I woke up today in a pretty reflective mood. To be honest, I am sick and tired of all this reflection, and just want to turn my brain off and just be. However, I am a pretty brooding and contemplative person, and I can’t possibly deny myself that. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself after all. So, I write with the hopes of organizing these thoughts in my head, and trying to make sense of it all.
I can’t help but contemplate where I came from, and where I am going. I think of ten or fifteen years ago, and trace my progress all the way to sitting here writing this post. I took some pretty drastic leaps to get to where I am today. For a person who does not believe in a higher power, I think I took some pretty dramatic leaps of faith. Actually, I don’t think I had anything but hope, and the desire to accomplish something, or get myself to a certain place to guide me through the past fifteen years of my life. It’s brilliant that any of my grand plans worked, even though they didn’t go off without a hitch like I wanted them to.
In 1995, I was attending a private high school called Thebes (yes, it’s a pretty cliché name) on the outskirts of Cairo. It was built against rolling sand dunes, with no air conditioning, and nowhere to go if a student wanted to skip class and bum around. It was either class, or the blazoning hot sun, and the autocratic teachers that despised being there just like the students did.
It was a typical day just like any other. As I was leaving class for recess, I noticed a flier on the wall about going to the United States. I had never traveled out of Egypt before, and my only knowledge of the U.S. was gained through watching movies and the ever popular soap operas that played on TV. I grew up watching Falcon Crest, Knots Landing, and I am ashamed to admit, the Bold and the Beautiful too. The flier was for a program by the American Field Service (AFS), and advertized living with an American host family for an academic year while attending high school. Intrigued, and pretty excited about the possibility, I took the flier home and showed it to my father. As he always does in his doubtful and condescending way, my father told me to apply and see what happens.
I passed the English test, as well as the interview, and called my father on his promise to seriously consider sending me on the program. I found out that he didn’t think I really had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting accepted, and now had to eat his words. He met with the program administrators, and before we both knew it, he shelled out the $6000 program fee, and the idea became a reality. If I think about it, I must have been crazy or desperate at the time. Or, it could have been just one more step in the journey to find my place in life, and belong somewhere. I had never left Egypt, never traveled without my family except on a fieldtrip with school to Luxor in southern Egypt, and I didn’t even have a passport.
The closer the program start date approached, the more I got nervous. I had no idea where I was placed in the US, or who my host family was. At the beginning of August the program called to ask if I was OK being placed with a divorced man with no children. Faced with an imminent start date, I said yes, and made the journey to Chicago with nothing but hope to guide me. It was a pretty drastic leap of faith.
The divorced guy turned out to me a complete asshole, and I did not last in his home for more than two weeks. My room was his office, and I slept on the sleeper sofa. He thought Egyptians slept on the floor in tents in the desert, and expected me to clean after his blind cat that pooped all over his condo. I was upset, and I was scared that leaving his home would mean I had to go back to Egypt in a proverbial flight of shame. But that did not happen! I complained to my program counselor, and expressed my disappointment and anger at my placement with a person I did not think should be hosting me, or anyone else for that matter.
A few days later I was moved to the home of a family that had hosted ten students before me. It was a temporary placement until the program found me a permanent home. As it turned out, I stayed in that home for the duration of the program. The elder couple sitting in the kitchen with a way-too-large table piled high with books would become my Mom and Dad for the next 15 years…well past the end date of my program. They were the best thing that had ever happened to me, and they would continue to influence me for the second half of my life.
Fast forward to 2001, when once again I had to take a leap of faith that would change my life forever. I had just graduated collage with a BA in Political Science, and feeling around in the dark trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. At the same time, the police took it upon themselves to crack down on gays in Egypt, and prosecute them like murderers and terrorists. Friends and other acquaintances were arrested, thrown in jail, their names and addresses published in the papers, their lives destroyed, and their families disowned them. Gay men in Egypt lived day to day, looking over their shoulders, and wondering if they were going to be next. Teenage gay men chatting online were baited by undercover policemen, and arrested. Lives were destroyed, and families were decimated.
I remember calling my Mom and Dad on the phone to tell them what was happening in Cairo. I had come out to them three years earlier and they were more supportive than my biological family was (my father sent me to reparative therapy). A few days later, I received a FedEx envelope containing a plane ticket to Chicago. It was an invitation to take a leap of faith; to take a gamble and see what the future may hold. I sold some of my belongings, packed my suitcase, and came to Chicago with $500 in my pocket, and no plan. But, I had an incredible, loving, and supportive family that watched out over me, and guided me in my new path. I ended up seeking political asylum, and never returning to Egypt again.
Eleven years later, I am sitting here, reflecting on taking drastic leaps of faith that, while were not easy, I believe changed my life for the better. The truth is, we take leaps of faith every day, some larger than others. We have no way of knowing if the leaps we take will change our lives for the better, or bring us closer to happiness. Yet, we take these leaps, and live in the hopes that being true to our selves….going with our guts…or, if you will, a belief in a higher power, be it Jesus, Allah, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Shiva will guide us and help us through. Faith is not a four letter word, yet sometimes we treat it as such. I can’t help but think that if I had not taken a leap of faith 15 years ago, I would have been dead by my own hands, or those of the police in Egypt. I can’t help but think that had I not taken a leap of faith, the amazing family I met in 1995 would have never come into my life, and I would have been much poorer for it. They influenced my life in ways that I could never have fathomed.
As I sit at yet another canyon in my life, I have nothing but faith guiding me. Faith in the idea that if I am true and honest with myself, then I am on the right path…wherever it pay lead!!
