By Amina H Syed
“It is said that there is no such thing as coincidence in this world,” says Paulo Coelho in his book, the Pilgrimage. My experiences have proved just that. I joined the Book Club when we were settled in Bucharest. The group was reading “The secret life of the bees” by Sue Monk Kidd. It did not sound exciting – more like a scientific journal. I opened the book and found the beginning of each chapter lined with a researched fact about the honey comb society. Contrary to my expectation, this arrested me for being a student of religion , each and every detail to me was an explanation of the following verse of the Quran, “ And your Lord inspired the bee, saying: “ take you habitations in the mountains and in the trees and in what they erect. “ Then, eat of all fruits, and follow the ways of your lord made easy (for you). There comes forth from their bellies, a drink of varying colour, wherein is healing for men. Verily, in this is indeed a sign for people who think.” Surat Al Nahl (68)
I pondered over each and every intrinsic detail. The life of Lily, the young heroine, is intrinsically connected to the life of the bees. They heal and cure her, physically and emotionally, giving the solace that she seeks so desperately. The wise black August, the Queen Bee, guides all through the course of the story. Her personality and impact is in direct contrast to the self destructive over passionate May and the sullen, hopeless June. Meandering through the course of life with her bee hives and the black Mary, she can stand her ground in the social upheaval that rages around her. The time is the mid 1900 and the age of the civil right laws. “Our lady is not some magical being…. She’s something inside you… You don’t have to put your hand on Mary’s heart to get strength, consolation and rescue, and all the other we need to get through life. You can place it right here on your own heart. Your own heart.”
I arrived in London on the day of the bombing – 7/7. We stood at immigration when the officer warned us not to go to central London as there had been several explosions. I have had enough of the violence and bloodshed all over the world. Muslims and non Muslims both are at it, heaping blame on each other but in reality no one is better than the other. In my frustration I had echoed Lily’s words, “Make the world better. Take meanness out of people’s hearts.’ We were on holiday and rather cruelly shunned all news during the two weeks we were there. We were at an English friend’s house when in the course of our conversation I suddenly remembered to ask, if the criminals had been caught. It was an awkward moment as my friend, rather embarrassed said they were British Pakistani’s. We groaned out aloud. What could have made them commit such a crime? In my opinion, the British also need to ask themselves this question. They may have Pakistani parents but they were essentially British. The abusive connotations in the one word “ Paki” opens an entire discourse.
The secret life of the bees opens up the entire subject of racial prejudice. As I walked down the streets of England, I was overwhelmed with the consciousness of being Pakistani. I have never ever felt insecure about my identity even when the green passport merits detailed scrutiny. I thought I read quiet censor in people’s eyes. The newspapers flashed the name of Pakistan, and the faces of the mullahs. I felt self conscious and ashamed. “I wished they had been “more cultured.” My thoughts resonated on the pattern of Lily. Custodian of the ultimate Book of Truth, we have failed to live by its wisdom. Therefore our words sound hollow. The world is looking for answers but they never hope to find them with us.
The words of Zach, the black boy in the book, “I don’t know if I’ll have much of a future …. I’m a negro” turned my thoughts towards my children. Their innocence is marred by prejudice. And now a year later with the recent foiled attempt at kidnapping, the Muslim boys are being targeted as the source of all terrorism. My young nephew came to Bucharest for a visit and was made to step out of line. Another was detained while returning from Canada and lost his connection. Our kids are clean but nothing makes sense any more. Soldiers blowing whistles on comrades especially in Iraq reveal that they will attack at whim. The law has given them power to do anything. What can one do, is a question that perhaps Muslims all over the world are asking themselves.
“You can’t be a true bee keeper without getting stung….Regrets don’t help anything,” says the wise August. “There’s a fullness of time for things,.. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.” Reaction must be controlled and inner strengths developed. On my return to Romania, I met with some awkward experiences. I went with a friend to the famous palace in Bucharest only to be singled out for a detailed scrutiny of my passport (which luckily I had on me) because I happened to have my head covered. Then, a visiting friend who left alone for Budapest was targeted by the immigration officials on the train journey. They harassed her till she was forced to let go of some money because she had a “problem passport.”
It would be easy to show reaction but the need is to ask where we have gone wrong. Propaganda against us is important to understand but counteracting it by a sustained, planned, non reactive but enlightened approach is imperative. The first step is some soul searching – starting today. “The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters,” says August to the young Lily. The natural catastrophes all over the world are enough evidence that the soul searching is not only for the Muslims. In the words of a Romanian, it seems “God is angry with us.”
The grandeur of Muslims are recorded in the annals of history, so what happened to us? In the example of the bees lies the secret of a successful life. “It takes honey bee workers ten million foraging trips to gather enough nectar to make one pound of honey.( Bees of the world)’ ‘A bees life is but short…. a worker bee, as a rule, does not live more than four or five weeks…( The Dancing bees).” “The main thing is that they are hardworking to the point of killing themselves. Sometimes you want to say to them , Relax, take some time off, you deserve it.” This feverish activity, it must be noted is not for personal gain alone but also a kind of selfless giving. Each bee produces a few drops of honey in her limited lifetime, whose benefits for us are detailed in the book. It is this struggle that is the true meaning of the most abused concept of Jihad. It actually means the struggle to better oneself and ones society, intellectually and morally towards perfection.
Suicide bombing does not have its origin in Islam. Islam has no tolerance for suicide. However it shows an extreme frustration of people who have been pushed out of their land, fighting an unequal war with stones counteracting sophisticated weapons. According to Robert A. Pape, in the course of his research for a book on suicide attackers, he had found that of the 38 bombers that they identified only eight were Islamic fundamentalists and three were even Christians, the rest belonged to leftist political groups. He says that, “What these suicide attackers – and their heirs today – shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation.”
Chaim Potok, author of the Book, The Chosen that explained to me what is meant by jihad. The learned professor in the book says to his son, “We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity…. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. A man must fill his life with meaning; meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning.”
Coming to Bucharest has been an enlightening experience. It has closely acquainted me to a microcosm of the world, multi religions, cultures and traditions. It has reinforced my belief that people are essentially good everywhere. They are also essentially the same. The tolerance and understanding that underlines expatriate relationships is the missing ingredient of the peace process. Having lived it, one becomes a global citizen.
On the day that we met with each other to discuss the book, “the secret life of the bees,” I listened to the others. None had related to it as I did. I was reluctant to share my views but remembered a friend's encouraging words that a diversity of cultures ensured a challenging discussion. I took heart and said my piece. “The whole fabric of the honey bee society depends on communication – on an innate ability to send and receive messages, to encode and decode information – (the Honey Bee)”
It is time we reached out to others. In the words of my English friend, why don’t the Pakistani’s protest against the belittling propaganda against them? Why do they not seek to remove misunderstandings and project a soft image. We must wake up from the stupor that grips us. As another person said, “our silence is deadly.”
