Telling Stories

As part of the AJWS World Partners Fellowship, we are asked to complete periodic small writing assignments. The last assignment was a series of questions related to Passover -- we could pick one, and post our answer on a group website. Shlayma and I both answered the same question, and I asked her permission to post both answers, because her words resonate with many of the thoughts spinning through my head these days. Myla answered a different question -- which also reflects on many of our shared thoughts and experiences -- and I've added her thoughts below.

Question:

While the Exodus was happening, Moses instructed the Children of Israel in how they would later tell the story of the Exodus to their children and to future generations. This consciousness of the significance of the experience and projection about how, in the future, to tell the story, relates to your experience as a WP fellow. What consciousness do you have about the significance of your experience? How do you imagine this experience will shape your identity and what stories will you tell about it?

My Response:

i. There are stories that people don’t want to hear, and then there are the stories that I don’t want to tell.

Recently, I posted a blog article about a weekend trip we took to Goa for Shlayma’s birthday – and, after months of very little feedback from my (mostly) American audience, received a slew of compliments on my writing, my sharing, my adventuring. At first, I wanted to blame my readers for responding to the peace, the ease of the story when they have commented very little on stories of confusion and conflicting values… but I have also started to realize that I was able to write clearly about Goa for the very same reasons I was taking my readers to task. Goa was nothing if not easy and escapist, which places writing about Goa in precisely that same category. For two weeks, I have been trying to write about the Pesach weekend I spent in Dharamsala with Shlayma, a host of wandering Jews, and a community of exiled Tibetan monks, but the words have refused to come. How do I do justice to the images of monks murdered by Chinese police just last month, images that are hung across every temple and holy site? How do I explain the selfish motives that drove me into the mountains, the peace I found from watching others struggle? The simple answer, of course, is that I can’t, and that I’ll write the story soon despite all that, and shrug at the holes in the narrative and the injustice at the world, and get back to writing grants. And the simple answer, unfortunately, is usually the one that makes it out into the world.

ii. We.

All of my stories about India start with ‘we.’ Never in my life as my story been so completely intertwined with the stories of others. I think of the Passover questions – how is this night different from all other nights? – and I think that this journey is different from all other journeys because it is so completely shared, shared with Myla and Shlayma, and shared with the billion plus souls breathing in the industrializing pollution and breathing out the endless singing syllables that make up the polyglot beauty of India.

iii.

For me, being in India has been very much about story-telling. The moment I began to feel comfortable here was the moment I began to write about my experiences – and by writing, of course, to process them. It has become a way to place a few filters on the unremitting waves of impressions I’ve felt in this country, and to play around with a few details in order to find some more coherent sense of patterns in the morass. I don’t know which stories I will tell at home, and at this point, I’m not interested in guessing. All I ask from the stories that form in my mind is just that – that they continue to form, to be told, to make it out of my head and into the world.

Shlayma's Response:

It is always unsettling to me when people back home say how much I inspire them by being here. From my perspective, my time here has been largely selfish and ultimately useless. I try to demystify the exoticism of doing time in India, but to them my mere presence here is a tremendous sacrifice for a greater cause. I guess I am surrendering to some extent, because I’ve given up a lot—mostly my egotistical pride around doing “selfless” service. Being here, amidst many material discomforts and disturbing realities, has been a very humbling experience. As a result, I’ve questioned the motives that drove me to come in the first place, and whether my presence here has had even the smallest benefit. Nevertheless, however critical I am about the effectiveness of long-term international service work, the struggle to make sense of my global social responsibility has meant something to those that have not chosen to engage with these questions in the same way. For many of my friends and family, my choice to be here challenges them to think about their own choices, and my stories move them to become informed about injustices in the world. While I have no idea how this experience will shape my identity or what value it will have in the future, I know that at this moment in time living in India, working at an HIV/AIDS NGO and celebrating Passover seder in the mountains with Tibetan exiles is a story in the making—one that is inspiring others to think and act in ways that will hopefully shape a better world.

Myla's Question and Response:

Pesach is the holiday of freedom. The haggadah includes the following instruction: In every generation, each person should view him/herself as if s/he personally left Egypt. Since we say this every year at the Seder, the implication is that not only does it happen every generation, but that every year we should experience liberation. Thinking about your experience as a WP fellow, in what ways are you freer than you were last year? In what ways are you less free? What impact will leaving India and this experience have on your level of freedom—will you be more free to have left, or less free because of the memory of the experience?

