More ancient history

I'm often chided for saying a lot without actually saying much of anything. It's a dubious talent I have, honed over many years of hiding myself in plain sight. If I say nothing, people will assume and believe what they want; a sort of lesser-of-evils when the only alternative seemed to be outright lies.

That was a false dichotomy, of course, for there was another option -- Be open and honest. But that doesn't necessarily imply that one has to advertise or flaunt themselves; just answer any questions truthfully when asked.

But old habits die hard, especially when they were developed and honed at an early age.

My parents converted to Islam when I was two, and while they didn't wear it on their sleeves (that I recall, anyway), it certainly caused many problems for them until they somehow managed to find work in Saudi Arabia. One would have thought the problems would have gone away there, and for them, it largely did, but for their children, it went from not terribly good to a whole lot worse. While they embraced the religion, and later the culture, of their dreams, us children were left swinging.

As far back as I can remember, I've always felt like an outsider. Being one of three non-Christians (the others being my eldest sister and an Iranian kid) in Holy Name Elementary School, run by the Catholic church across the street. In Columbus, Ohio. Oh, I was a model student, and the nuns that taught me were kind -- except when the metal-tipped ruler had to come out -- and we never overtly made to feel bad that we weren't Catholic, doing their best to accommodate us.

But it's hard to meaningfully accommodate when so much of the school's routine revolves around the Church or Catholicism in general; from the crucifixes on the wall to the Hail Mary's in the morning to masses and field trips to a factory where they make those little Body-of-Christ-to-be wafers, the school lived and breathed Catholicism, and it was deeply embedded in everything they did.

So during Mass, us three got to sit in the rear pew of the church and not participate in communion. My mother taught me to say "Hail Mary, Mother of Cod", and sort of tried to explain that they were wrong and we were right without really explaining anything at all. Oh, and as long as the wafer remained a wafer and not the Eucharist, I could eat as many as I wanted. Oh, and especially no drinking the blood!

I don't begrudge my parents' choice of that school for us; we were not living in a good neighborhood, and the only public elementary school available to us was a hellhole. Many years later I was later told that it was so bad that there had been a rape in the halls of that (elementary!) school.

As I said earlier, I was a model student, and the only thing that kept me from getting perfect grades was my handwriting. I do have many happy memories of that school... but through all of it, there was the feeling that I was an outsider; that I didn't belong there; and I suspect a goodly chunk of my trying to be an ideal student was due to me trying to "fit in" by being everything my teachers wanted me to be, even though it was doomed to failure.

I still remember the lyrics to the solo part I had in a musical from second grade. I had perfect pitch back then. I had no part in the following year's Christmas play, being in a bit of a sulking funk when they were signing people up to participate. The reasons escape me now, but not my feelings: hurt, and oh-so-very alone.

I grew up culturally isolated; my parents tried to insulate us from the big bad world and western culture, but unfortunately they didn't fill that void with anything else. Being the working poor, they could barely make ends meet, and as such us kids were largely left to fend for ourselves. We didn't have the strong home life or that strong sense of cultural identity (that defines so many immigrant families) to give us a sense of place.

We didn't have a television, though we later got one to use as a screen for an Atari home computer. It was a flaky black-and-white-set, and despite having a coathanger for an antenna, it managed to pick up enough of a signal for me to sneak the occasional set of cartoons after making myself breakfast in the mornings -- Voltron, Thundercats, and Transformers I remember in particular, though if Transformers came on, it meant that I had better get going to school or I'd be late!

We even had our own Muslim "Sunday School" and the two Eid festivals every year, but they always felt poorly tacked on like a misplaced tail during a party game. In hindsight, that was because everyone else there seemed to have that sense of identity I lacked; strong extended immigrant families that already had their own culture and communities. Being a white, blonde kid in that sea of dark hair and dark skin.. I not only felt different, but I *was* different. My parents had abandoned the culture they were born to, yet were unable to assimilate us into anything else.

