Not on My Bucket List

Chapter 1: New Beginnings As I looked at the profiles on the “mature gay dating” web site, I found myself asking, Why am I doing this? It had been almost a year since my last breakup, and I swore then that I would never again go down the romance road. But you know how it goes when there’s a breakup: all the friends choose sides. And since most of our friends were his friends—well, you get the idea. I needed a new set of friends. I quickly posted a rather vanilla profile: Looking to make new friends, possibly more if the chemistry is there. But you never know. Sometimes you find love when you’re least expecting it. Then I added a few pictures, but nothing too racy. After quickly getting past all the unflattering pictures of naked guys (God, can’t these people preserve at least a little mystery for the first date?), I found a few possibilities. A couple of guys in a nearby town. Another guy in Guatemala. Corresponding with him would be great for practicing my Spanish. Another guy close by who seemed interested in meeting me. But another profile caught my eye. It was different from the others, perhaps more sincere. Looking for the man of my dreams, who will become my husband and with whom I will spend the rest of my life. I am willing to move anywhere in the world. Please be honest, drug and disease free, compassionate, romantic, and moral. If you are not all these qualities, please do not respond. I was about to pass this profile by, when I saw the place this man lived. Algeria! Wow. What was a Muslim man in a country that frowns on homosexuality (to put it mildly) doing on this website? There were no pictures. Probably a wise move on his part. Yet, it must have taken a fair amount of courage to post a profile on this website in a country where emails could be closely monitored. I was somehow drawn to it. While the last couple of words in the profile hardly described me, I wanted to talk to him. Given the current practice of demonizing Muslims in this country, I thought about how much I could learn from a dialogue with him. I read the profile several more times. I couldn’t imagine why I would respond to him. We couldn’t have less in common. He was eighteen years younger than me. I would never have a chance at meeting him. This was not a country where I would ever consider travelling. I looked at the profile again. Fluent in Arabic, French, Spanish, Catalan, and English. Wow. He didn’t seem like your average Middle Easterner. On the excuse that it would be another opportunity to practice my Spanish, I wrote him a short response: We live far apart, but I would enjoy talking to you and learning more about you and your culture. Yes, maybe he could help me to understand the current attitude toward Muslims in America. In any event, it would be educational. A couple of days later I received a response. I liked your profile and your pictures. Yes, I would like to correspond with you. Ask me any question you like about my culture. And I would enjoy hearing about your life in England. I didn’t know the reason he assumed I lived in England, but I knew that I had better set him straight about this right away. It was my impression that Americans weren’t real popular in countries like Algeria. But after I sent him a message informing him that I was American, I received this response: It doesn’t matter to me whether you are British, French, German, Canadian, or American. I am a peaceful man who believes in respect for all people. Please, continue to dialogue with me. I will send you some pictures so that you know a bit more about me. The pictures were, to say the least, the beginnings of my education of what life was like for him. In one picture, he was seated barefoot on the floor of a mosque. In another, dressed in a leather jacket in front of a soccer stadium in Spain. Yet another in Arab attire in his bedroom. A picture of him coaching a children’s soccer game. And yet another, in a bright green swimsuit lounging by a pool. In all of them, the confident, attractive face of a man comfortable in his own skin, in his own culture. So what was he doing on a gay website? I asked him this in our next exchange. You are a Muslim, and you live in a country where homosexuality is probably a crime. How do you reconcile this, live with this? The answer was clear and concise. It is my personal business what I am, how the creator made me. We do not discuss it here. It is taboo. But I know I am gay. I have known for a long time. A few years ago, a marriage was arranged for me. But I eventually had to call it off. I could not go through with it. I am sure some people have come to their own conclusions about me, but they say nothing about it. As I say, it is taboo to discuss it. I tried to wrap my head around how difficult, how hopeless, life must be for him. No wonder he turned to a gay web site. What other means was there for him? I decided to do a little research on Algeria. It was, of course, a French colony from the nineteenth century until 1962. A bitter war for independence ensued in the 