Article

Change

Freedom of Belief

Middle East

21 November 2023

7 min read

Letter from Amman: discovering resilience around the dinner table

Dining in a different culture lets Belle TIndall contemplate struggle and belonging across the heartlands of the Middle East.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

a Lebanese meal of many dishes displayed on a table.

Did you know that a traditional Lebanese meal is usually served in four or five courses?

First comes the vegetarian feast; a smoky eggplant dip, a mountain of pita, grape leaves that are rolled around vegetables, rice and nuts, bowls of pickled turnips and ribboned cucumber.

Then a hint of meat is introduced; chicken wings and slow-cooked liver, beef meatballs unfused with onion and parsley and smothered in breadcrumbs, all served alongside more dips, more vegetables and more pita.

The third time the servers come around, you are presented with the climax of the meal - a plate of painstakingly cooked lamb and chicken skewers. Only once that has been enjoyed can you expect desert before a final course of fresh mint tea and little almondy-flavoured treats.

Each time the servers re-appear, you find yourself convinced that there cannot be enough room on the table to accommodate yet another round of plates. And each time you realise that you were wrong. Lebanese cuisine, similar to many other Middle Eastern cuisines in this respect, is designed to be enjoyed slowly, continually, and communally.

I did not know this.

When I found myself at a Lebanese restaurant in their neighbouring country of Jordan (affectionately referred to as ‘the oasis of the Middle East’ throughout the evening), I naturally loaded up my plate on the first round, wondering why everyone around me was being so overly polite with their miniature portions. That was, of course, my mistake. By the third (and arguably best) course, I was defeated. My far savvier dining companions that evening were Christians leaders from across Jordan, the Middle East, and beyond. Among those present were Anglican bishops and archbishops, those whose provinces spanned countries and even continents. Leaders from the Oriental Orthodox family – representing Coptic Orthodox, Syriac, Indian, Greek and Armenian. There were Maronite leaders from Lebanon, Lutheran leaders from Jordan, and Anglican leaders from Israel to name but a few. And then there was me. I am twenty-seven years or so into this Christian life of mine, and as well as being exposed to six or seven different expressions of ‘church’ in my lifetime, I also read a lot. So, I had kidded myself into thinking that I understood the immense diversity encapsulated in the term ‘Christianity’. It turns out that I was wrong, again (are you beginning to sense the theme of my trip?).

If there is such a thing as sacred geography, I think I may have experienced it that afternoon. I was able to soak in the past, and it was glorious. Almost as glorious as the glimpse of the present that I was granted that evening.

Utterly honoured to be at that table in Jordan’s capital city of Amman, I was exposed to more diversity in that one meal than I had experienced in my entire life. I am truly not exaggerating when I say that there wasn’t a single minute spent at that restaurant where I wasn’t soaking up something entirely new; whether that be a story, a statistic, a taste or a custom. There were seemingly endless details to learn about differing expressions of a faith that I knew so well, lived out in contexts that I knew not at all. The whole experience was a sledgehammer to any notions, consciously denied yet subconsciously held, that Christianity had come to set up its largest camp in Europe.

On the contrary; we are, at present, but a quarter of the story.

Furthermore, the Middle East, in many respects, is the birthplace of Christianity. These countries are the ‘biblical heartlands’, as Rupert Shortt puts it. The Christian presence there dates back to the lifetime of Jesus Christ himself, who travelled and taught throughout the then Roman-occupied lands. As a Biblical studies scholar, one of my favourite oddities of Christianity is that it is, to a degree, situated. There’s human context involved; tangible, immersible, learnable context. The death and resurrection of the Son of God happened in human history. Of course, Christianity simultaneously bursts the banks of such contexts; in a far truer way it is unplaceable and certainly uncontainable, transcending time, space and matter. It resides beyond all that we can measure. God is, after all, over all things, through all things, and in all things (to borrow a phrase from Paul… who wrote this in a particular letter, to a church rooted in the particular city of Ephesus, during the particular timeframe of 60-62 AD. So you see my point…).

But still, the context is there: the depth of history, the breadth of legacy. As Augustine once said of the Church: it is on a pilgrimage through time. And I would suggest that nowhere is such a pilgrimage more obvious than the ‘biblical heartlands’ of the Middle East. Indeed, one of the variables that fed into me being embarrassingly eager at the dinner table that evening was the appetite that had been worked up that day. An appetite caused by venturing into the Jordanian wilderness, walking along the Jordan River, journeying up Mt. Nebo, looking out over the landscape that one can find detailed in the pages of the Bible.

