My conversation partner is better than yours… sorry about it

            Our plans are so dependent on technology, and when technology fails we usually do too. Not only the thesis of “Apollo 13” and “The Poseidon Adventure,” I learned this lesson first hand in Market Square.

I had emailed my conversation and happily received a quick response. We had planned for a late lunch at TCU classic Market Square where we would have deep conversations over oily stir-fry. I got to Market Square a few minutes early and realized I had no clue whom I was looking for. I then had the bright idea to email him a description of what I was wearing. The idea was brilliant, my phone not so much. As soon as I opened my email, my phone stopped working—not a dead battery, straight up electrical shenanigans.

With rebellious phone in pocket, I ventured into Market Square hoping to find a lone Saudi. I knew his name and his nationality, so, although it went against everything my parents have ever taught me, I began to profile, but then I realized I honestly have no clue how to profile a Saudi Arabian because I had no clue what they look like so I looked for anyone who was slightly not white, which is pretty easy at TCU.

The search ended when I spotted someone sitting alone at a table near the entrance. I approached his table and asked, “Are you Nasrallah?” which could’ve gone horribly wrong if he weren’t which would make me a racist bastard.

“Yes,” he replied and got up to shake my hand. Yay! I wasn’t a racist bastard for assuming the only non-white student in Market Square was Nasrallah.

“Awesome. I’m Nick. Let’s go grab some food,” I suggested.

Walking back with plates covered in fries and Frog Sauce, which is horribly named but so tasty, we sat, nibbled, and got the boring first date stuff out of the way: siblings, hometowns, majors. Nasrallah is wonderfully opinionated and well spoken, even in his second language. In his nearly flawless English, he articulated his homesickness and disappointments with TCU and America in general. I agreed and related with all the points he made. We both miss home. We both wish America had better (or in most places actually had) public transit. We both wish TCU were more diverse. We both think America is too puritanical and needs to lighten up, and that’s coming from a Saudi Arabian. As we talked, I realized that you can feel like an alien whether you live 600 or 16,000 miles away from a place.

I felt like I was agreeing too much and our meeting was turning more into an affirmation session because I just kept nodding my head because Nasrallah had so many true insights into American life and being in a new place. Giving my neck a break from affirmative nods, I asked Nasrallah what his future plans were.

“Next spring I plan on transferring to the University of Alabama and changing my major to chemical engineering.”

~HANDS TO CHEEKS SHOCKED FACE EMOJI~

            After spending a summer abroad, I’m used to explaining what and where my lovely home state is. “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Forrest Gump,” Helen Keller, the greatest team in college football. That’s how I explain which state Alabama is to foreigners. But Nasrallah knew Alabama for the university and its chemical engineering program.

“No freaking way,” I replied “My best friend is a chemical engineering major at Alabama.”

My best friend Jeff will probably meet Nasrallah. They will probably be in the same classes and complain about the same professors. And I’ll be jealous when that happens and also happy. But for now, Nasrallah and I will continue to meet up and complain about the same things: public transit and Market Square food.

(L)Austen Translation

In twelfth grade English, I put off reading Pride and Prejudice until the day before our test on Austen’s much beloved (by cat ladies, I presume) classic. A staunch opponent of Spark Notes, I soldiered through the Elizabeth Bennet’s tumultuous relationship with Mr. Darcy. I didn’t hate the book, but didn’t understand why some girls in the class (and, this is not a gendered generalization because I was the only guy in my senior AP English class) got such a thrill out of Austen’s verbose romp through Regency England.

I then watched the trailer for the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and began to understand the hype. At two and a half minutes, the trailer tells Elizabeth’s entire story, giving a giant middle finger to spoiler alerts, in a more compelling fashion than Austen does in three hundred pages or the actual movie does in three hours. Set to instrumentals that make you want to stand on the windswept edge of the Grand Canyon and ponder life, the trailer eviscerates Austen’s challenging prose, relying on fabulous costumes and pastoral images to sell the story to the audience. Watching the trailer makes you care as much about Darcy and Bennet as you do for Jim and Pam from The Office or Ross and Rachel from Friends. Although it is more emotionally gripping, the trailer is not great literature.

