COVER -> MY GLASS HOUSE
It was romance as a romantic like myself would want it. Oum al-Khalsoum singing on the little transistor radio the Captain owned, his children placing flakes of hashish on our "hubbly bubbly" pipe, the Captain beating a skin drum, me at the tiller with the Nile breeze blowing across my face looking at naked children playing in the bullrushes along the shore much as they might have done three thousand years earlier...
I remember thinking of Moses' mother pushing him off from such a shore in a reed basket. I wondered if this was much the same scene Antony saw in Cleopatra's barge, or if Alexander took the time to appreciate the beauty of the Nile.
Zamalek island, that haven of lush greenery in the center of the Nile and the city, where many foreign embassies were stationed, was a place I visited often while living in Cairo. My friends, the poet Abdelrahman el-Abnoudi and his film-maker wife, Atiat, lived there.
Like me, they were radicals. Adbelrahman was working on his epic poem from the Hilleleya, now a magnum opus in the Arab world. Atiat was struggling to have her films exhibited in her homeland. I was a callow young writer, the "Bastard Pasha," trying to absorb as much of their culture as I could in the scant year allotted me by the Watson (IBM) Fellowship... and trying to appear mature.
I was only twenty-two, after all.
It was during this fellowship that I interviewed W.E.B. DuBois's widow, Shirley Graham DuBois, and Al-Ahram cartoonist Salah Jahin, met the Abnoudis, talked to the sons of Anwar Sadat, probed into the essense of Egyptian culture with street merchants, soldiers, even prostitutes.
These were things expected of me, I guess, even as a kid.
The Past Intrudes
I think of all of this now because this medium, the Internet, has now put me back in touch with people I knew 30 years ago.It seems that my high school re-union, the 30th, is approaching, and all-of-a-sudden I have had telephone conversations and e-mails with people I have mostly forgotten --- and, if not forgotten, not contacted in all the intervening years.
Some are surprised that I am an Internet Guy today. Others wish to see me in meatspace, a frightening prospect.
Most troubling to me is that I was a BMOC (Big Man on Campus) by default. President of the Student Body, Editor of the student newspaper, Captain of the Debating Team, yatta-yatta-yatta, because of my desperate desire to be accepted.
The Punch-line is that they would never accept me because I was Black in a school that was predominantly white.
SO no matter how accomplished I was, despite the National Merit Scholar award, my sterling academic record, my plays being produced, I was still "the nigger." And lots of my fellow students made it apparent that this was my status. Not good enough because of the color of my skin.
So why, I must ask myself, would I want to go to a reunion with people who denigrated me then, and probably today won't accept that I really was smarter, had more promise, and would never have judged them on such a superficial level as they judged me?
As Tupac has sang, "Raise 'em up!"
This is where the integration paradigm fell apart. No matter how talented you are, how intelligent, how gifted, if you are a minority, you still get dissed. You still are not good enough.... because you are not part of "The Club."
So, yes, I resent the treatment I received from many of my high school classmates, most of whom couldn't hold a candle to me. I resent their arrogance, their hubris, their ignorance. I might still attend their reunion. But I won't consider it mine.
THINGS THAT BOTHER ME THIS WEEK
1. Facing the angst produced by the past.2. Keeping my pledge to see physicians.
3. Needing more time to program the next update of this site.
4. Avoiding looming sexual involvements I hadn't anticipated.
Thanks for coming back this week.
"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod
ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was also a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services.
Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly. His opinions on the Info Age began appearing on MethodFive's HYPER technology newsletter in March. 1999. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000.
Our Editor does listen!