Eden My Pashtun Rabbi

A Jew's Search for Truth, Meaning, And Hope in the Muslim World
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5439-3156-3
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 344 Seiten

On the cusp of Ramadan, as the hot August sun was beginning its evening descent ushering in the Holy Month, David Eden, the newly hired 'journalist expert' at United Arab Emirates University, stood on the side of the deserted road in downtown Al Ain dripping sweat and hopelessly trying to hail a taxi. As he cursed his circumstance and was about to give up, a battered Corolla pulled to the curb. Sometimes a chance encounter can change your life forever. Rarely is it with someone so different and from such a dissimilar world. Even scarcer still is when it touches your heart and soul, and becomes weaved into your life's fabric. But that's what happened when an expat Pashtun taxi driver from North Waziristan picked up an expat American Jewish journalist the evening before his first class. Could it be insha'Allah, 'God's will,' that brought these two disparate souls together? Or was it beshert, 'Destined to be?' And if that was the case, 'Who' destined it? ' My Pashtun Rabbi' chronicles David Eden's time as the 'journalism expert' at UAE University during the 2008-2009 school year as the world's economy collapsed and war erupted in the Middle East. What's more, David's Jewish identity was unknown to his students, faculty, and nearly everybody. What would happen when they found out? How would the fact he was Jewish effect his relationships with his students and friends as the truth is revealed? That's the heart of 'My Pashtun Rabbi' as David Eden takes you inside his classes, introduces his students, befriends a prominent Emirati family, and goes on adventures, including a camel ranch, the world's richest horse race, a labor camp and a journey into the heart of Yemen. He went to 'see for himself' to better understand the relationship between Jews and Muslims and make up his own mind. And he did.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Eden, David