I think there are some practical and concrete limitations to freedom. If one does not have food, or access to resources or work that can get them food, it is likely they cannot be free – free from starvation, stress, pain. However, on a somewhat abstract philosophical level, I do think that freedom in some ways is a frame of mind, a perception of one's circumstances. Being in India has made me see the multitude of freedoms that I enjoy that I was less, if at all, aware of before coming to a developing country. Many of the freedoms I always had, but didn't recognize as such.

I am free to demand, as a voting citizen, member of the press, or otherwise, that a corrupt government official resign. In India, such a demand may result in a murder. I can vote in America for whoever I want! In Florida people have been turned away for minor offenses, such as being black, but for the most part US citizens can vote. In Pakastan and Nepal's elections, people are afraid to leave their house during voting because of violence and bombings that may occur, something I have never had to worry about when voting. I have always been extremely critical of the American government, but it is perhaps important to keep a perspective of relativity and recognize that the frustration I feel at various things in my government does not measure to much in comparison with the atrocities committed by some governments in other parts of the world.

My worth as a person is not "more" than someone else's worth. I am not better than other people. And yet, I have many people who would give me money or help if I asked for or needed it. There are people who are invested in me and would pay for hospital bills if I got sick, food if I was hungry, or education if I was curious – I am also fortunate to have health insurance. This doesn't make me worth more than the person I see begging for money on the traffic junction corner as the motions towards the sleeper baby in her arms... but it perhaps does make me more free. I can ask for money if I am in need, large sums of money, and receive this. She can't. I am confident that I will be able to provide for my family one day, almost irrespective of the circumstances. She can't. I am free to know that, most probably, I will survive barring some freak accident, and so will my children. She isn't.

I am not rich in my country; but relatively, and by virtue of being able to be able to travel abroad, and even by virtue of having white skin, I am rich. Money aside, I am rich in culture and experience and opportunity. I can go to most countries in the world on my passport. I can volunteer and "help" others just because I want to; because I feel motivated to help others, and see the world while I'm at it. How perfectly selfish.

I am free to dress, be, and love who I want, for the most part. I am free to have sex with who I want, and to have sex at all. I am free to say no to sex, and take action against anyone who tries to violate that right. If I am raped or if my spouse dies, I do not know with almost complete certainty that I can never remarry. Fear of stigma, inability to remarry, or of being murdered are not obstacles for me for leaving a bad relationship/marriage. While statistically and realistically I do naturally fear domestic violence in my country for myself and those I love, I know that I would have support of my family and friends if I ever was in an abusive situation and tried to leave. I wouldn't be forced to move back in with my parents and be shunned from society; I would be allowed and welcome to move back in with my parents, if I needed, and would likely praised and admired for my strength in leaving an abusive partner. My family won't be insulted if they have no say in my chosen life partner, and I don't have to fear that they will disown me if I choose someone they don't approve of. I don't have to fear that I will be unable to marry because my parents cannot provide a significant dowry, and I don't have to fear being murdered for not giving enough dowry. While starting a family may mean I will have obstacles to pursuing higher education, it does not mean that I will be unable to do so, or discouraged from doing so. If I marry I am not voiceless in the decision of where I will live, and with whom (e.g. moving into my in-laws' home, wherever that happens to be).

I would say that the recognition of my own freedom, which I did nothing special to deserve, burdens me, and also makes me grateful for my undeserved circumstances. I still have issues with my country and its government and women's rights in my culture, but in comparison they seem relatively tame to the issues so many women face in India. So, in response to the question, I think I will return to the USA to feel that I am much freer as an individual than I had realized before now, and hopefully this understanding of relative freedom, or freedom in relation to others that I feel undeserving of yet thankful for, will help me to be a better person and do my part to work for equality and towards social justice. If I take literally the assertion that I personally have left slavery in Egypt, then surely I have come a long way. My hope is that this new perspective of freedom, and the memory and somewhat limited understanding of the vast inequality of freedom in the world, will help drive my motivation to effect change.