I woke up this morning to find I'd developed a really bad periodontal abscess. It had apparently been festering for weeks, but I had never noticed it before. I enjoyed a really nice dinner last night, and the nights before, none the wiser. But, in the meantime, it seems, this thing was doing damage.
Last week, Meryl (with due credit to Samizdata) posted an excerpt from an incredible essay by David Warren called "Struggling with Islam." I can't recommend it highly enough. It's long, but well worth the time.
Warren spent part of his childhood in Pakistan, and reading his account reminded me of an article I'd just enjoyed recently in Saveur Magazine. The author, Madhur Jaffrey, is a fabulous food writer and, well, a wonderful writer, period. And in her story in the September/October 2002 issue of Saveur, "A Passage to Pakistan," she writes about her childhood in India at the time of Partition from a sort of gastronomic perspective.
1945. Delhi, Colonial India. We are a gang of 12-year old school friends, racing out of our classrooms at recess, pigtails flying, tiered tiffin carriers in hand. Abida and Zahida -- gentle, kind Muslim twins -- have brought chukandar gosht, a dish of cardamom-flavored meat with beets. We suck the marrow from the bones. Manjeer is a Sikh. She has brought parathas -- flat, flaky breads stuffed with grated cauliflower. I, a Hindu, have rather humble potatoes cooked with cumin and ginger, to be devoured with phulkas -- small, delicate flatbreads. We all eat with gusto, dipping into one another's containers.Another botched ending to British colonial rule, with no small "help" from the U.N. Reading these words as a total outsider to the conflict, I couldn't help but feel a deep sadness for the theft of the unselfconscious camaraderie that these children had enjoyed. I've heard similar stories about Muslim, Jewish and Christian children in "Palestine." But both conflicts obviously existed, in a deep and festering way, long before the events that exploded them into full blown war.1946. Delhi, Colonial India. Independence and Partition have been announced. Our class, symptomatic of all India, has split into two warring factions, Hindus on one side, Muslims on the other. Fingers point, accusations are hurled. I am the only one who refuses to participate in this growing horror. I plead with each side to see the humanity in the other. One girl, from the Hindu faction, spits out her ultimate condemnation: "You are just the kind of Hindu that will end up marrying a Muslim.
No more common lunches. Each hostile side now takes its tiffin carriers sullenly to different ends of the playground. I am viewed with slight suspicion by both. I cannot bear to see my India being broken up this way.
1947. Delhi, Independent India. The British rulers have departed from our paradise, but not before creating an Eve -- Pakistan -- out of India's ribs. They have not left behind a happy couple. Half of Manjeer's family has died in the religious riots that followed the announcement of Partition. Abida and Zahida are gone. Indeed, most of our family's Muslim friends have moved to the newly formed Pakistan -- my father's hunting companions and old college mates, my brother's bridge partners, my bosom pals. Many of us remaining in secular India are bereft. We've watched the dismemberment of all that we know and hold dear. How are we going to split our shared history and culture? Delhi is filling up with refugees.
The innocence of children (and of adults as well) can mask but not ameliorate such problems. This is one of the points that the Left insists on avoiding. We will never make peace by ignoring our differences and underlying hostilities, sitting down together and pretending they don't exist. We must drag them out into the open and deal with them, fully, or they will surely continue to smolder beneath the surface, growing all the more virulent until the infection can no longer be contained.
This has, in fact, already happened. The trick is not to put the genie back in the bottle but to examine it thoroughly with open eyes, name it, flush it out and eliminate it, once and for all. Easier said than done, I know. But I've been reminded again, today, that ignorance is certainly not bliss -- at least not for long.
