Conference

Community, friendship and the end of the world

The worst hasn’t happened, as if that hierarchy of things-bad, worse-has any meaning anymore. I feared a nuclear explosion this week. I feared learning about it on my phone, maybe during a conference session. I feared my own country, young and reliably stupid, jumping into the fray.

I’ve made plans for every possible scenario, and all of them are shit. I’ve wondered what I’d do if someone decides I’m too outspoken and makes it their job to make sure I don’t have one. I’ve wondered which of my white friends would speak up for me if it happened (none of them). It isn’t about me, and also, I’ve never been so self centered, centered in my self, in my life. The impossibility of safely finding community is part of the psychological toolkit of war.

I’m at a conference of educators this week, in a city and state I’ve never visited before.

My first day, I go to a bar with friends between workshops. The food, drinks and music are all great, and as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing more exciting than the unfamiliar air of a new place, so I let it go when a couple of dopey white guys wander over to flirt. One of them asks where we’re from, and I say Boston. I’m always surprised by my own answer to this question, and even more surprised that it no longer feels strange. He says “I’m sorry!” and laughs at his own wit. The guy is unattractive and unironically wearing a cowboy hat. I’m the one who’s sorry, especially for my friend, who he’s desperately trying to impress with small talk. It’s all amusing enough at first; he rambles on about his truck in Indiana or Iowa or Ohio, I forget which one, something about scenic cornfields on his way down here. Gesturing towards my conference badge, he says I must rake in the profits from organizing these things, and I say “actually, I’m a teacher,” and I swear to God, no person I’ve ever told my job that has responded with such exaggerated horror. He isn’t horrified by the low wages or endless emotional labor, in case you’re wondering, but by the fact that we must be woke ass book defendin types, and did we know that America is free and beautiful and did we know that no matter what we think up in Boston, it ain’t never gonna be bad here like the Middle East?

Excuse me for using the name of your lord in vain, but Jesus H. Christ, people are ridiculous.

I conduct a three hour workshop, talking and bouncing around the room like I am happy happy happy to be here, and I guess I am, though I don’t know what that means anymore. After my own session, I sit in a plenary with seven thousand attendees. I have never in my life seen so many educators. I want to feel something, as if I belong, but there’s a nagging shame in my ribcage. Maybe I am ashamed of being from Boston, being a teacher, being a woke ass book defender, carrying secrets, staying silent about the worst ones. The CEO of the organization gives a talk about how it’s dark, dark times. The MD says we’ve never seen anything like this before. The guest lecturer says I don’t know how to look my kids in the eye anymore and tell them the world is okay. They’re all people of color. None of them say what I want them to say, although I don’t blame them. Seven thousand people in the audience, and this is America, which ain’t never gonna be bad like the Middle East.

At the airport, I wasn’t interrogated this time. I’m white passing and my last name is in Farsi and not Arabic-and God knows most Americans don’t know what language is spoken in Iran. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve traveled without someone with Ahmed in their name, or without my noticeably South Asian siblings. It was a revelation, walking through security and not getting so much as a second look. So this is what it’s like.

I thought about the airport during a session on cultivating mindfulness in the classroom. I couldn’t help it, or maybe I could, but I didn’t want to. In the paired activity later, my partner was a teacher from a Christian ministry school in Texas. She said it was easy for her to define “children’s spiritual selves” because Jesus gave them a way to understand that religion and spirituality are one and the same. She earnestly shared her relief that in her small town in Texas, nobody looked down on her for taking her kids to church, because the community is beautiful. I believe it too, in my loneliness. She asked me if I make sure my own kids pray. I told her I shared her belief in the importance of community, but felt afraid to seek it. I might as well tell her the truth before she offers me a Bible, so I hastily share that I’m Muslim. She says you don’t have a temple or something? I tell her I guess we do, but I don’t go there with the kids because it feels unsafe. She changes the subject and says “I for one will never understand liberals and atheists, cause they have no dang reason to do the right thing, if you know what I’m saying.”

I bump into her on the escalator later. I want to dislike her so badly. She squeezes my arm and says “ma’am, I do hope you find a nice place to safely pray with your kids,” and maybe it’s the slow Southern drawl and maybe it’s because she touched me or maybe I do want a place to pray with my kids, because I suddenly want to cry.

I get some group photos at the end. One of me with teachers from Congo and Ghana who attended my talk, one of the Asian Interest Forum I’ve joined. Three different brown friends I text the photos to tell me I should consider getting another one with mostly white folks, to look more legit on LinkedIn. The absurdity of tokenizing my non-melanated colleagues makes me giggle (and I didn’t do it, in case you’re wondering). After the photos, I eye two women genuinely delighted to see one another. Their mermaid and peacock hued dresses, the way they throw back their heads and laugh, something about the ease, the love, overtakes me. It isn’t happiness, or even envy, it’s grief, it’s taking me back to a time and place when the world made sense, when everything wasn’t laden with hidden meaning or danger.

This isn’t the apocalypse I’ve been talking about, but my imagination could never have conjured anything as ugly as the truth.