1950’s. French policemen were shot on the streets of Algiers, the largest city, situated in the north of the country on the Mediterranean. Battles on the narrow, winding streets of the casbah, the old section of the city. France finally granted independence in 1962, and the country moved toward regaining its Arab heritage and tried to de-emphasize French language and culture. But just thirty years later, a nasty civil war claimed at least 100,000 lives. Entire villages were butchered: men, women, and children, even babies. Most foreigners left; those who didn’t were killed, along with journalists trying to cover the events. It certainly didn’t sound like a country where westerners would be welcome—or safe. Tell me what life is like for you there, I said in my next email. I am currently in my last few semesters for my master’s degree in French. I live in a small city of about 100,000 in the western part of Algeria, on the edge of the Sahara Desert. I am actually much closer to the border with Morocco than I am to the big city of Algiers, which is about a ten-hour drive. My family comes from nomads; that is our heritage. We often go into the desert to camp like our ancestors. There I enjoy climbing sand dunes and playing with the camels and the sheep. Our entire days are spent there searching for water and firewood, as the animals must have water to survive. The temperature there during the day can reach forty degrees Centigrade and above. Wow. That would be 105 Fahrenheit. How do you survive? I answered back. And you play with a camel? I thought they were nasty creatures who spit at you! You just have to know how to handle the camel, he wrote back. And the heat—it is something we are used to, for the most part, although at times it is very hard to deal with. He lived with his family in a small house on the edge of his town. That family included three generations in one house. He sent me pictures of the kitchen, which seemed fairly modern, and of various foods he had prepared: hummus, breads, sweets. He told me that cooking and housekeeping were strictly women’s work in his culture, making me wonder if his love of cooking raised people’s suspicions about him. The function of men in his culture, he said, was providing for the family and the “boom-boom,” as he called it, making babies. The more we corresponded, the more fascinated I became with this glimpse into life in another part of the world. I wanted to know more. Most especially, given the picture of him in the mosque, I wanted to know more about what his religion meant to him. How devout was he? How on earth could he be Muslim and gay? My religion is very important to me, he told me. I pray five times a day. The rules of cleanliness and purity of soul are something I carefully observe. As far as being gay, that is my business, a separate issue entirely. I thought of a friend of mine, a devout Catholic, who was gay, but seemed to overlook the church’s view of this issue. I suppose a Muslim could do the same, though his culture was surely less forgiving. Can you tell me about the five pillars of faith? I asked. That would require a lengthy discussion. I am not sure I could do it adequately in an email. Given your interest in my religion, Mr. Questions, I would suggest that we try to Skype. That would also allow us to actually see and hear each other for the first time. Then you can ask me all the questions you want, Mr. Questions! This was to become his new nickname for me, for a while at least. But Skype? I had never attempted it. I asked the advice of some friends who were savvier on the computer than me, and they told me how to set it up. A time was selected for an upcoming Sunday afternoon. His call came promptly at one P.M. At first, I could not seem to get my computer to answer the call, and it dropped. But he called me again, and this time was successful. I remembered to turn on my camera and found myself staring at the image of a good looking Arab man. He was just a little older than the pictures he had sent me, and perhaps just a few pounds heavier. But still a good looking, distinguished man in his late forties. For a quick moment I just stared at his image, amazed at the marvel of modern technology bringing this man into my home. He smiled. “Hola. Espero que tu estes bien,” he said, Spanish for “Hello, I hope you are well.” “Si, si,” I answered, excited that this was actually happening. “This is so amazing! I am actually looking at you in real time!” He smiled again, more broadly this time. “Yes, it is amazing. I have done it before, several times, and it never ceases to amaze me. When it works, anyway. The internet in my country is rather fragile and there are days when it collapses. We hope the government will do something about that, but so far it hasn’t happened.” I was still so blown away by what was happening that I really couldn’t think what to say to him, though I am sure I had a thousand questions. He took advantage of my hesitation and jumped right in. “What time is it there? I do not know what time zone you are in.” “One