Literature is read. Literature is words. Literature is a journey. Therefore, the trailer is literature. It uses dialogue and narration to tell a (very condensed) story, but it is not great literature. Austen’s novel, however laborious it may be, is great literature because of the depth of the journey. Instead of focusing solely on romance, Pride and Prejudice the novel explores the sexual politics of a patriarchal society, chronicles the economic inequalities facing a middle-class family, and portrays the tenuous bonds between these family members. The novel takes the reader on a multifaceted journey that makes Darcy’s second proposal all the more rewarding.

Using the caveats I’ve already mentioned for defining literature, you could argue just about any work of art, tweet, jingle, or ClipArt image is literature, however, literature that lasts encapsulates a journey that is emotionally resonant. The Lord of the Rings and Junie B. Jones is a Beauty Shop Guy both are literature, however, the experiences that the reader brings to their interaction with these texts will determine whether or not the literature is meaningful. Personally, Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book is much more emotionally resonant than Homer’s The Odyssey partially because it is nostalgic and also because I’m an insomniac. Literature is just about anything you want it to be, whether or not you want to be reading it is personal.

[I’ve attached the preview to the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice because those instrumentals with Keira Knightley’s wistful stares into the undefined distance will make you want to follow your bliss]

Briars: Cape Town, South Africa

It was my moment. That part in the romantic comedy where the couple slow motion runs towards each other at the bus stop and profess their love (probably just to break up a week later). That part in the song where the instruments cut out then shift into a cherubic key change. That part of your trip to Africa that every Anglo-Euro-merican pays for.

Our mission team had set up camp in Overcome Heights, one of the most violent townships in Cape Town’s notorious Cape Flats area. Some have (accurately) described the neighborhood as “an apartheid dumping ground,” a plot of earth so covered in shanties, garbage, and dog poop that it doesn’t even look like earth anymore. However, our team had plopped ourselves on top of the one discernible smudge of green in a sea of dirt-brown and concrete-gray.

The park—a word I use liberally—had no trappings of an American park. No swings floated ghostly in the winter winds and a patch of sand made for a makeshift sandbox in which kids dug for shattered glass instead of China (and not just because South Africa isn’t geographically polarized from China—I guess the kids could’ve been digging for the Atlantic Ocean). Resting from my breakout role as “Crowd Member” in the skits we performed for the kids, I leaned against a fence—another word I use liberally—and watched the frenetic buzz of children grin and zoom about the field. Girls flocked under the park’s one shade tree gossiping—or talking about my inspiring performance as “Crowd Member”—as the boys dribbled a soccer ball up and down the green-space. Now, soccer is just not my sport. I’m no Ann Coulter, but I just don’t understand why the sport is so freaking great. And I was tired and jet-lagged and also a non-fan of running. So I just leaned on the wooden post waiting for my save-the-world moment when “ta daaaaa…”

He stood in the middle of the sandpit, sluggishly sinking to the other side of the world. Wrapped in an oversized brown hoodie, he wore equally brown shorts and no shoes. Rays seeped from the heavens where angels sang a peerless rendition of “We are the World” just for me. It was my moment. My destiny as an upper-middle class white person to swoop down and save this barefoot-brown-baby. To impart my knowledge and rock-solid faith upon “the least of these.” To Instagram the crap out of this totally life changing and momentous occasion with a Scriptural and emoji-fraught caption.
So I swooped.

The two year-old had planted himself in the middle of the soccer match—a stubbron move with which my inner rebel could relate. He also played more at my pace, digging leisurely in the sand amidst the older boys running at break neck speed. I squatted next to the kid and introduced myself. The only response I got was a stone-faced grimace. Not exactly a college-essay-material beginning, but I would persist. I asked him his name and got the same look of disgruntled confusion. I still have no clue when babies start talking and if he was at that age yet, but I knew this kid needed me, or at least that’s what the lighting, the impoverished backdrop, and barefootedness were telling me.

So I sat down in the middle of the soccer game and dug along with my African child. However, the exotic allure Madonna saw in African babies was slowly waning. It’s not like I was getting much out of digging a hole in some rancid sand next to this kid. But the more we dug, the more he warmed up to me so I kept talking to my captive audience, which is something I’m used to. I gave him a thumbs up at one point of the conversation, and he thought that was the greatest. Finally! A positive response. He copied my foreign gesture and pressed his tiny thumb up to mine and we both beamed at our E.T. moment.

