Spending the early part of childhood in Rochester, NY (my dad worked for Eastman Kodak), I remember that he traveled on occasion to conduct training. I remember him going to Beirut, Lebanon, in the early-mid 70's, before it was destroyed, and hearing stories of sitting up on a balcony in the hills watching some rockets being fired off in the distance as the fighting was getting underway. I also remember an Iranian man named Vigaine (not sure of the spelling) who was here for training and had family in Iran he was always worried about. Not sure what ever became of him or his family. He was extremely nice, generous, polite, friendly, wore a business suit, and gave me one of the few gifts I remember from those early years - a big, white, plastic Formula racing car that I could roll down ramps or along the ground (by my own arm power, of course). Very cool.
Spending the remainder of my childhood and adult years in Texas, Richardson (outside of Dallas) had a pretty sizable Islamic community. There was an interesting-looking mosque adding an international flair to the short skyline in one part of town, and lots of people attended - that always made an impression on me, all of the women in burkas and men dressed in their non-Western attire, at least for that particular day and time. Friendliest haircutter I ever regularly visited was from Iran and he owned the salon, but was always careful to refer to it as "Persia" rather than Iran.
Today, my next door neighbors are Iranians. She's a nurse, he's an engineer that used to wear a hard hat on his way to work in his little pickup (he's opened up a Mexican restaurant as a career change within the past year though), and they have a teenager who's crazy about soccer as well as an infant. We've been neighbors for 7 years now. Nothing but a hard-working, polite, westernized, American family, who happens to travel to and from Tehran every summer to see family (as did the Persian hairmaster above).
These stories/slices of life have no point other than to illustrate that although the world is vast and much of it is filled with circumstances and responses to those circumstances that are beyond our comprehension or ability to reason through, people are people at the local, neighborhood level, and I have to believe that if the world were filled with neighborhoods just like these, where everyone has enough to eat and drink, electricity, jobs, a little money to spend, safety and security, freedom to worship as desired as long as others are not harmed, then we'd all be a whole lot better off. Maybe the neighborhoods are centered around mosques or temples or cathedrals or shopping malls or factories, but if people had these basic necessities taken care of, most of the world's issues would no longer exist. I've seen an interview with citizens of Baghdad saying "the Americans can take the oil - just let us live our lives", or words to that effect. People just want to be left alone to pursue what they feel is their life's purpose, be it to raise a family, excel at a job, worship privately, evangelize their religion in a non-violent manner, display their artistic abilities, or invent something that would improve the world. I realize global politics are not that simple - but I can't make logical sense out of why they are not, or why they can't start making their way in that direction.
I did read the print version of that Economist article (of course I'm a subscriber to your country's fine publication), and I am quite glad for having never met one - though I know they're around. As are gang members, drug cartels, and organized crime, all of which are much more impacting on every American's daily life in this country in one way or another, in my opinion.
Posted by: worth | March 28, 2007 at 10:00 AM