the academic equivalent of a blonde joke

I had a creative writing professor who said that, years ago, he vowed not to tell the same story twice. The result? A single story — especially one pregnant with didactic potential — gave birth to a thousand permutations. His personal history became a coloring book of sorts, with fixed outlines and infinite possibilities. The narration varied from one telling to the next so much so that, he admit, he found it impossible to strip away the decorations without tearing at the Christmas tree. (Yeah. Pregnancy, coloring books and Christmas trees. It’s like metaphors on crack.)

Then I had a part-Irish professor who, I suspect, endlessly repeated his stories and never got caught. The trick was he’d tell it to you conspiratorially, like it was a state secret, but then go on to circulate it among the student body, like a bee among flowers. His anecdotes, for the most part, were meant to bring a moment’s cheer to our otherwise humdrum, caffeinated, midterm-infested college lives.

On one of many dreary Monday mornings, our paths crossed in the mail room and, as we sifted through our respective piles of college announcements and invitations, he shared with me this gem:

“So I see a young man at the library, a student from [insert one of Scripps' sister-colleges]. At the circulation desk he tells the librarian, ‘I need a play by Shakespeare.’ So she asks, ‘Which one?’ And the student answers [a dramatic pause, flipping through envelopes] ‘William.’”

The professor raises his eyebrows, as if reliving his astonishment. He is, after all, a British-accented Oxford-trained professor of linguistics. (The unlucky college kid didn’t know just how unlucky he was.)

Still, thanks to this tale of absentmindedness (or shall I say absent mindedness?), the careworn sleep-deprived mask cracked into little clay bits and fell from my face. And the English major in me started up her Monday smug as a bug. (The biology major in me, however, was still down in the dumps because, if there were a stupid-biology-student joke, the stupid biology student would be me.)

urban illiteracy

It was days after I’d heard about the Fulbright. I was at a Board of Trustees retreat, representing Scripps students as the outgoing president of the student body. I’d met fairly often with our affable trustees, and so had made many friends among them.

As we waited for lunch, I spoke with the husband of a trustee — a graduate of a men’s college. (If women’s colleges are becoming an endangered species, men’s colleges are all but extinct.) His posture and haircut resisted the descriptors of graying years and suggested the dashing military man he once was.

His arms were crossed as if he were at once confident among and indifferent about his company. He also had a way of making small talk without looking at me at all, and tipping his head slightly in my direction to hear what I had to say. Every generation has its prejudices, I told myself, and the prejudices surrounding my hijab (headscarf) were fresher than others.

As if addressing the bushes before him, he asked me the formidable question college seniors begrudgingly attract. “What are you doing next year?” Lucky for me, I had an answer.

“I’m going to be abroad.”

He laughed. Oh he laughed. And I turned red. And the female trustees with me sort of frowned at him and looked away. And I didn’t understand. Between laughs and still without looking at me, he tried to explain something about enunciation, but I was confused and my defenses were up.

Back in the safety of my dorm, I looked up “broad” in an online dictionary and, to my heart’s satisfaction, found nothing to laugh about, unless broad rivers and broad shoulders are funny. Then I hit up the Urban Dictionary and, lo and behold, there it was. “Word for a woman. Less respectable than lady but much more respectable than bitch.” Excellent. At least he had a little fun at my expense, right? I hated myself a little.

Later, when I was relating the story to my brother, he too laughed. And laughed. He’s usually the one who alerts me to my insouciant use of SAT words. This time, however, he raised his straight eyebrows in amusement. “You don’t know what a broad is?” He shook his head and, without luck, tried to repress a smile. “Yeah, that’s bad.”

There are more words in the heavens and earth, Tamatim, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

we few, we happy few

It’s not St. Crispin’s Day, I’m not at war, and (much as I wish I were) I’m not Shakespeare’s Henry V. Still, I cannot help but think: “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers (and sisters).”

During the Fulbright orientation in D.C., I met a hijabi Fulbrighter, A, among a myriad of other beyond-awesome people. As she and I and other newly met girlfriends strolled through our nation’s capital, we were accosted right and left — in the best possible way.

For example, the Muslim hotel concierge asked us about our countries of origin. On the street, a woman in hijab and salwar kameez requested directions. (We were just an ounce less clueless than she was.) Then, as we waited for the crosswalk, we witnessed a taxi driver make a perilous turn, with hands and face poking out of his window — all in order to tell us assalamu alaikum, peace be unto you.

One of our friends, K, regarded us quizzically after one of these perilous hi-and-runs. So we explained that salams were greetings of peace, an etiquette of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). “Do you… like that?” she asked hesitantly. I completely understood where she was coming from. It looked like were being tokenized, that random passersby were making assumptions about our religious affiliation simply based on our appearance. And yet A and I couldn’t repress our smiles. “Do we like it? We love it!”

Nothing kicks estrangement out the window like a stranger’s salam. It’s like a “welcome to my ‘hood” sign. It’s like an “if you need any help, I’m here” signal. (Salam with a smile is like an In-N-Out burger with onions. Yes, it’s that good.)

Unfortunately, I realized that I only experience the euphoric hallucinogenic effects of salams where Muslims are scarce. Why, you ask? Because, ironically, where Muslims are ubiquitous, salams are harder to come by.

Take, for example, Egypt.

Cairo alone has a 7 million+ Muslim-majority population (which, by the way, outnumbers the entire population of its Sahara-plagued neighbor, Libya.) If Muslim residents of Cairo were to say salam every time they came across a fellow Muslim — well, they’d do little else.

As a guest of Egypt last summer, however, I didn’t know that. It was my first trip to a Muslim-majority country — correction, to any country outside the U.S. As I ventured with Baba onto new territory, I told myself I was going to be educated, thoughtful, attentive. What I succeeded in being, however, was naive.

After committing several touristy foibles at the airport (like taking pictures of the “Enter [Egypt] in Peace” banner — an allusion to a verse in the Qur’an), I militantly guarded my suitcases as Baba tried to retrieve a lost bag. As hijabi janitors passed by in their Guantanamo-like orange jumpsuits, I said my salams. They looked at each other, amused, but humored me nonetheless. I quickly noticed that no one — I mean, no one was saying salam.

Oh, I thought to myself. This is what it must feel like to be in places like Dearborn, Michigan, where seeing Muslims is like breathing air — taken for granted. I’ve heard about places like that, where a Muslim will meet a Muslim and look upon her with an indifferent eye. (Who but me goes to Cairo to learn about Dearborn? That’s like going to the sea to study the little pool of rainwater in your backyard.)

That made me think — yes, as a hijabi, I do wear a costume that, on most days, wins me gawking looks at the local Albertsons or no word of acknowledgement from the librarian. And yet, a single comical salam out of a taxi cab window makes this sore thumb a little proud to stick out.