Lines

Lately my dreams have been racing and vivid.

I am with an old friend, making old mistakes. Like in real life he is painfully wise. Gently he caresses my flaws and chips the layers of thick white paint off my attic window frames.

I am imprisoned in a sanatorium. Old men with knife-like fingers pace and I carry a blade to fend off owls in the central courtyard. Rocking chairs.

I am running. The neighbor’s house collapsed and burst into flame, the result of raging lava flows beneath the foundation. Trying to escape the failing homes we are chased; liquid gold at our heels.

The frankincense thickens and soon you can see it waft between your face and your book.

“Just be Muslim”, says the little girl. “Just pray.”

After dinner and seated, they ask my age. “Esher-een?? But you are small.”

“I love your mouth, it is like Avril. Do you know Avril? ‘Hey hey you you i don’t like your girlfriend…’”

“I tell my mother I want to wear shorts but she says, ‘You are Muslim, what do you want to do with that?’”

I ask them what they think of Americans, their honest opinion. The girls only say “George Bush” or “Israel”.

“I love the English ones. Let me look, do you use Olay?”

“You are twenty? You look younger. All the Americans we know are big, so much bigger than us.”

In perfect English, Rayan asks “What language do they speak in America?”

It’s late evening and word is whispered through the ranks that "Tony" wants the girls to get ready for the lecture… they tell me he is notoriously the most traditional/strict of the family and this is a common and expected occurrence during family gatherings.

Luckily he is my homestay father…

The boys play soccer or cards at a neighboring table, while we ladies are instructed, via Arabic, on the ways to stay modest and where we may be lead astray (The Marriage talk, as the girls term it). "Tony" uses his cell phone to represent girls “then” and Imam’s to stand for girls “now”, talking about differences in temptation and participation in forbidden practices. He asks the girls why they think there are so many girls “now” doing “bad” things. The main argument of the group is technology; ease of access. The discussion gets heated, "Tony" plays mediator among the harem making sure they don’t interrupt one another and the entire time I’m sitting there thinking. “we shouldn’t have to sit here.”

I try to grasp as much of the discussion as I can. In the end "Tony" asks for my opinion. I say that technology certainly plays a role in simplifying what was once more complex, but it is the fact that we live in a dynamic and evolving world that there has been a move away from TRADITION, which isn’t the same as movement toward “badness”. I tried to emphasize that it’s really less about the actual span of time when it comes to the detriment of youth between “then” and “now”. Even a hundred years ago a girl was able to smoke, obtain alcohol, get pregnant out of wedlock… we still had all the same parts…

Ok, he countered, so what are we supposed to do about it?

Education, I said. Instead of imposing rule after limitation after law on daughters, parents need to TEACH them things. TELL them the difference between good and bad choices and give them reasons WHY. By leaving it at “You can’t do ____, and you can’t do ____” you not only instill in them a harmful naivety, you cultivate a daughter’s desire to rebel! Limitations and rules do not raise a child, education does.

"Tony" obviously doesn’t agree, coming back with, “So what do I do? Tell my eight-year-old daughter that a man will harm her sexually?? Eight-years-old?”

First off I was confused about how he got on the 8-year kick seeing as how he has a daughter in fact, (who was shooed away for being too young for this “workshop”) and she happens to be 12.

Clearly we were arguing different wave lengths. I wanted to talk concepts and "Tony" wanted to talk numbers… More than anything at this point I wanted to stand up and tell him “Of course not, "Tony". Don’t educate your daughters about the dangers of the world. Instead why doesn’t everyone lock them in a cage in their basement?” Which has only stuck with me because there are no basements in Oman.

The other girls took the discussion back over and I sat looking at my hands. In my peripheral vision I could see my green hijab, loosely wrapped around my head. In front of me on the table, Bushra was absentmindedly playing with "Tony's" cell as she talked. I looked at the phone and it hit me that my real dad has the same one, my dad in America. The one who has never scolded me for showing my hair on accident or told the Indian gas station clerk that he “needs to be smart” or dominates the life of his daughter to such a degree that she won’t even dance in a room full of girls with the door locked for fear that her father would find out.

I promised "Meadow" I wouldn’t tell.

My dad thinks I am strong enough to live without hiding and he thinks I am pretty without seeing that as a commodity to be held secret and to hoard. I’m sure "Tony" is a good father. But he is not my father.