Here and Now

How can I defend what you find indefensible?

How can I ever explain to you that you would understand? You try, and I see you get that serious look on your face as you try and make sense of what I'm saying, but it is beyond you. That is not an insult to your intelligence, it is simply as if I was trying to describe the color blue to someone blind since birth. How accurate could his mental image be? How accurate could yours, with no frame of reference?

I will try, though. Do you have a relative that perhaps you are not overly fond of? An aunt, or an uncle? Maybe they drink too much, or have had trouble with the law, or perhaps they are cruel to the other members of your family? You do have someone like that; I see it in your eyes. You dislike them, or tell yourself you do, and the other members of your family shake their heads and gossip about them behind their backs. Still, at every family gathering you invite them anyway. If they need money, or help, your family competes to be the first to provide it. Because no matter how angry they make you, the heart of the matter is, they are still your flesh and blood. You have no problem with verbally tearing them apart, but should a stranger try it, should they insult that relative to your face, your blood would boil and you would fight to the death to defend them.

Homes, my friend, are like that as well. They live and breath, and become members of your family. As a child, you may hate your home, and long to leave it, and even as a man you might never wish to set foot in it again, but it is still your home and you still love it, no matter what. You would still risk it all to keep it safe, and perhaps once it is safe you would walk away and never return. Do you understand me now?

Better now, I believe. Not all the way, and never completely, but perhaps it is dawning on you that when I fought, I fought for love, not hate. I fought for the love of my country, as battered and bleeding as it was, because I could do nothing else and live with myself. Not him, I couldn't have cared less about my oath to defend him. I fought, in a sense, for my mother.

Yes, our lives were different, but not as different as you might imagine. You imagine us all living in tents in the middle of raging deserts, I suppose. Americans make me laugh; they are always so startled to see the things they take for granted taken for granted by others. Don't be offended by that, it's endearing in a way. I grew up with cars and electricity and television, the same as you did. Yes, there was heat, and yes there was sand, but there are heat and sand in a lot of places. If you're born in the ocean you swim in the ocean, and you never think about anything else.

Ah, the big question. Why did I leave? I could turn that around on you, you know. Why did you leave a home you loved? But you've already told me, and I suppose it's my turn.

I do not always believe that honesty is the best answer, you know that. Perhaps some things people are better off not knowing. My parents are still living, and my brothers, and the longer I stayed with them, the harder it became to keep my secrets my own. I was growing careless, and my older brother was beginning to suspect the truth about me. He never would have told my parents, but I could see the shame in his eyes, the disappointment. From a brother, it was like a knife in the gut. From my father and mother... I might not have survived the wound.

There is more than the obvious answer there, more than you think. I could tell you about being a small boy and kneeling facing Mecca over and over during the day, and wondering if I was wasting my time. I could tell you about the doubts that crept into my mind, about Allah, about the rules we lived by, about my life in general.

Had I stayed, they would have come for me, eventually. You can only hide yourself so long. Sooner or later, they would have come for me, and taken me away to be.... you don't have a word for it in English. Re-educated might be as close as you can come. Cured, they'd think of it. Contrary to what you might think, I wouldn't immediately have been put to death. I was young, and strong, and a good warrior. They would not have wanted to waste me. If I had resisted their cure, however, sooner or later I would have died. And my family would have been shamed forever as a result.

That sound noble, doesn't it? Me leaving them all behind to protect them, and that is part of the reason. But selfishly, I wanted to live. I wanted to live as I chose to live, if not accepted anywhere, then at least knowing that if I kept my wits about me I wouldn't be killed for it. I wanted a chance.

It's harder on you than it is on me. I have had many years to come to terms with my secret self, but you... you are still

struggling with it. It goes against what you have always believed to be true. You, who have loved women, and been loved by them. In your mind, it must always been black and white, one or another. There are so many shades in between that your basic nature recoils in horror from; you find gray so ugly you can't even stand to look at it.

Very well, my friend, if this will make it easier on you. Think of men in prison; not those forced but those who give freely, who look around the bleak and dismal place they've found themselves and find something shining and bright in the middle of it. Many of them have wives, children, lives, and when they are free they go back to them. Aren't we just prisoners here, Sawyer? If we are rescued tomorrow, I will still be me. You are free to go about your life and do as you please; I would not stand in your way.

You are afraid, though, that you can't. That after this, nothing will ever be the same. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps something is sprung within you, something that cannot ever be put back the way it is. Would you blame me for that? No, I can see that you do not. No one brings you here each night, after all. There are no bullets left in the gun, and I've never taken anything in my life that wasn't freely offered.

I think, though, that we're going to be here for a while. I can't explain the feeling any better than that, yet I wake up and look out into the water, and I get a sense of endlessness. Perhaps we will not die here, and perhaps we will not be old men when they do come for us, but we will be older men, wiser men perhaps.

And what if we do die here? Should our remaining years be alone, filled with regret? Mine will not be; I am going to find happiness here or die trying. I believe I can find that in you; I believe you can give me that. At the moment, we can offer comfort, warmth. Maybe in time, more than that. I think that I could fall in love with you; I flatter myself that someday you could fall in love with me. Who knows?

You ask me "What now?"

What now? Us, now.

After the now, I can't say.

But the now is here, the now is warm, and the now isn't going anywhere.

Not yet.