by Jim Carroll
I therefore settled on Iran as my field of combat. There I would make my fortune and along with it, get the ammunition for the battle to achieve victory over Esau and the likes of him.
Victory, but victory over what? What was I really shooting for? Was it my personal financial goal? Could I make a contribution in Iran as a Christian? Yes, that was one of my hopes. In my anger toward Esau and how he had dogged my family, I put my future success in Iran together in the same basket with defeating Esau and all those who hated Christians. My youthful financial analysis supported my plan.
I had already made my choice about a university long before my argument with Papa and Hibah. There was no way I was staying in Kuwait. King’s College in London was my first choice and I was confident my grades, TOFEL, and SAT scores were good enough to get in. Of course, they were. I anticipated I would find my entry card to Iran there.
My father had another son, my half-brother Thawab, from an earlier failed marriage. Thawab began visiting our home on Friday afternoons and meeting with small groups of men around this same time. I was not informed about their purpose, but I suspected it was more than social.
Again I dreamed about what would occur in the future, but I was afraid to tell anyone – it was too ridiculous and frightening.
As for my brother, perhaps my father was actually taking action. Thawab was forty-one, and I had no emotional connection to this half-brother nearly thirty years older than me. It seemed unbelievable that Thawab would play a role, but it was evident my father loved him, and I kept silent.
The pot churned in the Gulf and in little Kuwait. In January 2009 Sheik Nawaf had formed a new government following another disagreement in parliament. In the spring three women, including Massouma Al-Mubarak, finally won seats in parliament elections. Hibah couldn’t resist. “See, Yacoub, there is a chance for us.
My occasional spells of spontaneous sleep during the day and my more frequent morning visions continued unabated. I often woke, unable to move while dreamlike images flashed in front of me. I failed to integrate them into any mental picture of my glorious future. Had I done so, I would have lived in fear and perhaps even abandoned my plan. Were the dreams I experienced like those of my biblical namesake? Look what he had endured!
My departure at the airport was enlivened only by Binyamin, who hugged my neck and refused to let go. I didn’t want him to stop, and he buried his head between my head and shoulder. Hibah had refused to join the goodbyes.
When I left for London my father was seventy-one.
CHAPTER 5
KING’S COLLEGE
I made my way to London’s King’s College in the fall of 2009. I was determined to go there. Besides, it was only natural I would follow in my father’s footsteps and attend there. Even though he was certain I should stay in Kuwait, I told him I had to go there, claiming that I wanted to follow the way he had gone, but I was really following my own will. I would not, however, seek a doctoral degree as he did. His investigation of Islamic law had led him into a morass from which he escaped only with God’s help. I vowed not to follow the steps that led him astray; my own march turned out to be adequate for that purpose anyway.
Almost simultaneous with my enrollment at King’s, Iran admitted they were building a nuclear enrichment facility near Qom, the Persian center of religious study. Any irony there? Their intentions looked belligerent in nature, and this was confirmed for the world by their test-firing a series of medium- and long-range ballistic missiles soon after. I watched the TV reports on CNN not knowing, but imagining, how these events would affect my future. What an adventure faced me! At least Esau had no involvement there.
The stairs creaked as I walked up the three flights to my dorm room. Having just arrived from Kuwait where it was boiling hot, I shivered as the cold rain dripped from my thin, brown leather jacket. Purchased in Kuwait, it did not prove waterproof. Each step bore a small puddle from an earlier arrival, and I fell and bruised my knee. I got out the key for the dorm room, but the door was unlocked and ajar. Both room windows were wide open. I shut them first thing and attempted to turn on the radiator, an ancient gray-painted device with which I was wholly unfamiliar. The gray monster clanged away when I succeeded. The room was cluttered with crumpled newspapers, empty soft drink bottles, and candy wrappers. How could my new roommate have created this mess so quickly? It was not Kuwaiti standard.
I dried off the best I could: we had one towel apiece on the rack in the room. At 2 a.m., my assigned roommate, Adam Farmson, arrived singing the tenor part from “Sweet Adeline” at the top of his voice. He had no talent for music.
By that time, I had picked up his trash. He greeted me with, “Thanks much, chum, for doing the maid service. So that’s going to be your job here, eh? I’ve just had the first pub debauch of my previously pure life.” The son of an Anglican pastor from Wales, he was free in London from his childhood moorings. “So, you’re my Muslim roomie. I suppose that’s why you couldn’t go out to the pubs.” He reopened the windows and turned off the radiator. Then he grabbed his stomach, bent over, and stumbled out to the hall bathroom, gurgling and smelling like sour apples. After retching, he came back to our room and collapsed onto his bed without getting under the covers.
I couldn’t resist. “It appears you shouldn’t have gone yourself.” He didn’t hear me, and I heard nothing more from him except snoring until morning.
“Was I unpleasant last night? I’ve never had more than one drink a night. When I knew I didn’t have to go home to father, I got carried away. Listen chum, you don’t have a chance here. I assume English isn’t your native language, and for that reason alone, you’re fried.” He talked at me over his shoulder as he pulled off last night’s vomit-stained socks. “And you’re an Arab. You guys are always in the news about some type of fighting and killing, so the profs are going to shoot you down right from the beginning. You’d better get your wardrobe adjusted. Also, my father, the preacher, would want me to talk to you about why you shouldn’t be a Muslim.”
