(originally written back in February)

‘Twas a Friday when I met up with Abdulmajeed (who prefers simply to be called ‘Majeed’), who has never had New York-style pizza, and thinks America is just great. We originally planned on meeting in that bastion of American mystique we so obliquely call Starbucks (notable both for its environmental concern and its willingness to sue people without much reason) which inexplicably closes at 4PM on Friday afternoons. Coming into Cabell library I see the baristas pulling down the gates and sweeping up the floor and all of those general closing actions those of us who have either worked in food service or have craved popcorn chicken at eleven at night are so familiar with. As the green-aproned workers wiped down the counters with Windex, I frantically dial Majeed on my new and rather swank Moto RAZR, hoping I haven’t missed him, that this is a cell number, that I can find this guy and change plans.

Turns out he was right behind me.

Part of me expected the traditional, stereotypical Saudi man. Another part of me was completely unsurprised when he showed up with sideburns, a goatee, and an Abercrombie teeshirt. We shook hands, and damn if he doesn’t have a good handshake, and agreed we’d go get some pizza. At least, he said, as he had just eaten, he’d come and hang out while I ate with my good buddy Tim, who tagged along like a tall, bald, Irish wolfhound. Majeed, as I’ve said, had not, and because he did not deign to join us in our consumption, has not yet had New York-style pizza. But it smelled heavenly, and even he enjoyed it.

It really was a multicultural affair. An Italian, an Irishman, and a Saudi transfer student grabbing a pie at a pizza place owned by Hispanics. Only, as they say, in America (which isn’t quite true, but true enough for the aphorism to merit attention) – and it was about America we spoke. We shared sexist jokes – because that’s what guys do – about the inability of the fairer sex to drive, including my sister’s six-year annual car accident streak, which flowed from Majeed’s interest in the ability of American guys to have girlfriends. In Saudi Arabia, the good man said, have a girlfriend and it’s “off to the jails.”

It went on like that. There appears to be very little a man can do and not be sent off to the jails. Majeed found equally notable to relative ease with which one can acquire and consume alcohol, even considering Virginia’s fairly strict blue laws and the dominance of the Ukrop family, which does not sell alcohol at their stores, over grocery shopping in Central Virginia. Incidentally, the Ukrop family came up particularly often in considering the strict Wahabbi government in Saudi Arabia. Our fine Saudi friend had been unaware of the existence of sects of Christianity that discouraged or forbade drinking.

We also talked about the process of language acquisition, particularly foreign languages. Ok. So, I’m really terribly envious of him for having the resource of living, at least for a while, in a country that uses his desired language on a regular basis. It’s a brilliant resource and he’s incredibly lucky to have it. It means that there are situations where you’ll have to use it on a daily basis outside of the classroom. It means you actually need to know how to ask where you can find the milk or the pretzels or if parking is permitted between the hours of six and eight because you can’t quite figure out what the sign is saying and so you stopped a kind passerby to make your strange, halting query. You stammer it out at first but over time, you know, over time it gets a little better and a little better and damn if eventually you can’t hold a conversation with a couple of big, loud natives and only have to ask about a couple of words like “term” and “cliché.” It was pretty awesome.

I’ve never had that. Language is tough stuff if you don’t get to practice all the time, and as much as I have a natural ability, always you need to practice and practice. Majeed came to the US to learn English and Accounting, so that when he returns to the dunes and beaten cities of his home place, he can stand up and get a job crunching the books for those American businesses that poor so much money into the region. A year and a half in, though, and he hasn’t picked up enough English to start taking English-language courses in his field. So far, it’s still just learning the lingua franca of world finance. He has the same problem anyone learning a foreign language has: when he goes home, he hangs out with his Saudi friends and speaks Arabic. English doesn’t occupy his day they way it probably should, and to some extent, he has isolated himself into an expat community rather than try to participate in the larger culture he’s presently living in.

This gets me thinking about the cultural aspect of the dominance of English: what is the proper role of a lingua franca, an international language? Maybe this sort of linguistic bloating is inevitable; the language of the dominant economic and cultural force always spreads, and today, there are about a billion speakers of English, over half of which only know it as a second language. Majeed here represents a pretty unavoidable reality, and that’s the growing dominance of English over local tongues in trade, to the extent that a Saudi kid feels the need to travel halfway around the world to learn it enough to be successful. But this has always been the case, hasn’t it? From Greek to Latin to Italian to French to English and, in the future, perhaps Chinese or Portuguese or Hindi, it always becomes necessary to communicate according to the dominant mode. It opens doors to money, power, influence, or simply opportunity. It’s only avoidable if you only want to operate in the limited sphere of your surroundings – but even here in the United States, Spanish is rapidly becoming a necessity for business discourse. Even Barack Obama says “Si, se puede!” at his campaign stops.

I also discovered that, much as George Bush would say otherwise, the world ain’t clamoring for democracy. Majeed tells me that the Saudi people are relatively satisfied with their lives, and do their best to get by. This, he tells me, is just how life is. It’s something I’ve been toying around with – that oppression is impossible, and that the human person can always be free. What Majeed tells me more than anything else, when I read the implications, is this: human freedom is not found in civil rights. The things he finds most notable about the United States isn’t freedom, but license. We can dress scandalously and drink beer. We’re free to be good and we’re free to be bad. We can dance and we can shop and we can move about without consequence, more or less. But is this what freedom is?

Is it possible that freedom is more than the ability to buy a Porsche and wear a miniskirt and watch Seinfeld?

I can’t help but think about the post-Soviet states. When democracy and capitalism came through, everyone celebrated. It was the triumph of the century, right? The end of the Cold War had come. But in the end, all it did was give the people walkmans and Coca-Cola, and within a few years, people were complaining, no, lamenting the fact that everyone had become insular and materialist. The community-mindedness Communism had fostered had eroded. Meanwhile, all of their lofty democratically-elected governments were cancerous with corruption. The fall of the Wall brought no paradise. And all they’d been hearing about the Communist years was how horrible it had been. But, they said, at least then everyone was fed. Everyone had a job. Was it worse, or was it just different? I can’t imagine how it must have been to hear endlessly about how your happy childhood hadn’t really been happy at all. But those were the lives they lived. Weren’t they happy, then? Wasn’t life still life, then?

In Saudi Arabia, should democracy come, I’m sure there would be celebration in the streets. But just a few years in, they’d be lamenting the decline in religious devotion, the increasingly-lax morals, and the bad influence of Western movies.

Just what I was thinking about.