‘Not a bad place to have a cup of tea, aye?’, remarked the Archbishop of Dublin (who knows these regions well), as we sat next in the grounds of a Franciscan Monastery on the top of Mt. Nebo, looking out over the Dead Sea and all that surrounds it.

I began to ponder at length what faith looks like when it is laced with defiance. By the third course I was beginning to appreciate (albeit in an incredibly limited sense) what hope feels like when it must be stubborn to survive.

Over a long and shared meal, the kind that makes getting to know the stranger opposite you quite inevitable, I was able to hear about what it’s like to be a Christian in the Middle East in the here and now. The hospitality extended to me at the table included me being so generously provided with stories of what it can be like to be a Christian in their contexts.

Of course, many stories shared throughout my time in Jordan were pertaining to the on-going Israel-Palestine conflict. I was able to speak with a Greek Orthodox Bishop about the Greek Orthodox church, filled to bursting with refugees, which was struck and destroyed in a Gaza City blast. I was able to hear about the Anglican-run Cancer Treatment Centre of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which was hit and damaged in a similar way.

I learnt about the Christian communities who are readying themselves to respond to the needs and trauma of those who may, eventually, be able to seek refuge in their countries. I heard compassion flow from people whose eyes hadn’t for one moment turned away from the on-going plight of the Palestinian, nor the Israeli, people.

I also realised that evening, just how much there is much to be learnt about the faith that one has taken for granted, from those for whom the very same faith is a source of discrimination, even danger. The pressure that 360 million Christians across the world are living under is referred to by Rupert Shortt as ‘christianophobia’ and profoundly coined a ‘360-degree threat’ by Janine Di Giovanni.

I heard how it feels to receive word that members of your community have been executed for their Christian faith; how such news incites instant fear and unimaginable grief. I spoke to one man who plans to leave the country he’s currently residing in as soon as a certain political leader is no longer present, because according to him, this sympathetic leader’s presence is the only reason his Christian faith has been tolerated thus far.

And very quickly, I realised that I was no longer learning about these Christian leaders and the communities they represent, I was learning from them. I began to ponder at length what faith looks like when it is laced with defiance. By the third course I was beginning to appreciate (albeit in an incredibly limited sense) what hope feels like when it must be stubborn to survive. I glimpsed first-hand the difference that resilience can make to one’s compassion. Like I say, I was intending to learn about these communities, but I found myself learning from them.

Sitting at a table in a country that I had never been to before, with a group of people who were all strangers to me before this trip, trying to wrap my head around contexts that I have no experience of, the words of the afore-mentioned Janine Di Giovanni sprang to mind,

‘It (Christianity) combines ritual, which soothes in anxious times, with a vast sense of belonging to something much larger and greater than yourself.’

How, in that situation, where I had utterly misunderstood the meal-time etiquette, could it be that I felt a sense of belonging? On one level, it could very well have an awful lot to do with how naturally hospitality seems to come to people in Jordan, and it appears, the Middle East in general. But, I would suggest that it is something else too; something larger, something greater, something unseen.

Perhaps Christian community, in accordance with the Son of God upon which it is built, is both completely situated in one’s individual time and place, and simultaneously utterly un-containable.

Article

Change

Politics

Psychology

5 November 2024

5 min read

How to be a wise diplomat about the election result

It’s not just American citizens weighing-up and trading-off.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson writes on geopolitics. He is also a business executive and holds a doctorate in theology.

An ambassador presents credential to President Trump

President Trump accepts credentials from Indonesian ambassador M. Lutfi.

White House via Wikimedia Commons.

The American election result, whatever the case, is a landmark event in geopolitics. And here, it is unclear which result is better for the world in the long-term, given the ambiguous motives, interests and intentions of its main characters.

Whereas the Biden Administration led by the Democrats has been fraught with war, the Trump Administration was comparatively peaceful, with breakthroughs such as the historic Abraham Accords. Yet, the rhetoric of President Trump is aggressive and divisive.

Despite mainstream media assertions focused on the clear best choice in the election, a balanced perspective is necessary involving consideration of trade-offs between what the parties and their leaders each offer. This balance, however, is difficult to achieve as polarisation encourages retrenchment into simple views.

As the American election approaches, it is worth considering what a diplomatic approach to an election transition might entail. Here we can look to the example of Henry Kissinger, whose diplomatic mindset is illustrated in Barry Gewen’s The Inevitability of Tragedy. Gewen eloquently illustrates the Kissingerian – even if often cold-hearted – approach to the consideration of trade-offs in diplomacy.

