A Beautiful Thing

In these days of celebrity sex tapes, televised hate-mongering and story after story of mothers drowning or starving or otherwise harming their children, how happy I was to meet Sameh M. . Sameh is eighteen years old, a Palestinian. We met at a dinner welcoming international students to the college where I teach. He was one of twenty or so young people representing every corner of the world -- China, France, Nepal, Romania, Tajikistan, Zimbabwe. Young people. Some of them away from home for the first time. High-spirited, nervous, full of questions about the journey on which they were about to embark.

On the table, covered with a checkered cloth, the chicken was piled high. Next to it, the potato salad. The potato salad next to the slaw. And among them bowls of chips, plates of cheese, baskets of fruit and bread. An abundance of typical American summer fare. And summer it was. The temperature that day had climbed into the high nineties.

After the introductions, obligatory welcoming speeches full of praise for the students' courage and admonitions about the temptations awaiting them, the students dug in. Everyone except Sameh. He sat in a glider, swinging slowly back and forth, watching the others. It was the holy month of Ramadan, the month when observant Moslems are asked to fast during the daylight hours. The time was nearing seven o'clock. The sun wouldn't set for another twenty minutes or so. Sameh hadn't eaten the entire day. Not a bite. Nor had he swallowed a single sip of water. (Very observant Moslems don't even swallow their own saliva during this sacred time.)

This gangly boy was far away from his family that night, far way, in fact, from any other person who shared his faith. There was no one there to see if, just twenty minutes early, he'd allow himself a handful of chips or pour himself a cup of soda. But for Sameh, that wasn't the point. Deprivation, I mean. Participating in this tradition, alone, thousands of miles away from home, Sameh wasn't giving up anything, and I envied, in fact, what he seemed to be gaining, the connection to his Moslem brothers and sisters all around the world.

I wonder if this is what frightens the Koran burners of this world, the connection to something we have lost, the connection to each other and to something larger than ourselves. Maybe we should forget about celebrity sex tapes for a while.

(By the way, to those Koran burners, I'd like to say that I think they would be hard pressed to get Sameh to burn any kind of book. He graduated at the top of his class from one of the best schools in The Middle East. He wants to be a doctor.)

I told my wife Barbara about this experience."These days it's beautiful to see anyone believing in anything," she said. I wish I knew Sameh's parents. I'd like to tell them what a good son they have raised.