Dangerous Love

by Ray Norman

  My remarks were soon followed by warm comments from many others, as well as words of gratitude for our love and courage in the midst of hardship. We talked more about World Vision’s program in their community, and I was able to answer a number of practical questions about our hopes and intentions. Before the meeting concluded, many publicly assured me of their prayers that God would guide and protect World Vision during these difficult times.

  This was surely one of the most remarkable meetings I had attended since I first set foot in Mauritania, and it was followed by many similar meetings with similar questions as I traveled around the country, visiting our partner communities. The reactions and questions these meetings and my words generated took us by surprise. On multiple occasions I found myself having to publicly answer questions about our Christian faith and where we found this power and strength to forgive, much less return to a country where we had experienced such harm. Within a few days one of the local Arabic papers carried the news that we had forgiven the assailant, and it was only then that we began to understand more fully the import of our actions.

  The legal system of Mauritania is a mix of colonially inherited French civil law and Islamic sharia law, the latter of which generally calls for the death penalty for those who unjustly take the life of another—a penalty that can only be revoked by the victim or the victim’s immediate family. While Ali had not succeeded in taking our lives, the consequences of his actions were clearly dire—at least in the minds of most Mauritanians we encountered. And a public articulation of forgiveness by those he had attempted to kill would surely reduce (in a significant way) the severity of the consequences he would face should his case ever come to court. Unexpectedly, our actions had provoked a flood of questions, both private and public—questions whose answers were at the very core of our reason for being in this country, but about which, under normal circumstances, we could never share publicly due to the restrictions of our adopted country. Doors of opportunity began to open as we sought ways to appropriately answer these questions, to share the reason for the hope that is within us (1 Peter 3:15), and to tell the story of the One who is the source of that hope. As a result of these moving encounters with those we served and the ensuing reactions, my staff and I gradually began to see how God, in his infinite wisdom, had taken personal tragedy and used it in direct answer to our prayers.

  In the midst of these remarkable meetings with our partner communities, my senior Mauritanian staff approached me with another matter. During the past seventeen years of World Vision’s work in this country, we had never been invited, nor had the opportunity, to meet with the Mauritanian president, Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya. Other mainline humanitarian organizations, such as those affiliated with the United Nations and other secular institutions, had been invited in times past to brief the president on their work. Throughout the years World Vision had grown to be the nation’s largest NGO. Among the NGOs in Mauritania, we were now the government’s primary partner in implementing its poverty-reduction strategy; we were the principal implementer of the UN World Food Program’s food distribution initiative; and we were actively engaged in the largest number of needy, rural, and urban communities across the country. At the same time, we were an openly Christian organization operating in an Islamic republic, and there were still many individuals and interest groups who questioned whether such an organization should be allowed to continue its work in Mauritania.

  Our senior staff had learned informally that, given recent events, President Taya would probably be open to an audience with me. I felt it was important that we seize this opportunity to brief him on both our ethos and on the active role World Vision played in reducing poverty and enhancing the lives of Mauritania’s children.

  Two weeks later I was driven to the presidential palace. After a few formalities and a short wait, I was escorted into a sitting room where the president himself genially greeted me. I had often seen his image in the newspaper or on local television, and he seemed to split his public time equally between a traditional Mauritanian robe and a smart suit and tie. On this day he had donned a dark, western-style suit. He was rather short of stature and sported a large, black mustache that seemed to match his dark, flashing eyes. I was surprised, although pleased, when he addressed the handful of advisors in the room and asked that he and I be left alone for this visit.

  He offered me the seat adjacent to him and immediately asked about me and my family, and especially my daughter, and offered sincere condolences for what had transpired. He said he had been informed the incident appeared to have been an attempted robbery, and he was obviously surprised when I apologized and hesitantly told him that, in fact, the events I experienced had given no indication, at least to me, that robbery was the motive. This revelation moved him quickly to the topic that I soon learned was foremost on his mind—the perceptions of Americans and those in other Western nations with regard to Mauritania and its people in the aftermath of both 9/11 and the recent attack on Hannah and me. He asked me, in a rather circumspect way, how I felt others might view his country given these circumstances.

  I had come to this meeting hoping to have the opportunity to provide the president with a clear and transparent briefing on World Vision and its work in his country, and most importantly the unique way we went about engaging communities through our child-focused approach. Although he was the president, I had been informed by some of my national staff that the full import of World Vision’s history of humanitarian work in Mauritania was probably not well known by him. There were certainly those who preferred that the successes of a Christian organization not be given what they considered to be undue attention. So President Taya’s preoccupation with outside perceptions, as well as his direct questions, caught me somewhat off guard. I knew my time with him was limited, and my mind raced as to how I could turn the conversation around.

  I chose to plow forward. “Monsieur le Président, I can only speak in generalities about others’ perceptions, but I can speak with certitude about my own perceptions as an American who has lived and worked closely among Mauritanians in recent years. I, for one, consider it a privilege to work among the Mauritanian people and have found them to be generous and welcoming, especially among the very poor communities where I spend most of my time. The people’s courage and commitment to seeking a better life for their families have been deeply inspiring and personally transforming for me.

