Aaron Vialpando Poet Prose

Arab Street in the Evening: Brothers of Abraham

Arab Street in the Evening: Brothers of Abraham
A Meditation on Kinship, Memory, and the False Invention of Religious Enmity

Along the street they call Arab Street, I did not feel danger; I felt peace. The people could see that I was American and that my beliefs were not their own, yet they did not quarrel with me or turn away. They received me as a brother and treated my mother with respect. In that welcome, I began to see how falsely whole peoples are branded as radical, as though fear were truth. As evening came, my family and I gathered at a Ramadan buffet where the food seemed to touch the lips before it reached the soul. No Muslim and no Muslimah called me infidel. They called me brother, offered water, broke bread, and made room for me without demanding that I become them. I met a man from Pakistan who spoke to my mother with great courtesy and was surprised by how much she admired his Turkish-designed crafts. When I asked about the picture on his wall, he recited it to me as the Shahada. I repeated it back, using the word last rather than final, and he smiled when I told him of my studies in Islam and how deeply I valued the book. In such moments, I thought of Ishmael and Isaac, sons of Abraham born of different mothers and yet still brothers. The cross and the crescent were never meant to be enemies except in the mouths of those who profit from division and dress noise as wisdom. Before I left, I heard the Imam reciting the Quran through the high window of the mosque. Though I did not know the language, the sound carried peace. It seemed to me that the Spirit can make words heard beyond translation, so that what is spoken in one tongue may still be understood by the soul in another. Beneath all slogans and rivalries, there is still one human table, one shared longing, and one Creator not honored by hatred. Perhaps we would do better to live with the discipline of prayer and to fix our attention on the unity of humanity under one Creator, rather than surrendering ourselves to the divisions preached by court jesters who have made an idol of the media and bowed before it as a golden calf.

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