Fluffy-Kittens

What, no fluffy kittens in ten months?!  Well, we adopted a stray calico kitten, but I want to point out Muslim medical students who started a clinic in South Central Los Angeles.

I haven't been posting because, well, I haven't been thinking in that "committed progressive theoretical up on my soap box" way lately.  I've been happy, sleeping, working, researching, doing other things like cleaning my apartment and organizing my dvds.  Then I thought this morning...wait a sec!  I am a progressive Muslim, then anything I am into is "progressive Islam" is it not?  Okay, I don't think that.  You caught me.  This is merely a ploy so that I might post some errata and call it progressive Islam cause I got naught else to write about:

How strange and wonderful the little things become during wartime.

I left Cairo last week to make my bi-annual pilgrimage to the motherland. I spent 4 days in NYC catching up with a lot of friends and colleagues and editors and editors and colleagues who are also friends, and now I'm in Colorado visiting family. This place is so verdant and beautiful and secluded that places like Lebanon seem very far away indeed. But on the Egypt Air flight I took out of Cairo, the war in Lebanon was brought thundering home. As I took my seat I noticed that many of the people around me were speaking a dialect of Arabic that was not Egyptian. When I heard a woman's voice say 'Beirut' followed by a sigh, and I realized with a shock that the plane was full of Lebanese evacuees. In the row parallel to mine, a tastefully dressed woman was sitting with a girl who looked like her daughter, who was perhaps nineteen or twenty. They wore expressions that don't have names--relief mingled with exhaustion and happiness that is not really happiness, but the triumphant and painful proximity of the future after a narrow scrape with death. That's one I have experience with; I wore it often after a long and exhausting illness I had in college, and I recognized it.

So I am in the cafe, typing away, sitting at the cafe bar.  This dude in a baseball hat asks me about my Mac.  He introduces me to his girlfriend.  He asks me to tell her what I like about my Mac.  Knowing that we are all junkies, he can count on anyone with a Mac to talk pretty.  I talk pretty about my Mac and go back to drinking my coffee and eating my bagel and typing away.  His girlfriend gets up to use the restroom.  He looks over at the screen and sees the title of this website up on my browser.  He asks me about it.  I explain.  I say what I always do: We Muslims have quite a lot going on in our community than most people realize.  He said that he lives in New York City and knows a lot of Muslims.  Then he said, "After 9/11 I fasted Ramadan with some Bangladeshi kids to show them that not everyone hates them."  His girlfriend came back and I turned to her and said, "Hold on to this one.  He is not an asshole.  Some guys don't sound like assholes at first, but they really are.  This one is not an asshole."  Godwilling, she'll buy a Mac and hold onto the guy.  TabarakAllah, decent guy.  Made my day.