  “Not only has World Vision had the opportunity to serve and assist these communities, but many remarkable individuals we have encountered in this journey have also spoken into our own lives, and we are all the more enriched for it. More importantly, the expression of love and concern by these very people in the aftermath of the attack on Hannah and me has been nothing short of overwhelming. My family, Monsieur le Président, has been indelibly impacted for the good by your people.”

  He gazed at me for a moment with a very surprised and quizzical look.

  “I am pleased that you feel this way, especially after all that has happened to you and your family. Do you think there are others in America and Europe who, like you, may not view us so critically?”

  I replied that I saw no reason why they should view Mauritania critically and went on to share that few places on earth are immune to individual acts of violence and that I still considered Nouakchott a much safer place to live than many cities in Europe or the United States. Then I continued, “As an American I have always articulated my admiration for your people, and recent events have not changed my perspective. If anything, the outpouring of love my family has received in recent months has only served to confirm those convictions.”

  He seemed greatly relieved by this comment of mine. I sincerely think he had expected me to be somewhat bitter and resentful, and to make demands for better protection for our staff. But after this comment he thanked me for my perspective and assured me that he was doing all in his power to ensure safety and security in Mauritania during these tumultuous times.

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nbsp; He then seemed ready to move the conversation in the direction I had been trying to steer it. I presented him with a folder of documents and photos concerning World Vision’s program and quickly reviewed its seventeen-year history in Mauritania, as well as the status of our present programs in health, education, literacy, microfinance, agriculture, and food aid. He was obviously impressed and said that he had not realized how much we were doing. I then took the next step, and in our remaining minutes gently unpacked our ethos and core values as a Christian organization, driving home the point—as I had done during my recent community visits—that “we value people,” all people: the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak. And that because the poor and the weak are valued the least by most people and societies, World Vision chooses to identify with them and walk alongside them on a journey of hope.

  The president listened thoughtfully and was clearly intrigued. He expressed his gratitude for having had this opportunity to learn so much about World Vision’s work. Then he thanked me warmly, and my twenty-minute audience with him was over.

  9

  THE IMAM’S REMARKABLE COUNSEL

  For Christ’s love compels us.

  (2 CORINTHIANS 5:14)

  THE GENEROUS OUT POURING OF LOVE AND CONCERN WE RECEIVED, along with the remarkable opportunities to answer pointed and poignant questions, touched us deeply. Each day we continued to marvel not only at the way God demonstrated his care for us but at the ways in which our suffering had opened such unexpected doors of opportunity. Sandstorms in the Sahara can blow in suddenly and fiercely, leaving the once-clear blue skies and open spaces filled with a lingering pallor that erases all shadows and removes the edges from all things. But they clear ever so slowly, almost imperceptibly, sometimes taking days if there is no rain to clean the skies. We came to see that, with the same subtlety that gradually brings back the edges and contours of life after a sandstorm, the Holy Spirit had indeed been audaciously answering our petitions of months, even years, that he would open doors of opportunity for those we quietly served to hear and observe the ways of a living, powerful, and caring heavenly Father.

  My concern for the safety and well-being of both our expatriate and national staff continued to weigh on me. But I wrestled more deeply with the matter of our commitment to the poor of Mauritania. How could we leave them when their lives were already bordering on hopelessness? What kind of witness would it be for Christ and his love for all people if we abandoned these people we had come to serve in their own time of need? Yet each day I faced conflicting advice from multiple directions and from many I respected deeply—our local World Vision staff, World Vision leadership in our international office, our government partners in Mauritania, the communities we served, and friends, family, and pastors around the world to whom we felt accountable in some measure.

  Our Mauritanian friends and colleagues in the government and in the communities where we worked were well aware of the tenuous circumstances. But they consistently beseeched us to keep our hands to the plow and weather this period, which would hopefully soon pass. My many colleagues in World Vision were all over the map on the question. Some encouraged us to stay put while others, especially those who had little firsthand experience of Mauritania, stressed the risks of maintaining an expatriate team in such a potentially hostile environment. One even went so far as to insinuate that the blood of my staff would be on my hands if anything should happen to them. This notion, of course, was distressing.

  My immediate supervisor, Dan Ole Shani, with whom I was on the phone constantly during those days, was a reassuring source of balanced wisdom and advice. In the midst of serving as a helpful sounding board, he consistently reminded me of World Vision’s general position on such matters: that while dialogue with World Vision leadership and our international security personnel was an important resource for making such decisions, at the end of the day, the national director of each field program called the final shot on decisions such as these.

  On the one hand I was grateful those of us who lived closest to the situation, and whose lives would be most affected by a decision, would be allowed to own it. But at other times I wished that someone else could, or would, take up the burden and make the decision for me. Our local staff provided wonderful support, anxious as many of them were. In the end they agreed that the decision was mine and generously gave me both the support and space I needed to assess and work through the complexities of such a decision.