When face-painting time rolled around, I corralled my African child towards the fence where the activities were taking place. All along the way, I picked up every shard of beer bottle I could find as the shoeless kid toddled behind me. My paranoid suburban mother side was kicking in and I started internally freaking out about all the possible injuries that awaited a barefoot two year-old in that glass-shard minefield of a park. I nervously sat on the fence and stooped to collect the brambles from in front of me where the kid wandered in circles, giving me thumbs ups. I was so focused on “preparing the way” that I almost didn’t see the kid step on a huge briar that jammed itself in the sole of his foot. I paternally started to pounce, expecting tears and a tantrum—from both him and me—when the two year-old coolly looked down at his foot and pulled out the splinter with not even a whimper.

His stoicism stunned me to silence.

He didn’t need me. He didn’t need Madonna. He didn’t even need shoes.

The child was as resilient as his community, as durable as his continent. A continent with over twice the population of the US, as diverse and inventive as the US, just different. A continent whose metanarrative is the “sob story,” one perpetuated by the media and multiple well-intentioned NGOs. However, I don’t believe in the African sob story. While famine, genocide, and gangsterism plague Africa, I refuse to buy in to its image as a helpless, barefoot child, standing lost in the middle of a park. I refuse this image because I have sped down the streets of Cape Town in the open trunk of VW Chico.

Each morning in Capricorn, a neighborhood next to Overcome, our team and local workers would walk the streets of the shantytown, beating drums and singing to let kids know it was time for our morning “Club.” That morning, one of the local workers handed me a gargantuan bass drum and asked me to get into the popped trunk of his car. Not used to men forcing me into car trunks, I was hesitant at first but then embraced my uncomfortable perch in the VW Chico. As we drove at walking speed, kids, caught like moths to light, trickled from their shanties to beat the drum. Legs dangling in the dusty street, I was resituating myself when the local worker who was driving sped off once we had reached the main road. At 60 mph, I hugged the massive bass with one hand and with the other clawed at the Chico’s plush plastic interior. In a brief reprieve from panic, I looked straight ahead—but backwards—and watched dozens of children screaming after the vehicle, pulsing past the drug dealers and stray mutts, smiles splitting upon their raised faces. They faded into the golden dust of morning as we hung a right.

I do not believe in the African sob story because of what I saw from the back of a speeding car. Africa is not a photo op, but a home. Africans are not museum pieces; they are Africans and therefore people, and a people who tread among innumerable briars that they will step on and remove. Then, they will keep walking.

Global Positioning System: Texas, Northern Louisiana, Mississippi, “Alabama,” and Alabama

My GPS thinks I live in two different places: a redbrick home in suburban Birmingham and a parking lot in Fort Worth. Lot 5 is where my car slept; not me. I slept on an economic blue mattress in a dorm room that was an eight-minute walk from the lot. Nonetheless, my GPS waves a gleaming house icon over Lot 5 because that’s where I taught it, my $100 Sacagawea, to lead me. The redbrick home lies 683 miles east of the plastic mattress and Lot 5. I programmed the address into my GPS as I rolled out of the parking lot. I sleep in the home’s dark and freezing basement. I dapple the walls like my cave-ancestors did with their buffalos and saber-tooth tigers but with pages cleaved from thrift editions of Shakespeare and photos from the pre-Facebook era when printed photos existed. Summer is when my cave swells with my belongings that forever trek from asphalt-home to redbrick-home. The space is mine, but so was the room with the blue industrial mattress.

After packing up the essentials from my dorm (bedding, a South African flag, and a didgeridoo) and jettisoning my year’s excesses (free t-shirts, instant grits, and three-month old cookies) I set my GPS for Vicksburg, Mississippi. My dad, with whom I was caravanning, and I were splitting up the hajj and would be staying the night in Vicksburg. I’m sure Vicksburg was a thriving metropolis at some point, or at least was before Ulysses S. Grant stormed through and killed the party, but now it sits quietly, sinking into the Mississippi like a kid dangling his feet off a pier.

