ktravula – a travelogue!

Believing, at the Synagogue

On Friday, I found myself in a Synagogue, wearing a yarmulke, holding a siddur, browsing a Talmud, and reading the Torah in original Hebrew. This doesn’t happen to me every day. It has in fact never happened before. A few minutes earlier, I had just concluded a tour of the city’s biggest Cathedral, and hours earlier had driven the current Fulbright scholar, teacher of Arabic to a mosque for his Friday prayers. All I knew about the Jewish faith was from the few books I’d read, the few movies I’d seen, and the few conversations I’ve had with people who should know and those who shouldn’t, and the Bible.

The bible tells more, of course, and then less. The bible has Jesus, the apostles, the miracles, the disciples and the revelation. But, as I’ve learnt, one can’t be a good practitioner of Judaism by just reading the Bible. It just doesn’t say as much as necessary. That’s where the Talmud comes in. It’s the Torah explained, and this comes in handy especially since people of the Jewish faith don’t believe in Jesus, his divinity or his impending return. He’s just one guy that passed through the world like any other person. The Torah is just another word for the five books of Moses, “the entirety of Judaism’s founding legal and ethicalreligious texts.” And oh, the Torah is not a book. It’s a scroll, a large one, and everything on it is hand-written, in Hebrew (and I think in Aramaic as well). Whoever wrote this one I saw has a very good and regulated handwriting.

It was equally fortuitous that the synagogue visited was not an orthodox one, because, as I found out, the beautiful singing and instrumentation that got me most impressed by the Shabbat service is not a common part of Jewish Shabbats. It’s found only in liberal synagogues. What’s more, it had a woman lead. I didn’t verify if she was the woman rabbi or just the choir/singing leader. All I remember was being transported into realms of believing as she sang, and strummed the guitar to accompaniment of another guitar and a fiddle. The whole service itself was half singing and half reciting, much like a Catholic mass (minus the singing and instrumentation).

The Shabbat (sabbath) starts at Friday evenings and ends about 25 hours later. During this period – commanded by God to be kept holy by all believers – Jews are not expected to use fire, go to work or use electricity. It is for this reason that the only picture I took while in the service was of the siddur, and was my last while in the premises, in respect of the preference of the worshipers. While we were in the Synagogue library, I had to put on the light, and put it off later too. Those laws are strictly respected. If I would ever return to another one of those Shabbat services, it would most likely be because of the music, and the whole attitude of homeliness that one feels while there, even though – amidst a room full of people of a different race and skin colour, it is not hard to be spotted as a wandering stranger. What made up for that were the smiles and warmth of the people who all wanted to know about us and where we came from.

It was surely a fun time, definitely enlightening, as the five other students I went with confirmed. “Shabbat Shalom,” we said.

Meanderings

The task of making comparisons between states and towns along the roads to the North of Nigeria would soon inevitably fall on anyone undertaking a task of going around the country – Africa’s largest by population. Are there much differences in population, order, electricity, internet access, and a general sense of well-being? Are we that much different after all no matter where we choose to live, or do we differ only because we speak different languages or pray to a different invisible man than the other person? The answers are not that difficult if only we apply ourselves to discovering it.

The young man in whose house I slept for two days in Kaduna finished from the University in Zaria in 2005 and served in the same year in Edo State. I had never met or spoken with him until that night when I showed up at his door with another friend and asked to stay overnight for the period of my footloose tour of his state. The young man at the motor park who negotiated by bike ride with the hausa-speaking rider within my first five minutes of arriving in the state was of the same breed. Oblivious of the fact that we had indeed been in the same car through the ride from Abuja to Kaduna and never haven spoken even once, he gladly got me towards the right direction, all for a handshake, “thank you” and a goodbye smile. Human goodness, I say.

In countless meanderings around places around the world, I have encountered the same kind of optimism and open-heartedness even from random strangers, and it has never ceased to amaze, and to delight. If only we could all live together as one, all the days of the year. While eating lunch yesterday and getting prepared to head out, there was the news flash on television that nine (or ten, depending on who you ask) people have again been killed in a fresh case of violence in the city of Jos. Over what? Religion?

Of all the things that should cause violence, shouldn’t religion in a sane world be the least relevant, especially since none of us is really sure? But what do we have? Moslems pray to Allah to help them destroy their enemies, and sometimes even lend him a hand. Christians sometimes do the same, praying for God’s help to vanquish the unbelievers. To paraphrase George Carlin, one of these groups would be fucking disappointed. Could it be… everyone? Is love for neighbour so hard to conjur in a world where we have succeeded in dominating nature and pretty much everything else?

Forgive my rant, all I wanted to say was that I love what I see in most of everywhere I have been around the country. Kaduna reminds me of Ibadan, but not in every way. Ibadan is too rowdy, and so is Kaduna city, with rickety buses and loud bus conductors who speak only the local language. But as far as scerenity is concerned, Ibadan has much much less open land areas along the highways than Kaduna does, and politically, my city seems far less mature. End of rant.

On Freedom

An interesting perspective on Facebook’s “double standards,” religion, Islam, tolerance, and freedom of speech. What do you think?

To Draw or Not to Draw Mohammed.