  My greatest struggle at this time was perhaps with those I felt accountable to spiritually. First, on a personal level, were my wife and children. Although we were all deeply touched by the unexpected outpouring of love and support we found in Mauritania, we still wrestled with the conflicting matters that raged between our heads and hearts. Frankly, there were days (and many sleepless nights) when we just wanted out of it all. We wanted stability, sanity, and a reasoned life; and everything we were doing in Mauritania seemed to scream out in contrast to these reasoned notions in our heads. I relied heavily on Hélène’s sense of call and purpose in all that we set our hearts to, and had done so from the first days of our marriage. But when I saw her struggle with her own emotional and spiritual capacity, I struggled too. Nathaniel was a source of welcomed stability. He trusted us to follow God’s call on our hearts. At this stage, his life was willingly attached to what we felt was right. Hannah was just glad to be back home and among friends. She yearned for stability and all that was familiar. But she was also deeply affected by our struggles, much as we tried to insulate her from our more trying moments.

  Another great concern was that our friends and pastors back in Europe and the United States, who had been an important source of moral and spiritual support for us over the years, did not understand how their comments to us could put us and our work in danger. During our recent weeks in France for Hannah’s recovery, I had called and consulted with a number of them, but continuing the dialogue from Mauritania was difficult at best. We had to be cautious with what was said during phone calls or through electronic mail. Only a few months earlier a colleague working for a secular NGO had been expelled from the country for a politically charged e-mail he had sent to a friend abroad. Because of this, it was nearly impossible to fully articulate to these friends the questions that weighed on my heart.

  Many of them found it difficult to appreciate the communication constraints (and risks) we worked under in Mauritania. A carefully worded question on my part could be (and often was) answered with starkly open and rather careless language. At the same time, Hélène and I had both learned years before that it was unrealistic to expect these people, dear as they were, to fully understand the unusual complexities and nuances of our lives in the parts of the world we often frequented. In the midst of these sporadic and cautious dialogues, many of them gave us the impression that we should question the notion of staying on, and that wisdom would perhaps dictate that after more than fifteen years of living and working in Muslim countries, it was now time for us to come home to heal, get refreshed, and be restored.

  This reasoning tugged painfully at our hearts. It struck a deep cord of yearning for home—and I have little doubt it was tied to the normal, deeper yearning for a permanent home, the New Jerusalem, a lifelong desire to finally be in the “courts of . . . the living God” (Ps. 84:2). There were certainly times when this yearning and tugging made sense in my head and would pull me in the direction of my cultural “home”—the security of America or Europe, family, friends, familiar churches, the house I dreamed of in suburban America with the oak trees and autumn leaves. But my heart ached for those in Mauritania, and I needed wisdom to know how to come to terms with these competing desires.

  This question, this conundrum, was my daily fare and the inner struggle I faced. And it continued to weigh heavily on my head and heart throughout each day, when I went to bed at night, and in the lonely night hours when I would awake from shallow sleep. I desperately needed to put this question to rest so that we could move forwa
rd with the many urgent and pressing tasks at hand, unhindered by fear and doubt. I wanted to follow God’s call on my heart and Hélène’s. I wanted to be responsible to my family and their needs. I wanted to honor the commitments we had made to the Mauritanian people. I wanted to respect the wisdom of our colleagues in the Mauritanian government. I wanted to honor those we had accountability to spiritually. And I yearned for the safety and well-being of our staff. But I could not put the pieces together. I needed to hear from God.

  Then one morning while at the office, and seemingly unconnected to this constant tension between my head and heart and my prayer for resolution, it came to me—a quiet yet pressing thought, a need: I should try to make contact with a leading imam. At the time I never connected this with a possible answer to my prayers. It just came to me as an incredibly wise thing to do. Why not try to get an audience with one of the leading Muslim clerics to get his take on all that was going on? I pondered this during the morning, then asked Amrita to arrange a meeting in the next day or two with my senior staff who were in Nouakchott at the time—as many were often on the road or working in up-country sites.

  As she went to work on this, I found myself wondering why I had never thought of talking to one of these clerics earlier in my time here in Mauritania. For the most part only the occasional Mauritanian staffer would engage a local cleric from time to time, usually on sticky matters that concerned a local community. But in my time as director, I could not recall any of the expatriate team intentionally meeting with any senior clerics on big-picture matters that we dealt with as a major relief and development institution in Mauritania. I think our general attitude (including that of many of our Mauritanian staff) was to try to keep a low profile on the religious front so as to avoid unnecessary attention and potential detractors of our program (as I am sure there were among Mauritania’s clerics). But the more I pondered this, I realized this oversight was really to our shame, and we should have been more intentional about quietly seeking more constructive engagement. Now that there was a crisis on hand, it made sense to me.