Vacilando

Not much has changed here—I’m still working through the end-of-semester madness, trying to make my papers take form and make sense, trying to keep my students motivated, trying to find a five spare minutes to spend with my husband, blah blah blah. I have four more weeks of this. All the same, I needed to vent something today.

So, I usually consider myself relatively unflappable and as such I’m not one to react to news of bombings in parts of the world that I might visit soon, but this morning when I heard on the radio that al-Qaeda had left a pair of presents in Algeria, it made my insides quiver in an unexpected way. Granted, if they award me the fellowship I’m not even headed to Algeria—it would be next door, to Tunisia—but I’ve always thought of that part of the Islamic world as more moderate, more secular, more modern, more tolerant—all those good things that make it easier to live in peace with one’s fellows. It just bothered me to know that al-Qaeda is becoming active in northwest Africa. Why? Why does this bother me now? Rewind twelve and a half years, to a younger me getting news that there had been a massive bus bombing in Tel Aviv, about a week before I left to spend the tail end of my semester there (suicide bombings in Israel were relatively less frequent then than now). It didn’t worry me, and I still went. I stayed a few blocks away from where the human bomb had detonated himself, and it seemed that everyone I talked to had known someone on that bus. My heart went out to them and I felt sympathy for the way they live(d) their lives, knowing every day when they walked out the door that this could be the day they died in a bombing, or worse, to lose someone close and go on living without them. I marveled at the acceptance, at the simple response of living in and enjoying every day without being obsessive or dramatic about it in the face of possibly impending doom. Perhaps because of that, I wasn’t afraid, either. And perhaps it was because I was naïve? There is part of me, though, that refuses to be terrorized by terror. Stubbornness is not always the best approach to things, I know, but why should I let anyone make me afraid? Why should I let anyone destroy my lifestyle because they don’t approve of it? Two days after 9/11 I went out dancing with my girlfriends. Not in insensitivity, not in lack of mourning, but in protest and defiance, to show that I was not afraid, that the terror had not gotten to me. I think I learned that from the Israelis. I don’t think it’s hedonism so much as a reverence for life; a principle that every day should be well-lived precisely because it is so precious, whether it’s cut off in two days or fifty years.

Mind you, I’m not saying that I’m worried that fundamentalists will overrun North Africa in the next few months and do horrid things to all westerners and sympathizers, and I’m not saying I’m going to stay home because of any such (irrational) fears. However, I’ve already been reconsidering accepting this fellowship (if they offer it to me—still no word) for many other reasons, and now security has been added to (the bottom of) that list. I’m not afraid. I don’t think I’d even say worried. Does concerned capture it? Or am I looking for excuses because I want someone else to make the decision easy for me?

At this point it’s come down to either taking the hypothetically-offered fellowship, or spending the summer in Mexico polishing my Spanish (which it needs badly, let me assure you). Both are so appealing in so many ways, and I’m trying to make my decision based on what’s most practical, what will serve me best now that I’m considered making my MA my terminal degree. I’m trying to ignore the siren call of what will be most exciting, and do what’s practical. When have I ever been know to be practical? That’s my husband’s forte, not mine, and that’s why I married him. Even so, it’s not the sort of decision I can ask him to make for me (not many of those out there, anyway).

I really want a quiet moment to sit by myself and consider all of this as rationally as I can manage, and to make a good decision based on solid, arguable things, rather than my usually modus operandi of “that would be cool! I’ll do that!”. A quiet moment. Hah. Can this decision wait until the end of the semester? I think maybe it can.