Day 188: The Advantage

"I charge you all that each one of you concentrate all the thoughts of your heart on love and unity. When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love. Thoughts of war bring destruction to all harmony, well-being, restfulness and content. Thoughts of love are constructive of brotherhood, peace, friendship, and happiness. When soldiers of the world draw their swords to kill, soldiers of God clasp each other's hands! So may all the savagery of man disappear by the Mercy of God, working through the pure in heart and the sincere of soul. Do not think the peace of the world an ideal impossible to attain! Nothing is impossible to the Divine Benevolence of God."

- `Abdu'l-Baha

On my fifth day back, I'm feeling a bit mixed up inside. The jubilation and sense of relief after finally arriving seem to have faded away, and the vacuum they've left has been filled by a hundred different on-rushing emotions. I think it would be accurate to say that I'm already depressed. Unfortunately, so is Mitra. It's hard to determine whether or not one of us has caused the other's depression, but we're certainly feeding into one another's depression. We seem to be depressed, more or less, about the same sort of things. It stems from a long, on-going debate about an ordeal I'm facing that, up until now, I've pretty much kept to myself.

In all my naivete, it seems I have fallen prey to one of the local believers, who from the outset has apparently been laboring to dupe and seduce me into some sort of relationship with her. To me it was nothing more than a platonic friendship. I just assumed we were good friends; to outward seeming it wasn't anything more or less than what might exist between two friends in the United States. But in fact, it turns out she has been spreading misinformation to incite rumors about the nature of our relationship, outright lied to me, and so on and so forth. All of this has sullied my reputation with a few people here, so much so that a few people thought I was the one behind all of this, that I was the one generating the rumors, and that I was "using" this poor, innocent girl, when in fact it was the other way around. Thanks to Mitra's intervention that seems to have been corrected, but it's slightly hurtful that someone could possibly come to think that about me in the first place.

Throughout this saga, which started before I came back to America but took on a new terrible form and shape after I returned, Mitra has been invaluable to me. She tried to warn me before but, in typical American (and Bryan) style I brushed it off and assumed that I knew what was best for me. I guess I'm now reaping the fruit of that strategy. She has been kind enough to listen to me and provide words of comfort while I'm sitting there crying because I got my feelings hurt. It's not just that I've been deceived, although it certainly makes one feel stupid and gullible when you find out you've been so easily and flawlessly manipulated. It's not just that people have thought that I was capable of taking advantage of someone in such a manner and that even though this girl has a clearly established pattern of behavior in doing this to numerous people before me local believers still chose to take her word over mine. It's more the bigger picture: what am I here for?

And the bigger picture also seems to be what Mitra is depressed about, too. These people lie, cheat, steal, gossip, manipulate and deceive without a shred of remorse. They lack any small amount of loyalty, and they have a level of superstition the likes of which I've never seen before in my entire life. And I say "they" and "these people" fully aware of how racist I must sound to the reader, but it's nothing but the truth. It has nothing to do with the color of their skin but everything to do with the content - or lack thereof - of their character. "So what," you might ask, "if the society behaves this way. We Baha'is are supposed to set an example." And yet therein lies the problem because these people are Baha'is. And that is what makes it hurt ten times worse.

What are we doing here if the people seem incapable of changing? Why do people become Baha'is if they can't embrace even the most basic of its tenets? We were having a brief discussion of this at lunch and Dr. Sabet enjoined Mitra and I to heed Abdu'l-Baha's words and look for the one positive thing in people and work with that. But at this point I wonder if I can even do that. I am so disappointed in myself in so many ways. How could I have been so blind to allow myself to be advantage of in such a manner? How can I sit here and think so poorly of Africans? How can I condemn others for not being Baha'i enough and in the same breath break the very same rules of behavior that I wish they would uphold? And most important of all, how could I, who came here so brimming with liberal thoughts and optimism, have allowed myself to become so bitter and pesimistic about what I've done here and what I can do?