Monday, March 29, 2010

Attempt at conversion?

I know I have two other posts preceding this one (I'm almost finished with one of them! Pictured posts take a long time..) but I had a really interesting encounter last night. Late into the evening, around 9:30pm, my host sister walked into my room and said one of the girls upstairs wanted to talk to me. To give a little background, my Moroccan family is quite well-off and I live in a three-story house. The third floor is reserved for the people that live with us but aren't part of the family. In Morocco, it is very common for a family in the city to host the daughters or sons of family friends or relatives that are studying in the city and are looking for a place to live. Our third floor houses a lot of women and I think I've met at least 5 or 6. These women eat separately from us, the main family, and I hardly ever see them because there are two entrances into the house. Well, last night, when my sister said that one of the women wanted to talk to me, I was kind of surprised and not sure why someone upstairs would want to talk to me. I had fifteen minutes before I had to skype with my mom, so I figured that I had some time and I might as well go up and see what was up. I went up to the third floor terrace and saw three women sitting outside, one was reading the Koran. I was introduced to them and exchanged hellos. Shortly after, the woman sitting with the Koran started to speak in broken French with me. She basically asked me if I was learning Arabic and told me that she was learning French. She said she wanted to know if I would be interested in helping each other learn Arabic and French (since I speak French), like a language exchange, and I thought that sounded pretty cool. I would get a chance to practice my Fus'ha Arabic outside of class, forcing me to regurgitate the things I had learned in class. Because of our language differences, communicating definitely took a while and we also kept going back and forth between Arabic and French. By the time we had communicated and agreed on doing a language exchange, I mentioned to them that I should probably go because my mom was waiting to skype with me. The woman said, "Ahh!" and started asking me about my family, whether I had any brothers or sisters. She asked me in French and had me respond to her in Arabic and then I asked her in Arabic if she had siblings and she responded in French.

After this process, which also lasted a while, I again tried to wiggle my way out of there and said that I should go talk to my mom and that we could talk again tomorrow. I think the woman was about to say something, but someone else came over and they started talking and somehow the conversation drifted to the woman asking me if I knew/had heard the Koran. At first, I said I hadn't, but quickly realized that I had heard classmates recites a little they had learned from their textbook, and I had also practically heard the whole thing the first day I arrived at my host family's home during the funeral "festivities." They kept talking, and words kept being thrown back and forth, translated to French, Arabic, and sometimes English. The woman started telling me that how wonderful the Koran was. She said that when someone was sad, it was a good book to read, that it would make you feel at ease.. before I knew it, the woman asked me if I wanted to hear some of the Koran and at this point, I decided to make my exit. I was definitely late to talk to my mom, and I was beginning to wonder if this woman was really interested in "exchanging languages" or if she had pulled me up there to try and convert me to Islam. I had never seen or met this woman in the two months that I've been here, and I found it strange, if not coincidental, that she seemed to be "selling" the Koran to me.

Our house is not sound proof at all, I can hear things my family says on the first floor when I'm sitting on my bed in the second floor, and I'm sure the people on the third floor can hear me when I skype, especially if I happen to get into an argument and cry, which is exactly what happened a couple of days ago, no big deal. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps they had overheard me the other night and this woman saw me as a potential subject to try converting.

I know I'm probably over-analyzing/over-thinking things, which is what I'm best at, and I might be going into a rant, but I personally am not a fan of the door-to-door style of evangelizing. I'm sure there are people out there who are truly interested in sharing their faith, beliefs, or religion with you, but it's hard for me to believe that a lot of the people coming up to complete strangers with whom they have no ties or connections with are really concerned about their spiritual well-being. This kind of "sharing" seems so impersonal and superficial; I feel like if someone really was interested in my well-being and respected who I was, they would want to get to know me because they are interested in me and not get to know me with the intention or goal of converting me. If the opportunity eventually came up for them to share their faith or beliefs with me, they would do so but not in a forceful or suggestive/pressured way, which was the feeling I was starting to get last night. I would be open to learning how to read the Koran and learning what it says, studying it like a text book, but I do not appreciate someone being interested in me solely to convert me. Furthermore, I've grown up with a strong Christian foundation and am deeply rooted in my faith, so I'm definitely not the ideal candidate/subject for conversion. But anyhow, long story short, last night's encounter definitely made me feel a bit uneasy. I'm not sure if I still want to have a language exchange tonight, but maybe I'll just play it by ear and see how it turns out.

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