Listening at the Edge of Dream

(Listening at the Edge of Dream & Winter Wind Disaster)




During these long winter nights I wake, suddenly find myself outside the net of dream and listening to the sound of the wild wind rushing through the world. Wind cannot be trapped in the trees, the laundry lines, or in the thoughts and words I throw into the sea.



I lie awake tangled in my blankets like a starfish in a fishing net, body still as a clamshell on the shore. Like a fly in a spider’s web, my brain buzzes with faint confusion.



Though I cannot fully understand, I listen when the wind passes and sings the song of infinite spaces. It tells me that in the end, our breath has no human borders.



But how we humans fight over our borders nonetheless. How we protect our personal space in the crowd. How we hide our real self even from ourselves. But now the Internet connects us, like the worldwide wind, in a web of desire, of dreams, of seeking truth. We find the Self lost in an endless hall of mirrors.



I sleep again and dream I seek the mosque and pass along this hall. Like the many mirrors on the wall, puddles are shining below on the surface of the winding street. Where is the mosque?



I find that I am instead in a marketplace in Iraq. People pass around me. There is the heavy smell of dust and smoke and sweet rotting grapes. I breathe the smell—but then feel cold dread in my heart, as slowly, old newspapers rise up and blow in the air, above my head. Am wondering if I have somehow not heard the explosion.



You, dear reader, read this news in your hands; the paper remains in your two hands even while invisible messages of the Internet pass helter-skelter through the air like Jinn. But the explosion is all around you.



For what is the free world? It is both an explosion and a world of walls and prohibitions. A marketplace of ideas, yes, but structures too. Is it not order that our people want, to maintain the market? Not mere democracy! Not mere laughter!



Or so say the ministers at their Thursday knitting circle. The economy and culture are global, they say; we must move with the fashion. Knitting quiets the mind, they say. The cell phones ring; conversations cross in air – seven languages at least. Is this the way?



If China were to democratize, would we Americans not feel the economic pinch? So let the Jinn fly. We want both media and meat; meaning and the market. And so they knit away.



Like the ministers in my dream, we imagine that our interdependent market builds a safer world. How many times have we heard that if we depend on each other the nations cannot fight.



One of the first people to advance this theory was Norman Angell in 1909. Of course, five years later the Great War brought the whole interconnected modern house of nations to the ground. Fire in the funhouse and melting mirrors and dreams gone forever.



And yet, some dreams do die hard. The world hates us for our freedoms, we tell ourselves; they want what we have. Our wonderful technology. So why not share?



But not so easy- -the world cannot continue to industrialize globally at our rate without creating ecological disaster and new deserts of scarcity. The sea will rise. Refugees may perish in their desperate crossing.



New seas, new borders; Bangladesh will require massive construction as did the Netherlands; to keep land dry. Will a future Musa divide the dangerous waves for their survival? And will 100 million Egyptians survive an increasingly salty land?



Back in dream again, I arrive late at the border and customs control takes its time. Do I plan to work, they ask. I do not know. I notice some of my fellow passengers have meanwhile disappeared into another room and not returned. I feel some uneasiness. The officer stares at his computer screen, his face is faintly flickering in the artificial light.



No, it is not a dream. I read today, “The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected.”



Conservatives almost always call to reinforce the borders from the barbarian threat. But more subtly, some of them have added a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act. The Times reported February 5 that, “the amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents. Until now, federal authorities have taken DNA samples only from convicted felons.”



This is a new border. A new boundary. An invisible wall in cyberspace. It seems that every time we arrive at this checkpoint a new human right is missing. They often don’t even tell us which one.



In this case, a million DNA checks per year will be shared with law enforcement. DNA tells authorities details about your health as well as identity. And in some ways it is more private that what you consider haram. How to wear hijab and yet give up the code to the secret door—even to all that knock?



Boundaries are vanishing like Venice under waves. So let me speak to you neighbor; it looks like we will have to know each other. Aren’t we tired of a divided community anyway? Aren’t we tired of blaming others, the Christians, the Jews, those other sects? Blaming each other? Aren’t we tired of competing to be the biggest victim? Looks like we just might have to help each other.



But we may not notice as the agents of disaster cast their nets ever wider, and the seas retreat and rise again. We may not be ready for disaster when it seems to come so slowly. We can hear the voice of the wind but let us continue what we are doing. Let us even surge. We are building the sandcastles of nationalism on the sand, crusader castles and modern nation states. And they are so beautiful we do not even look up to see the storm arrive.