I have just finished reading “The Future is Peace,” co-written by an Israeli Jew, Maoz Inon, and a Palestinian Moslem, Aziz Abu Sarah. The two came together in shared tragedy—Aziz lost a teenage brother tortured in Israeli prisons when young and too week to live when released; and Maoz lost both parents to the Hamas attack on October 7. Against incredible odds, the two work towards Peace, and cite the need for meeting and knowing the “other.” As a Palestinian elder tells the Jew, “Respect people and they will respect you in return.” Maoz took that to heart, and even in the darkest times, lives by it.
On putting that book down, I picked up “Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century,’ by the Turkish writer in exile, Ece Temelkuran. It’s the story of her leaving her homeland after years of censorship and threats of rape and murder, and her search for a new home among “exiles, refugees, misfits, the economically and political weak, the displaced, outcasts of the world…” She chooses the word “strangers” from the long list of synonyms. In an early event in the book, Ece is waiting for a visa in Hamburg, Germany with other refugees from other countries and a large group from Ukraine, where she talks about the humility and loss of dignity that binds the disparate group together.
Her quest is emotional as well as physical as she looks for her mates, other strangers, and for the language to speak with and of this polyglot collection of people., Most are physically separated from home countries, but some are refugees and strangers in their own countries, separated by natural, economic, and political disasters from the national power structure. The book is a meditation on the political and environmental causes of this growing population of permanent “strangers”—united in their separation from home.
And then, in a moment of clarity, I remembered the words of hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, Young Chief Joseph, speaking to Congressmen and dignitaries in Washington D.C. in Lincoln Hall in 1879, almost 150 years ago!
“We cannot hold our own with the white men as we are. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men. If the Indian breaks the law, punish him by the law. If the white man breaks the law, punish him also.
“Let me be a free man – free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself – and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty.
“Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we will have no more wars. We shall all be alike – brothers of one father and one mother, with one sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who rules above will smile upon this land, and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers’ hands from the face of the earth. For this time the Indian race is waiting and praying. I hope that no more groans of wounded men and women will ever go to the ear of the Great Spirit Chief above, and that all people may be one people. In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat has spoken for his people.”
Joseph’s plea is Moaz and Azis’s and Ece Temelkuran’s plea for dignity, respect and to be treated as a like human being. And wise Joseph says that if we do this, there will be no need for war.
His only mistake is to assume that white men treat each other so, that it is Indians who are outsiders. Moaz and Azis and Ece know personally that white men can make outsiders of other whites, that Arab can be pitted against Arab, Jew against Jew, Turk against Turk, American against American.
They also know, as a rumbling body of strangers and peacemakers across the globe know and preach, even as bombs fall and innocents die, what wise Joseph knew and preached all those years ago, that what stands against war and dictatorships are “respect” and “freedom” to move and believe as we like. Then, Joseph says, “We shall all be alike – brothers of one father and one mother, with one sky above us and one country around us.”
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