in the afternoon.” He raised an eyebrow, then said, “Oh, you mean 13:00.” Ah, yes, they must use military time over there. I would have to remember that. “It is 19:00 here,” he said. That would be seven P.M. Six hours ahead. Probably the same as London and Madrid. “It is already getting dark.” “What was the weather like today?” I asked. “What?” He looked at me quizzically. I reminded myself that his English was very good, but he might not understand some of my words. “El tiempo. No es verano, pero todavia caliente, espero.” (No longer summer, but still warm, I’ll bet.) He smiled that disarming smile again and nodded. “Ah, yes. It is still quite warm here at this time of year, even though the hottest months are over. But it will cool off quite a bit overnight. We are on the edge of the desert, with that kind of climate. Warm or very hot during the day, cool even cold at night during the winter. Today was about thirty. Now it’s down a few degrees from that.” I had dated a guy in Toronto a few years back and had come to learn some of the metric conversion. It had been in the mid-eighties and was still above eighty. “Just below twenty here,” I said. “Rain tonight.” He laughed. Actually it was more of a snort. “Not something we have to worry about here too often,” he said. I wanted him to understand that I appreciated how different his life was from mine. “I’m sure. Do you have enough water there for drinking, cooking, bathing? Are there times of the day there when the supply can’t keep up with the demand?” “We drink only bottled water. The water out of the ground is not safe to drink. It has not been purified like in your western cities. There is not enough for bathing, for the most part. There are public baths. These are not places you go for s*x, as your bath houses. They are places to go to get clean. They are separated for men and women.” I was a bit taken aback that someone living in such a remote location would know so much about my culture. Then again, it was the age of the internet. And he was clearly quite adept at that. “You are a very good looking man,” he said, smiling that smile again. Ah yes, most of my internet pictures had been with sunglasses on. He was seeing what I really looked like for pretty much the first time. I laughed. His charm was getting to me. “You don’t think I’m too old for you? I’ve got a few years on you, you know. You were born in the year I finished high school.” He leaned forward and stared at me with intense brown eyes. There was clearly a great deal of intelligence behind them. “No, I don’t. I have always fantasized about living the rest of my life with my daddy, my husband, my life partner.” Okay, this might be a problem. The website I had used did have that word in it, but it had been the best site to go on as all the rest just seemed to be for hook-ups. But I had never liked that word. In fact, I had always said that if anyone uttered that word in the heated passion of a one-night stand, they would go out the door with their clothes thrown out after them. But I decided to let it go. English, after all, was not his first language. I was sure he was unaware of the negative connotations of the word. We would discuss that at another time. He was still looking at me intently. I was starting to have a few fantasies of my own. Quickly gathering my thoughts, I said, “So you were going to tell me about the five pillars of Islam.” “Yes, Mr. Questions, I will tell you that. Let me think a minute, to be sure I am expressing myself in a way you will understand. “The five pillars of Islam are the framework of Muslim life. The first and most important is the Testimony of Faith. Allah is the one and only God. Muhammad is his prophet. The second is prayer. We pray five times a day, at dawn, mid-day, evening, sunset, and at night. We consider prayer our direct connection to God. In prayer we feel inner happiness, peace, and comfort, that God is pleased with us. The third pillar is Zakat, or sharing with the needy. The fourth is fasting during the month of Ramadan. Ramadan comes once a year, moving backwards one month each year. Fasting means no food or drink, including water, during daylight hours. When Ramadan comes during the winter, when the days are shorter and cooler, it is not too difficult, but when it comes during the summer months when the days are longer and hotter, it is much more difficult. But we do it willingly because our religion is important to us.” “But that could be quite unhealthy not to have water for twelve or fourteen hours when the temperature is thirty or above,” I said, again converting the temperature. “You could pass out, even die. Would Allah want that?” “We have faith that Allah will not let that happen,” he said with great sincerity. “We are used to it. We do it gladly.” I was a little shocked at this. I hadn’t realized the rules on fasting included water. “And the fifth pillar?” I asked. “Pilgrimage to Mecca during one’s lifetime, for those who are able,” he said. “I haven’t gone yet. I would invite you to go with me, but our s****l