The GPS projected an ETA of 6:34 PM, which, of course, I had to beat. I play games when I’m driving alone on the highway, like guessing where cars will exit based off their bumper stickers or handing out superlatives to truckers like “best hugger” (which I give based off perception—not experience) or “manliest facial hair.” However, beating the clock is my favorite highway game. It’s a middle finger to our future computer overlords—“Look at me, metallic bitches! I can prove you wrong!”—and proving anything wrong, whether they be a sibling or amalgam of non-biodegradable alloys, is fun.

After jamming to the new Beyoncé album twice—which is another great game: see how long you can ride that “surfboardt” with no hands on the wheel—I started to get pretty philosophical, because that’s what happens when you listen to Beyoncé’s new album two times in a row. Then I listened to the “Frozen” soundtrack and that really pushed me over the philosophical edge.

I had already passed about three hundred Texas state flags—because Texans love Texas—and thought about how it looks like someone zoomed up on a section of the American flag and printed it out for Texans to wave, and plaster on Nike shorts, and pray towards five times a day. This would make symbolic sense if Texas were a microcosm of the United States, but it isn’t. Texas is Texas. I still haven’t figured Texas out after living there for nine months, especially why grow men dress up like Woody the Cowboy in public. But I can assuredly say that Texas isn’t representative of the rest of America, no matter what its state flag might project. If all of America assimilated to Texas—aka: Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential platform—there’d be a Whataburger on every corner and public schools would teach creationism.

My vexillological musings didn’t stop there. Crossing into Mississippi from the third-world country of Northern Louisiana, the Mississippi state flag also caught my eye. By this point, I’d almost “surfboardted” to my death around Shreveport and hadn’t had human interaction for a solid three hours so my philosophical juices were really flowing.

Mississippi’s state flag is a Confederate flag postage-stamped onto an almost-Russian flag—a postcard from Putin to Faulkner. Like the Lone Star’s faux-collectivism, the Mississippi flag deludes the state’s identity. Based off the flag, you might expect a restaurant to serve borsht with a side of collard greens. And while I’m sure at least some Mississippians are proud Russians, I doubt many can pronounce Tchaikovsky or support military occupation of Crimea.

As my mind dervished at eighty miles per hour down I-20, I watched the clock and was pleased to see that I was about three minutes ahead of our ETA. Instead of entering in the hotel’s address, I had simply keyed in “Vicksburg, MS.” Therefore, when we pulled into the hotel, the GPS said I still had three miles to go to actually get to Vicksburg.

I wonder if a flesh-and-blood cartographer or an equation with Greek letters pinpointed Vicksburg on the map and why that one point is more Vicksburg than all the other points in the municipality. And where is that point? I was too exhausted from my six-hour jam session to follow the GPS to real-Vicksburg, Vicksburg proper. It may have been the restaurant where my dad and I ate shrimp and grits and listened to two old men sit and sing the blues. Or maybe it was where the first rebel fell during the Battle of Vicksburg. I do know that it’s a midpoint between Lot 5 and that redbrick house, but it wasn’t where I slept that night.

Under the covers of a Hampton Inn bed, I looked up “Alabama” on my Maps app. I love Alabama—for it’s flag, and creeks, and politically incorrect church signs, and football. The flag is St. Andrew’s cross, which I love for its crimson and whiteness, as if the state herself were cheering for the Tide. But a flag betrays those over which it whiffles; half the state wishes the flag were navy and vomit-orange.

My iPhone pierced the state with a red pushpin smack-dab in—what I guess is—Alabama’s geographic center, The Heart of the Heart of Dixie. “Alabama” is down County Road 324 just outside of Maplesville: pop. 672. “Alabama” is probably buried under a tangle of pine roots, floating between red clay and magma. “Alabama” is where teens go to smoke cigarettes and drink beer and where feral cats terrorize copperheads, pristine but not picturesque. I doubt many Alabamians have ever been to “Alabama.” Or perhaps some Choctaw, who was more of an Alabamian than any modern Alabamian even though the demonym didn’t exist, slept on that plot and felt the roundness of the earth beneath him. I might visit “Alabama” one day, but for now I am happy to be in Alabama, where I sleep in a painted cave under St. Andrew’s cross.