis about what is really going on over there. Getting to talk to a young Qatari girl about why she likes to wear a veil when she goes to the mall, even though she doesn’t wear one at school. And just becoming familiar and comfortable with a landscape studded with abayas and throbes, strewn with rubble and shimmering with middle-eastern desert heat. But the students, really, were the best part.

A couple of weeks before the end of the term, the students organized an “international night” where they all donned their national dress. This left we Americans with a dilemma. National dress? Jeans and a T-shirt? How pathetic. But all we could think of were terribly hackneyed and sometimes even offensive stereotypes (cowboy hat and boots? pinstripe suit? finally someone thought of a poodle skirt, but those are hard to come by in Doha), so most of us just wore some dressed-up version of what we wore to work. Kind of a sad moment of confronting our own cultural poverty, I thought. But I digress, because this story isn’t about us. It is about the most beautiful moment I experienced over there. Yes, swimming at midnight in the Persian Gulf with so much phosphorescence in the water you couldn’t tell where the sea stopped and the starry sky began (my birthday camping trip on the beach) was unbelievably beautiful, but really, this was better. The students were beautiful. And I don’t just mean their scarlet and emerald saris,their crisp white throbes, their elaborately embroidered abayas. I mean, the Syrian kids and the Lebanese kids with their arms around each other. The Palestinian kid rakishly sporting a red-white-and-blue Uncle Sam hat with a grin.It was humbling to see that it was so easy.

And then I saw them dance.

I mean, ok let me go back. First there was a fashion show where students paraded down the isle showing off their beauty and culture. Then there was to be a performance by a hired troupe of Indian dancers. But first all the Iraqi boys got up to do their own dance. All clad in the white throbes and, most recognizably, the black-and-white-checked headscarves so vilified in the American press. Someone sat on the side of the stage and played a drum, or something. Honestly I don’t even remember the music that they danced to, and I always remember the music. I was just so mesmerized. They all stood in a row on stage and held hands, and as they hopped and shuffled their feet in a step that they all seemed to instinctively know, my heart lurched. With heads bowed, they slowly moved in a halting cadence across the stage and down the steps, threading their way through the crowd now clapping its enthusiasm. That’s when I lost it. I tried to keep it together but I couldn’t I just cried right there. I cried because it hit me in the most immediate and visceral way the tragedy that we are perpetuating over there in Iraq. I don’t care what your politics are. You’d have to be made of stone to watch these brilliant, dedicated boys—the true promise of everyone’s future—dancing and smiling with clasped hands and not feel yourself implicated in the destruction of their world. It all came in a rush that night and for days afterward I walked around in a weepy stupor, breaking into tears whenever anyone talked about it. And everyone did, because I was not the only one devastated by that night. It seemed that everyone was talking in whispers, confirming with one another that we had all witnessed something great and moving and, yes yes I felt it too. Extraordinary.

It is all so far away now as I sit at my desk here in Burdett, New York in the cool, damp breeze that seemed so impossible there in Doha. Would I go back? Yes. Would I live there? No. I don’t like Doha enough to make it my home, but I loved my experience and my students enough to sincerely hope that I’ll get to see them again.

As an epilogic note, one of my favorite and most embattled Qatari girls emailed me a couple of days ago. All semester she struggled with her papers, shyness and inexperience with English combining to make her almost mute. But she had faced down her family, culture, and country (she was a niece of the Sheika) to enter this program, and she wanted to be a doctor more than anything because, in Qatar, women can’t see male doctors…and there are practically no female doctors. Therefore, that’s right, women basically can’t see doctors. So first she had to convince her family that it was appropriate that she go to medical school. Then she had to prove to them that she could hack it. Then she had to pass her bio, chem., orgo, physics, and biochem classes, and do well on the MCAT, and write essays about philosophy (all this in English of course, which she only learned a couple of years ago) while still fulfilling her duties at home. Needless to say, I was worried about her. I honestly didn’t know if she would make it. She was a second-year student, which meant that this was the moment of truth. Well, as I said, she emailed me. And she got in to the medical school. Again, I wept. One more woman doctor in Qatar. I was lucky to be a part of that.

I’ll keep this up (tho I’ll probably change the name), so check back for updates. Thanks for coming with me on this adventure. The only constant is change, and I’ll never be the same.

I love you all.