|
Eve and Said By Eve Berliner |
|
|
THE
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART |
THE
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART |
|
By Eve
Berliner The incendiary advent of Benjamin
Netanyahu onto the international scene sent shudders through our household,
the Mideast boiling in Brooklyn, New York. It is a relationship on the cusp of
history, Said and Eve, the Egyptian and the Hebress, a deep connection, an
ancient, mesmerizing alchemy. He, startling, stunning, exotic. She, a wild flame. Said, blood of Ramses running in his
veins, his face carved into the Pyramids of Giza. Eve, mother of the human
race ("Om el pasher"), mother of the universe ("Om
el donia"). The fecundity of the union, the
importance of it. Stepping over the scars of history, we
meet as human beings to reach beyond the barriers of culture, stereotype,
dogma, to comprehend the other's truth, to see the sweep of history through
the other's eyes. His brother Mohammed who lost his life
in the 1973 war with Israel, the forces of General Anwar el-Sadat crossing
the impregnable Suez Canal and seizing the Sinai back from its captors who
had conquered the land from Egypt in 1967, his brother's blood spilled
mortally on the sands of the Sinai, a martyr to his country, buried there at
the soldier's monument; for Said the loss of his brother its own mortal
wound. *
* * The day's headlines are provocative: the
Hebron massacre, Oklahoma City, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, renegade
nuclear bomb on the black market, Louis Farrakhan on the march, bin Laden in
hiding in Afghanistan. Slavery in the Sudan: "They're not Moslems,"
he utters solemnly. "They cannot be." The world detonates around us. It is the time of the assassin. The Egyptian patriot Anwar el-Sadat who gave his life to the consecration of peace with Israel, the Israeli visionary Yitzhak Rabin, slain by a fanatic Jewish fundamentalist in the name of God. The cauldron of the Mideast, the time bomb. Riyadh, al-Khobar, Hebron, Jerusalem. |
|
|
Radical militant Arabs blow up a bus in
Tel Aviv, a hemorrhage of death; Israel inflicts its own atrocity on a
refugee camp in Southern Lebanon. The slaughter of the innocents. Both sides
terrorist. "Islam is peace. Islam is love. If
you have a Jewish neighbor you have to give him peace and love. The face of
Islam, the face of Islam is beautiful. Islam is not against the human being.
The Islamic religion is for peace and for the human being to live, not to
destroy. The Prophet Mohammed made peace with the Jews," Said states
softly. "In the Moslem religion, a Moslem man may take a Jewish
wife." "Cousin," he proclaimed when I
informed him early on that I was Jewish. For the biblical patriarch Abraham begat
two sons: one by Sarah whom he called Isaac, the other by Hagar, who bore the
name Ishmael; Isaac, from whom sprang the Jews, Ishmael, whose descendants
became the Arabs, human brotherhood between Jew and Arab in the blood. *
* * It is an elemental thing, the
masculine/feminine mystique. Strong male essence to this brooding catlike
man; magical black eyes, long sinewy body, sinewy sweet lips, this fellow who
believes that Eve came from Adam's rib!!! "Get me a glass of
water...please," he intones. Centuries of attitudes about women, so
deeply ingrained, so complex. The subjugation of women in a culture of male
autocracy, woman under the veil. In the old culture a woman was not
permitted to leave the house without the permission of her husband, young
girls hidden behind shutters so as not to be seen by man. Only the
surreptitious contact of eyes would occur, and that too was prohibited. "Mutilation of Egyptian Girls:
Despite Ban It Goes On" -- reads the New York Times headline. He is silent. He is caught between two cultures, torn
between the wildness of his own nature and the Islamic strictures of
centuries; 18 years in America but his soul is steeped in Egypt. And yet he is in fact a modern man. We
meet as equals. He allows me my freedom. He respects my independence. And he
loves to cook! This devout Muslim with the macho vulnerable core, this
tender, fierce and beautiful man from Cairo, the lady from Brooklyn, New
York. Two different planets and yet the
relationship is one of harmony. There is freedom of expression in our
household and freedom of religion, Said passionate about Egypt, the crucible
of human civilization, and proud of its critical place on the contemporary
world stage. I do not try to talk him out of his
beliefs. He is entitled to them. I do not argue with his cultural inheritance
-- it is impossible -- his historical perspective -- it is his truth. "I missed you. I missed
America," he uttered upon returning from his first visit to Egypt in 16
years. Inadvertently, the third world had become a shock to his sensibility. He was inducted as an American citizen
on August 9, 1996. "Can't believe it. Can't believe it. I'm an American.
I'm an American," he kept repeating joyfully. "No one is exempt from the law in
America. Not even the President of the United States. I admire that," he
noted quietly. *
* * We rise above history, Eve and Said, the
chronicle of slavery and enmity and war written in the sands of time. The exodus is behind us. The Red Seas have parted. And we come together at the millennium
as Arab and Jew, in love and peaceful coexistence. 1996 |
|