“Okay, you’ve convinced me. Now, I’m Christian,” I answered. Already, we didn’t like each other.
He spun his head around and looked at me. “Don’t make fun of me. My father taught me about Muslims. Should I be afraid to sleep in the same room with you?”
“No, I really am a Christian.” I dispensed the required explanation, and finally he accepted my status as a believer. About his status, I remained unconvinced, but we tacitly agreed to tolerate each other as roommates after that.
My major concentration was international economics and finance with an emphasis on the Middle East. My knowledge of Middle East politics was superior to that of my schoolmates, and I used those skills to excel at King’s. I dug into my classes and completed the basics with a 4.0: all As. The courses in finance dealt with material I had already covered in my reading before I came. As a result, my time in London was not devoted solely to study. I did, however, avoid the sexual misadventures of my father. I had no time for romance. With all the women sporting revealing dress, it was a challenge, but I emerged pure in this realm. Frankly, Western women frightened me.
Adam commented on my marks. “Did your rich family pay off the profs?”
After I had the basic principles of finance down, I was sure I had a safe bet for my Iran plan. The source of power in the Gulf was money, so my goal was knowing all the ins and outs of managing it well. Notwithstanding Saudi oil, I saw Iran as the real power base, the pivotal player in the Gulf, which meant my foreign language concentration had to be Farsi. All this, by my calculation, was pointed at the Esau fight. I didn’t know how correct I was.
Accustomed to the role from my experiences in Kuwait, I starred in campus life. Thinking of Hibah, I joined the political action group on the rights of women. It was soon suggested that I run for class president.
My competitor was male, British, and white. I got most of the female vote and some of the men’s. Roar News, the student paper, posted the headline: “Kuwa
iti Yusef Al-Tamimi Elected Freshman Class President.” Farmson was beside himself. Due to the ongoing news of strife in the Arab world and the growing negative impression of Arabs, I considered my selection as a singular achievement. The student union filled with my congratulators, and I bought coffees all round.
And then there was intramural soccer. I relished the afternoon when I heard the little group of onlookers shout, “Goal! Goal! Goal!” each of the three times I scored from the wing. My joy was enhanced when I saw the defeated expression of the opposing goalkeeper, Farmson.
I continued to experience dreams a few hours after going to sleep. Their content at this point was standard – pursuit by vicious foes, falling in space, failing to complete an assignment, and the like – nothing prophetic or symbolic. And then, more pointedly, or perhaps prophetically, came the Esau dreams. Why did he seek me out in dreams? Did the dreams foreshadow any real event?
Farmson baffled me. “I never have dreams,” he said. This was not possible.
Adam resented my dreams because I sometimes made a commotion when I was sleeping. A hurled shoe often woke me. Less frequent were the morning dreams, if they should be called dreams, which occurred when I was in the phase between awake and asleep but unable to move.
My father had explained to me he had the same condition, which he called narcolepsy. I was thankful I didn’t have the falling attacks that afflicted him. The morning visions I experienced while awake were frightening enough. Each time I was paralyzed. Every time they occurred, the foreboding they brought with them was new and fresh. For reasons I couldn’t grasp, the assurance of eventual recovery eluded me during these visions. I learned they had a medical name: hypnogogic hallucinations. Knowing this made me question my sanity. Sometimes all I could see in the “dream” was a room with three white walls and bars on the fourth side. I could never see beyond it.
My father told about one of his favorite hangouts, the Red Lion Pub, and I became a regular there. With its red neon lion on the window, the pub was a small, darkly lit room, long and narrow in shape. There were high stools along the bar, uncomfortable for an Arab used to sitting on the floor, but along the opposite wall and extending to the back there were wooden booths with high backs, a good place for private conversation. I went there for fellowship, not the ale, at least not at first.
Colleagues at the Red Lion, knowing of my interest in Iran, suggested a Googoosh concert. Googoosh was a popular singer-entertainer in Iran prior to the 1979 revolution. She was little known in the Gulf, and her flamboyant style was not suitable to the ghost of the revolution, so from 1979 until 2000 she was not permitted to perform, living as an exile in her own land. In 2000 the newly elected President Mohammed Khatami gave her the gift to perform, but only abroad. The senselessness of this ruling didn’t penetrate the minds of the authorities.
We took off from the pub in time to get tickets to her concert in the London theater district. Her purple, sequined dress was low in front and tightly cut, nothing like what I expected from a Middle Eastern woman. Heavy makeup obscured her years, and she sang in Farsi, her voice rich and husky. I was able to understand a few of the words. In one of her songs, called “I Want,” she celebrated her tortured, difficult past, repeating the phrase, “born again” over and over. What did she mean by “born again”? Her words served as confirmation for me that the future of the Gulf lay in Iran. Even in her musical seniority, she breathed vitality.