On That Nigerian Guy

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a 23 year old man from a comfortable home in Northern Nigeria who attends a university in the United Kingdom. He’s now notorious for trying to denotate an explosive device on a plane. I have tried not to talk about him before now, but who am I kidding? It’s in the news on every station and the word “Nigeria” pops up every time. Even on twitter, the words “Nigeria” and “Nigerians” have now become trending topics. By now we know that his father is a Nigerian banker who had warned the US about three weeks ago about his son’s suspicious affiliations. Well, three weeks ago, the US was busy debating the Tiger Woods story to pay attention to an errant Nigerian…

On a more serious note, that idiot from Katsina state has given the rest of us a bad name, as if we didn’t have enough troubles of our own already. Think of how many people are now subject to more restrictions because of a foolish act by one unthinking idiot. I’m happy that I am not travelling to anywhere soon, but I don’t envy those who are, and who are from Nigeria. I’m disgusted enough with having to remove my shoes, jacket, sweater, and even belt every time I try to board a plane. Now, they’d probably want to search my anus as well for firecrackers since I’m from a country whose name is now popping up now and then beside the word “terrorism”. For many Americans, it must be hard to see us in any other light now, except the people from whose country the terrorist came from. On the bright side, this takes the shine of “Nigerian Internet Scam”, if only for a minute. Heck, it even takes the shine off the death of South Africa’s anti-apatheid writer, Dennis Brutus, who died on the 26th December. Very sad indeed. (Update: another Nigerian passenger was arrested today Sunday the 27th because he spent one hour in the airplane bathroom on a similar flight, and was “verbally disruptive” – read Nigerian “uppity” – when questioned.)

Since the story broke, I’ve been trying to look on the bright side, trying to find the laughable side to it. Yesterday, I started looking for verses in Nostradamus’s predictions that mentioned “Nigerian”, “Christmas” and “terrorism” in the same sentence. No luck. I hope that soon, my search engine will come up with something I could use. For now, my hope is that if or when the suspected “Nigerian terrorist” is eventually convicted, he will be taken straight to Guantanamo to have a taste of the American countryside he so desperately desires. He can do with himself over there whatever he wants. Only for his sake, I will be petitioning the President Obama to keep open that detention facility indefinitely. We do not want the fool in any prison in Illinois like the president is planning for other Guantanamo inmates, and I’m pretty sure that they do not want him in Nigeria any time soon as well. Don’t take my word for it, check out this Facebook Group that has been set up primarily to throw the disgraceful Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab under the bus, virtually, since – the horror of horrors – we are not able to do it physically.

At age 23, I was struggling to get a University degree rather than of playing around with explosive firecrackers. At age 23, I’d never even been on a plane before. Well, there’s a lot you can do if you’re a spoilt kid with a privileged background. Who cares for common sense when you can easily and effortlessly disgrace your family and country with one thoughtless act of jackassery in a foreign country?

D is for Dogma

It began as a mild argument about whether one could precede every sentence with “The bible said…” and where I stood was “Not every part of the bible can be quoted as being representative of Christianity, spirituality, or the mind of God”. The person who immediately became my opponent was none other than (Let’s call him X), my fellow Fulbright colleague (also sometimes known, mostly as “pastor”).

His his first response was “You are wrong! You can start EVERY quote from the bible with “The bible said” because ALL the words in the bible are words from God.” Now this argument is very suspect, and never fails to amaze and amuse me because I am familiar with the bible as a collection of texts that include not only historical accounts, prophesies, fables and inspirational writings, but also poetry and personal letters. As a religious book, it is a document that holds the faith of the followers, but as text, it is also a collection of words on which a certain authority has been stamped by the church as representative of the faith. So I said to him, let me show you a part of the Songs of Solomon, I think it was Chapter 4 vs 5:

“The bible says – to use your word – ‘Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.’ Right?”

“Oh no,” he responds, jumping with all visible agitation, “the Songs of Solomon are not as carnal as you have read it. They are a representative of the love of God to the church.”

What?

“You wouldn’t know,” he continued. “you are not a spiritual person. You are only trying to use your knowledge of books to analyse spiritual things. The Songs of Solomon are God’s message to the church.”

I have heard this argument before, and I like the rationalization given to portray the lyrics of Solomon’s love poems are possessing a higher import beyond their face value. But they are just words. They are seductive lines written by a rich and content king to many of his almost uncountable number of wives and mistresses. They definitely are the least representative of the mind of God to man. I could not imagine Jesus being flattered by reference to women’s breasts as representative of his thoughts towards mankind. No no. So, I told my friend that, and he was really furious. He perspired heavily, shouted, and jumped around so much that with a little push, I feared that he could have fallen down right there.

The argument escalated in pitch and intensity, in the open lobby of the Hyatt Hotel where the four of us stood idling away before our proposed excursion around the city. The more everyone intervened with a point that seemed to punch a hole in our friend’s righteous argument, the more livid he became, shouting this time at anyone “How would you all know? You are not born again. I know because I am. It is a spiritual thing…” And then he added “Everything in the bible is the word of God to us, and I believe them all.”

Here, I asked “Everything in the bible? Even the part that says you shouldn’t eat pork, in the old testament?”

Here he hedges a little, unable to find a right answer, and says that “that’s in the Old Testamant. I will not argue with you. You are not born again. You cannot understand the spiritual things of the bible.” He was livid. The argument took turns and angles, until he eventually stormed out of the hotel to get some air, but mostly to avoid more opportunities to explain why he should be trusted as an authority on a subject that is obviously not mainly spiritual, but practical. We were all supposed to be scholars, free of the clutches of dogma, but it was a moment of enlightenment to discover that we were not all. And it was sad. Here was a particular case of the first ill: “I’m right, you’re wrong” quickly escalating (and degenerating, I should add) to the ignorant condescension of “I’m righteous, you’re dumb.” The last and usually brutal stage of such unchecked arrogance is, as Nigerian Nobel Laureatte Wole Soyinka puts it clearly: “I’m right, you’re dead!” If we had given to it, who knows how physical the argument could have become (between us two friends no less) on that floor of the Hyatt Regency.

No, not money, fanaticism is sometimes the root of all evils.

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