orientation would be frowned upon, to say the least. We would end up in jail, or worse.” My mind returned to my original thoughts on his situation in his country. I guess they had been pretty accurate. “So, Mr. Questions,” he smiled, “does that tell you what you want to know?” “Yes,” I said, “but I have another question.” “Of course!” he laughed. “Tell me about jihad.” There was silence. He looked at me intently again. “Ah, yes,” he said. “A term much misused by your western media. I am not surprised you ask me about it, Mr. Questions. “I know that it is misunderstood and misinterpreted by many people. Some of us feel the media misuses the term and takes it out of context to manipulate public opinion, especially of the uninformed. There are four meanings to the term, depending on the context with which it is used. “First, the human being is egotistical by nature. That is sometimes inevitable. So if a man makes efforts to overcome his desires and be fair to everyone, that is jihad. “Second: as an example, if you are at home and an enemy comes to kill you or steal from you, you will react and you will do everything possible to detain and even kill him, if necessary, because you are in a legitimate defense. This is also jihad. “Third, it is the set of religious duties of Muslims, to improve personally and to improve Islamic society. Armed struggle is a form of jihad for some Islamists. “And fourth, in the way you in the West know it, jihad also refers to the holy war waged by some Muslim extremists. “It is important to remember that, in Arabic, the same word can have several meanings, depending on the context in which it is used. Surely you have the same thing in English. Malik, for example, a common man’s name can mean king or it can mean angel depending on the context.” “And does your name have more than one meaning?” I asked. “Amir has only one meaning: prince.” Somehow that fit. At that moment he became my Algerian prince. “And what else do you want to ask me, Mr. Questions?” he asked, smiling at me again. He was clearly enjoying this session. Meeting me for the first time, talking with me, pleased to be telling me about his culture that I was so interested in. “I’m sure I have a lot more questions. You will probably get tired of me asking them. Tell me about your studies. When will you get your degree? What do you plan to do after that? Will this degree lead to some kind of job?” “I am hopeful that it will. In my country our government invites the top three students in academic standing at each university to take the national test to become a teacher. There is a shortage of teachers here, and this is part of the government’s attempt to alleviate that. I am currently number one in my class. If I pass the test, I might be offered a teaching job. It could be anywhere. But because of the corruption in my country, passing the test does not guarantee me a job. You usually have to pay someone in the government a bribe. I have a cousin who took the test. She also tutored a friend for it. She did well on the test, while the friend did poorly. Her friend got a teaching job because her family had the economic means to pay a bribe. She did not have bribe money and did not get a job. “Also, in my country I must take a test in order to qualify to go on for my PhD. I hope to qualify to take that test and do well enough on it to continue my education.” “But wouldn’t that be expensive? College over here is very expensive, and most students incur a lot of debt even just to get a bachelor’s degree. Do you have a scholarship for your studies?” “No, I am not that fortunate. There are not many scholarships here like in the West. I have borrowed money from various people. Banks charging interest are frowned upon in Muslim countries, as that is pretty much against our religion. I owe a lot of people a lot of money, which I will have to be sure to pay back one day, as these people have had the faith in me that I will do so.” I could not imagine how difficult life was for him there. Trying to borrow his way through school. The heat. The lack of fresh water. The fact that all his studies and hard work might lead to nothing. I thought of all the things Americans complain about. They seemed small indeed. It was no wonder the sheer hopelessness of it all had led him to the internet dating site. “Amir, it must be getting late there. We have been talking for over two hours.” I could hear the sounds in the background of small children being put to bed. “I must let you get some sleep, and we must not keep the rest of the household awake.” “Yes, you are right, it is time for sleep. I get up early, at 07:00, find a ride to school, and do not come home until 19:00, twelve hours later. It is a long day. I have enjoyed our conversation very, very much, Mr. Questions,” he laughed. “Can we do it again next Sunday?” “Yes, yes, let’s do that.” I said. “I look forward to it.” “That will give you a whole week to come up with more questions, Mr. Questions!” He laughed again. And I promise you I will, I said to myself. You can bet on it.