Even back then, I played along, figuring out and doing what I felt that other people there expected of and/or wanted me to do. After all, I already had to play lip-service to Catholicism at school every day, so this came naturally, and not only did I succeed, I even won an award, all the while wondering what it was that everyone else had that I was missing, why I just didn't get "it", and feeling ever more alone. (Keep in mind that my family left Ohio a week after my ninth birthday -- when I say that this goes way back, I mean it!)

I didn't really have any friends; though my family spent a lot of time with the aforementioned Iranian family and their kids. One of them, Milad (sp?) was my age and classmate, and he and I battled it out for Math Supremacy.. but I recall little else, other than he and his older brother were troublemakers. (Oh, did I mention my eldest sister and I were born in Iran? My parents only left because of that pesky Revolution..) On a more daily basis, the ones I ended spending time with, at least during my final year in Ohio, were local neighborhood kids, and not the best of sorts. (As an example, I later found out that one of them had stolen my sisters' big wheels from our yard/garage..)

Oh, even then I knew the neighborhood was bad, and there are more than a few occasions that in hindsight I'm amazed nothing truly bad happened to me. I had nobody to talk to about any of these things, least of which my parents -- though in this case, not out of fear. I remember not wanting to burden them with it; they were already going through so much, and they'd only get more stressed, worried, and try to isolate me even further.

I remember sugar maple trees with their propeller-like seeds whirling down into my hands. I remember the heat from the fire given off by our neighbor's garage, set alight by some arsonist. I remember the police busting our other neighbor for growing pot. Twice. I remember being woken up by Nutkin, not too long after she graduated from a stray to our housecoat after a particularly nasty blizzard.

I remember COSI, with their "please touch the cool stuff!" policy. I remember snowball fights and roasting fresh corn on a gas stove. I remember the carpet in my bedroom having a perfect pattern to be a parking lot (and plane of destruction) for my collection of (ever-more-battered) hot wheels cars. I remember staring out the front screen door one summer afternoon and asking "Why did God put me Here?" (Here in the physical sense, on this planet, rather than the more metaphorical sense..)

I remember Mrs. Love, my kindergarten teacher, and the embarrassing scene she caused when she saw me pick my younger sisters three years after I had left her classroom. I remember the elaborate GI Joe and He-Man toys of Tony's (the thief-turned-friend), their dying batteries sending their spidery legs creaking over the floor and wondering just what was supposed to be fun about them. I remember a particularly nasty car crash right in front of my house. I remember the first time I ate a fruit roll-up. I remember building things out of Legos, some of which I still own.

I remember a lone cardinal perched brilliantly red in a pine tree in the dead of winter. I remember gleefully mowing down giant mushroom growths in the front yard. I remember sneaking the occasional quarter to put in the Ms. Pac-Man machine in Morris's Market a few blocks up the street, making up stories to my mother about how eggs were getting more expensive. She only called me out once on it, and even then, there was a weary kindness behind her righteous anger. We needed the money, but I was her favorite. And I still am.

I remember Joey, Bice, and Aaron, all classmates of mine. Joey had an amazing singing voice, and his father drove an ancient Ford station wagon. Bice was named for the US's Bicentennial year in which she was born, and had a tendency to flash her (white) panties to the classroom, much to Sister Marie's dismay. Once, I "took" Bice to a ballgame. It was the closest I had to a girlfriend or indeed, a date, until my sophomore year in college.

Aaron was a particularly imaginative kid who was the first to intentionally mangle my name. Salmon, he called me. His vivid imagination stood in stark contrast to my apparent lack of one; though I now understand that it was a side-effect of the mask I wore; oh, I had one then just as I do now, but letting it out would have been revealing, so instead I sort of froze every time I had to do something creative. I didn't know how I was supposed to act or do, at least until I was able to start copying what I saw others around me doing, or figure out what "they" wanted or expected.

But even with that semi-stifled creativity, at least there was still some, and there was a genuinely encouraging environment. If only it lasted...

A week after my ninth birthday, and just over five years after we'd arrived in Ohio, my family returned to the Middle East, this time to the birthplace of their adopted religion, Saudi Arabia. Everything in my life was turned upside-down. But as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

But that... is a story for another time.

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