The courses in Farsi offered at King’s College were basic, as the language was unpopular in the West. Due to my native Arabic, I was already familiar with the writing and sounds signified by the script. In order to progress further, it was necessary for me to enter language immersion in Iran, which meant living with a Persian family for an extended period. It was not a simple matter for a Kuwaiti citizen to obtain a visa for a lengthy stay in Iran, but my father was able to arrange it. He was generous toward me, even though I had not followed his instruction to remain in Kuwait. With his help, I became an honored guest in Iran.
In 2009, in what should have been a warning to me, three U.S. citizens out for a mountain hike in 2009 were arrested on the Iran-Iraq border, found guilty of spying and sentenced to eight years in prison. No problem, I thought, I’m not a spy.
Soon it was reported that Iran was carrying out research to develop a nuclear bomb trigger. Iran rejected the report as politically motivated. My classmates questioned my plan to study there. “Are you crazy going to that place? You’ll probably get yourself arrested.”
When I did go, I traveled first to the capital city of Tehran where I spent several days sightseeing. The Golestan Palace grounds housed a series of seventeen buildings, all arches and columns with blue reflecting pools, now used for social events as well as the National Museum. There was the Pond House, the Picture House, and the Museum of Gifts to name a few. While I thought Islamic art avoided painting and sculpture of natural objects and emphasized calligraphy and design, this was not the case for the palace. There were art pieces from many eras among the more standard designs. The sculptures were minimalist in their form, but clearly human. Why wouldn’t the extremists say this was idolatry? Their deep culture had transcended that portion of the theocracy.
The cosmopolitan character of Tehran, despite the Islamic influence, startled me. I knew the people were not free but their street behavior was full of laughter, black leather jackets, and smiling women, hair covered but some arrayed with bright colors. The music blasting out to the street from the shops pounded my eardrums. An upscale dress shop played “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black-Eyed Peas.
Not all the women were freely dressed. The chador is a black, full-length robe open in front like a coat, and covering all or part of the face. Its purpose is to conceal the female form. What a sad thought! Two chador-covered women brushed hard against me even though there was ample space on the sidewalk, and youthful giggles came from under their black façades. One turned and looked back. Was she smiling? Her outfit obscured that information. I would never know.
A Persian proverb says, “Esfahān nesf-e- jahān ast” or “Isfa-han is half of the world.” I was anxious to see if the proverb was true, so I took the one-hour flight south to Isfahan where I began my language immersion experience with the Khorasani family who had accepted me as a student. My father paid them well for their trouble. By the time of my arrival I knew the basics of conversational Farsi, so I was able to converse with the parents and their children, Afsin and Afsoon. The wife, Leila, said, “You’re most welcome in our home. For your time here, you are like one of my children.” Even so, she covered her hair whenever I entered the kitchen for meals.
I had a small room to myself where I could study late into the night. The children were in bed by nine. During the day I was permitted to attend classes at the University of Isfahan, again thanks to the arrangements of my father. I sat in on two religious classes, Islamic Jurisprudence and Ijtihad, or Islamic Reasoning in Sharia Law. The professor of jurisprudence began the class, “I do not allow questions during class. I teach only the truth. You do not need to know anything else.” The all-male attendees spoke only to each other, making minimal eye contact with me. Was I an intruder into their world of complex Islamic thought? Although I grasped the words, I understood little of the religious reasoning that was taught, and I cared less. No exams for me in this discipline.
I completed four months there in my junior year and another four at the first part of my senior year. The father, Khalid Khorasani said, “You speak Farsi like a native.”
My visit with the Khorasani family became complicated when Afsin, their twelve-year old son, came to me about a recurring dream. “I get this dream all the time, and I don’t know what it means. I see myself trying to get out of a mud hole. I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating. The mud hole is in the courtyard of the Sheikh Lotfollah mosque. You know how important the mosque is to our people. I’m surrounded in the hole by pigs squealing. They’re trying to escape the mud hole too. The pigs are t
rying to bite me and eat me.”
He was right about that possibility. Pigs were omnivores, and he couldn’t tell his parents about this. They would see the dream as a condemnation of the revered mosque and perhaps Islam itself, and so he had come to me. “I saw myself in the dream, swearing insults against God.” Afsin considered himself a good Muslim so this frightened him. However, the important part of the dream was his rescue. “Then a white robed man came down from the sky and pulled me out of the mud. He washed me with clear water and placed me on a rock beside the mud hole.”
Afsin asked me what I thought of the dream and the fact that it continued to occur regularly. I explained to him he had seen a picture of his rescue by God’s grace, and that the white figure was Jesus Himself. But I delivered too much information too soon. I should have allowed him to figure it out on his own. Afsin responded, his eyes wide with fear. “What will I tell my parents? They’ll kill me. I don’t want to be rescued by Jesus.”
“Jesus has already done it. You mustn’t tell your parents. It’s too soon. There may be a right time,” I reassured him. “You’ll know if the time ever arrives.” As I considered what happened to Afsin, the psalms of my childhood invaded my heart. “O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up:; you discern my thoughts from afar” (Psalm 139:1-2). I could see how this psalm applied to Afsin, but did it apply to me?