Leseproben

CHAPTER 2 Rule Number One After our fifth or sixth consecutive wade through the buffet at Arabesque, enjoyable but increasingly monotonous, Tony and I decided to make a run for it. Brian lent us his Mitsubishi Lancer and we ventured out in search of booze. With Ramadan and the school year fast approaching, and with the prices at the Horse & Jockey Club burning holes in our wallets, we needed relief. Tony took the wheel. Moraig had mentioned two options: Spinney’s, across town, and an anonymous store behind the Hilton. Further intel revealed the second was near the dormitories for the hotel’s foreign staff. A gaggle of South Asians hanging out near what looked like dormitories suggested we’d navigated unerringly. The Mitsubishi deftly slotted into a space between a Land Cruiser and Range Rover, both with opaque tinted windows; we peered out at the single-story cinderblock building. It was, indeed, anonymous. No sign betrayed the establishment’s name or purpose. The two metal doors were marked simply “Entrance” and “Exit” in English. Another promising indication—anyone selling alcohol here would engage customers in the expats’ lingua franca. “Exit” swung open. Caught in the fluorescent light flooding through, we probably looked like a couple perps sizing up a prospect for armed robbery. Or cops on stakeout. I preferred the outlaw feeling. It fit Tony, too. Over our first week in the country, I’d learned this much about my accomplice. Originally a “Bugle boy” from Bugle, Cornwall, he immigrated to Australia after a stint in the Merchant Marine. At 17, he left Cornwall and had circumnavigated the world several times, with a stopover in Vietnam in the 1960s, ending up in Brisbane. He was a professional rally driver and enjoyed a profitable career in energy, chiefly oil, but chucked it all to get a PhD and teach, at half his former pay. “I’m glad I did it. Starting a doctorate in your forties is insane, but I don’t miss the rest.” Tony was a professor of something called “management information technology,” who at 60 had been “made redundant.” After seven years at Queensland U. of Technology, winning several teaching awards, he was one of the casualties when QUT gutted its faculty. With Australia’s university system in a state of general upheaval, Tony saw his best option in signing on at UAEU’s Business School. It was, he said with a determined tone of neutrality, a job. Though my son’s exploits were a favorite topic, Tony never mentioned children. He’d been married, too, less than a year, and following the divorce he and his ex-wife had lived together for two decades. For years I’d told myself, and more recently found myself telling Max, struggling to find his niche at college: “All you need in life is one other person to share your foxhole. Sometimes you share it for life, other times for a year, a day, an hour—however long it takes to get through a moment of truth.” Tony was living up to the sense of him I’d gotten the moment he strode into the Jebel Hafeet Room. Here’s a guy who’d make a good foxhole buddy. He’d had practice at what I needed to get started on—seeing a future where none was apparent. Clambering out of the Mitsubishi, we stood aside to allow two shop workers, South Asian, to lug four cases of liquor down the concrete steps. They proceeded to the Land Cruiser, raised the liftback and stowed the goods. The SUV’s window dropped a few inches and I caught a glimpse of a white guthra as a hand reached out to hand the worker a wad of dirhams. “I’d say we’ve found the place,” Tony said. “Insha’allah,” I offered. Invoking God’s will might still be in order, as we’d yet to step inside. There was the issue of a police permit. I eyed the uninviting building. “So, what if we get carded?” “Carded?” Tony asked. Right—he’d be thinking I was talking about a soccer match. “Asked to present our documents. The permit Moraig told us about with her chipper ‘You’ll see!’” “Ah! Right. No time to visit the police now! So, follow Rule Number One.” We stepped through “Enter” to find ourselves in an establishment that could hardly exist elsewhere in the Arab world. A floor-to-ceiling room filled full of alcohol. One wall was a display of vodka, the bottom shelf warehousing 12-dirham liters of Cyrillic-labeled Russian and Indian jet fuel, the top tiers stocked with Grey Goose, Belvedere, Chopin, Absolut, Stolichnaya, Russian Standard, Finlandia, Smirnoff, and more, for 80 to 140 dirhams a liter. Absolut was on special: 90 dirhams for two one-liter bottles. I divided these prices by 3.67, the exchange rate having already been imprinted on my cerebral cortex. Yep, much better deals than at the state store back home. A few boxes of Johnny Walker Blue, selling for a bit more than 500, dominated the top of the whiskey wall. Shelves below were stocked with JW’s green, black and red labels, Dewar’s, Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, Ballantine’s, Jack Daniels, Wild Turkey, Four Roses, Canadian Club, Bushmills, and 12-year-old Chivas Regal on special for 72 dirhams. Indian scotches—Bagpiper Gold, McDowell’s Green Label, MaQintosh—starting at 9 dirhams a bottle—filled the lower depths. “Tony,” I said. “Isn’t Indian Scotch an oxymoron?” “Nasty stuff, David. One of the more heinous crimes of the British Empire.” “The Blue’s half the price it goes for in Cleveland,” I observed. “No taxes here. After all, what self-respecting government would tax a product that is officially not sold inside its domain? They needn’t keep the prices low for us. We’d pay anything!” “And, as you have noted, Muslims don’t drink,” I said, smirking, “like Jews don’t eat bacon.” Tony rolled his eyes. “You saw the parking lot. Muslims don’t drink except the ones that do. I hear that Saudi’s consume more Scotch per capita than any people on earth.” He turned away. “I’m going to check out the gin.” I placed two bottles of Chivas and one of Martel V.S. on the counter and coolly laid a 200-dirham note beside them. Tony stepped up behind me with a Gordon’s gin and an Australian Chardonnay. At the register, a pudgy Indian with thick salt-and-pepper hair and matching moustache rang up my purchase, picked up the money, looked at me, and asked, “Do you have a permit?” “Rule Number One,” Tony murmured, closed-mouthed, the ventriloquist to my dummy. I enunciated slowly. “I don’t. Is that a problem?” The vendor looked me up and down. “No problem.” He pushed a button, opening the cash drawer. “I am supposed to ask, however. So I do.” A believer in Rule Number One himself. Back at the car Tony plopped his two black-bagged bottles in the back. I lowered my three to the floor between my feet and said, “When we walk into the Intercon, everyone will know what’s inside.” “Indeed,” Tony answered. “And our colleagues among the freshman faculty will be jealous because they’re too timid to venture out to find this place. We, however, will have a fine run of it.” As he backed out, a white BMW 750i, its windows opaque, pulled in. From a tiny spot of shade in front of their dormitory, the cluster of Hilton workers watched the parade of sin buyers in their overbearing vehicles. Did they know the people inside paid more for a bottle of sin than they earned in a week, maybe even a month? Were they even allowed inside the store? At the Intercon, once we’d delivered the keys and the Martell to Brian, Tony joined me in my room. He set up his bar on the balcony’s low bamboo table, while I filled the ice bucket. A hot breeze wafted over us as we settled into the two wicker chairs. In the pool a lone couple sat at the swim-up bar. Over Tony’s shoulder, through the sliding door, BBC World, though on mute, shouted ominous, flashing-red graphics of the nose-diving financial markets. Had I known what was looming, I would have pulled everything out of the markets, chiefly that life-altering settlement from the TV station. I naively thought I’d always have that, and the illusion made my situation feel different from Tony’s and my other UAEU colleagues. I had a cushion, an escape hatch. The job here was, for many, a one-and-only option. Within weeks the collapse of Lehman Brothers would be followed by cascading dominoes and havoc in the world’s financial system, what would become known as The Great Recession, and my sense of invulnerability would be shaken. “Gin or scotch?” Tony asked, Chivas in one hand, Gordon’s in the other. I pointed to the first. “Can’t stand gin.” I chuckled. “Back home I rarely drink.” “So you’ve said. Each time you’ve ordered a beer, if memory serves.” He produced a scowl, and a grave look. “There’s no back home for the moment, young David. This is your home now.” He had a point. But what was this “young David” crap he was laying on me since we’d gone on our booze run? I’d take the epithet as a token of camaraderie, along with his...