How the cats in Muslim countries reaffirm my patriotism – even if it’s a dirty word
This summer, I was the International Cat Express performance. To help you, I agree to fly from my home in Spokane, Washington to DC, meet with my sister and join her in her new government position (responsible for one of her two cats), a plane to Algiers.
Never visited a Muslim country, I have been competing, although people travelling widely warned me that the Algiers are unusually conservative and restrictive. I have warned against asking about religion or politics. A friend who works for the United Nations gave me a talk about what to wear, which boils down to: no naked skin.
My sister will start working the day after we arrive so I will be alone in a country with limited choices. You cannot use a credit card, you only have cash, and you cannot change money. I worked hard and then went to Italy for a vacation in five days.
The only thing I can do in Algiers is to walk around, make friends with many street cats, and talk to strangers. At French University, taking some recent Duolingo exercises as an example, I talked to the shop owner, chatted with security guards outside the embassy, and met people hanging out on the street. I don’t always disturb verbs and may mistake each noun.
What I found were people who love their homeland and longed to show it to me. Even the state that fought for independence in the 1960s, experienced a bloody civil war in the 1990s, and now existed under a repressive government, proud. But I also noticed nothing: easy travel, open political discourse, casual criticism of authority. Their pride lives with prudent silence.
On the way home, I spoke with Delta staff from Algeria. I told him that I found everyone would meet. His face illuminated. “It’s good now. Better.” But when he talked about the administration and the Civil War, even at Minneapolis Airport, his voice was lowered.
He now lives in the United States, scanning bags as they ride around the carousels and earned his Ph.D. He has a Bachelor of Economics in the Country and taught at a Polish university for 30 years. He will “return home” to Algeria in September.
People, I just go there and say: I love America.
Given my politics, career and (Hippi Vietnam War) parents (father: Regional Public Teacher; Mother: Community College and Ivy Lecturer), I was somewhat surprised to find myself feeling a surge in patriotism, especially these days, I know I expect to cynically criticize everything about our (legal) government. Many of my friends and colleagues have refuted people who voted differently from us and waved the virtue flag at “those people” who hung the houses in red, white and blue.
However, many people who share my belief in diversity, equity, and inclusion are often intolerant to others. We’ve already yelled and told others they’re wrong, uneducated and a bucket of creep. Maybe some of them are. Maybe so are some of us. But we have certainly stopped talking to each other. We didn’t even get the same news or find the same facts. Some of my friends said they have become numb to the Capitol of our country. Not me. Every day I was shocked by where I am now and I was worried about where we might go (another bloody civil war).
In Academe, we have the luxury of spitting. We spit and learned a big lesson in 2016: Not everyone is buying what we sell. That’s how we get into current political, cultural and social shit show.
But, I still like the United States. I love the values expressed in building our documents, written in such beautiful language, that I often assign them to creative writing students. Our most interesting founder’s autobiography (the first best-selling book) still has so much wit and wisdom that when I reread it, I was filled with awe and jealousy. Lincoln, a US speech, used a brief and powerful description of prose poems that could bring me to his knees. I love that over the past two centuries our best leaders have hoped their criticisms form a more perfect alliance to correct many of the things we encounter.
Just before I boarded my long and uncomfortable flight, a friend sent me a link to my last speech with Ronald Reagan. In it, he quoted a letter he received: “You can go to France to live, but you can’t be French… But from any corner of the earth, anyone can come to America to live and become American.” His point is: “If we ever close the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world will be lost very quickly.”
If you told me decades ago I would write to Ronald’s weird Reagan, I would say it’s very likely 2001: Space OdysseyHal became a reality. But, well, we’re here.
We cannot stop criticizing our country – this is the essence of democracy and the true value of the higher stages. But we need to model how to build constructive interactions with imperfect institutions, not just an introduction to the problems that are going wrong in the United States. We need to teach our students how to criticize while participating simultaneously, how to better demand while acknowledging what is worth keeping.
Seeing countries like Algeria shut themselves down politically and isolated from other North African countries, in many ways, the rest of the world is a warning example even after abandoning colonial rule. In higher education, when we reject the truth of ourselves being uncomfortable or fire those who disagree with us, we risk the pain, restraint, reduction like the kind of whispering conversations at the airport.
That’s why after five days of walking around Algiers with bad French and hot flakes, I boarded a flight to Rome with pasta Alla Carbonara, ice cream, ice cream and discussions about what went wrong in the world today, with strange relief and determination. You don’t have to think that your country’s hobbies are perfect, but you have to notice that the door is still open and fighting to keep that way. In democracy, just like in academia, when we no longer let new voices, new challenges, new possibilities, we begin to die from the inside out.