Gewen traces the early-life experience of Kissinger, a German Jew forced to flee Nazi persecution, both serving in the US Army and attending Harvard. Unlike his American peers, Kissinger understood through personal experience that authoritarianism could rise through democratic means, Adolph Hitler the primary example.

It is partly for this reason that Kissinger was willing as US Secretary of State to intervene in the affairs of foreign states to halt dictators emerging through democratic processes. The trade-off was here between respect of democratic process and the possibility of dictatorship, a trade-off which Americans without German-Nazi experience would never understand and which they saw as deeply unsettling.

Kissinger is the archetypal diplomat. His example is worth reflecting on in the wake of the American elections. Kissinger approached geopolitics with little emotion, instead considering what course of action in a particular situation served as the least worst evil available.

He engaged across a wide variety of networks, talking with individuals who would not speak with each other. And he maintained a considerable sense of calm throughout his career as both an actor and commentator, responding to events as they developed.

An initial consideration in emerging from the American elections is that too much emotionality – amplified by political polarization – will expose politicians, diplomats and the public to risk. Emotion colours careful, strategic calculation of various scenarios and actions across potential scenarios.

‘People constantly show you who they are; we are just too busy to notice,’

An effective diplomatic (or strategist) will carefully consider what might happen and think through potential steps in case these realities actually transpire, while recognising that too much anticipation risks cascading into fantasy. Too much emotion impedes this careful process of reflection and deliberation as part of the development of strategy.

A second element of effective diplomacy and strategy is to consider people as they are, rather than rely on superficial descriptions in the media, biased second-hand accounts or who or what one hopes another person is. People’s motives, intentions and interests are not easily discernible at first glance, instead requiring careful probing and questioning.

At the same time, there are few more accurate sayings than ‘People constantly show you who they are; we are just too busy to notice,’ conveying that counterparts are always providing information as to who they are, few careful or disciplined enough to mask their real thinking.

An effective diplomat might consider the early upbringing – much like that of Kissinger – that shapes a person’s character and behaviour, if not their worldview informing action.

Consider Donald J. Trump, learning right from wrong on the streets of New York City via the mentorship of lawyer Roy Cohn, who served as Chief Counsel to Joseph McCarthy while McCarthy prosecuted potential American communist sympathisers.

Cohn’s rules of life, work and play were as follows (these summarized by a friend well-acquainted with Cohn and his colleagues): ‘One, attack, attack, attack! Two, deny everything! Three, always claim victory!’ The logic of these three rules of life are readily understandable when considering the harsh New York realities within which Cohn and later Trump operated.

These considerations are overlooked, however, amid the onslaught of media which fails to consider what really shapes the character of a man or woman.

Curiosity, a critical mindset and self-restraint in the face of the human temptation to reach rapid and satisfying answers are here necessary, as part of figuring out what exactly is driving action.

A wise diplomat would pay particular attention to these pivotal factors – such as the influence of a long-standing mentor or advisor – as they might manifest in the present. This requires an intellectually honest and serious consideration of the worldview that shapes a counterpart, rather than considering superficial media commentary.

Third, a wise diplomat will maintain relations across a wide variety of networks, understanding that it is fine to talk with two or multiple individuals whose own relations are fractured (in fact, these strains in relations can be beneficial within diplomacy, the diplomat in this case able to play broker as he or she needs or wishes).

The maintenance of broad networks is vital, because this enables action under a wide array of potential circumstances, understanding that anything can happen (we are here reminded of Harold MacMillan’s saying “Events, dear boy, events!”) And a key lesson in diplomacy and in the cultivation of strategy is that, once crises unfold, it is the preparatory work in developing networks and alliances that counts; little new network-formation is possible afterwards.

The previous two points suggest that a wise diplomat will not pay too much attention to what is in the media, but will instead consider their own learning gleaned through in-person interactions with others, as well as the perspective of their most trusted contacts. Curiosity, a critical mindset and self-restraint in the face of the human temptation to reach rapid and satisfying answers are here necessary, as part of figuring out what exactly is driving action, and what can in turn be done to shape action in accordance with interests.

Finally, an effective diplomat will not try to play God, serving as the arbiter of right or wrong, adopting instead a more considered approach anticipating and responding to circumstances as they gradually or quickly evolve. Effective strategy requires an aloof approach (caring – but not caring too much), removing the self from a given situation so as not to allow natural human vices such as presumptiveness, arrogance or short-term self-interest to affect judgment.

And the American election bring with them a number of trade-offs, these to be weighed carefully by American citizens, as well as by diplomats and strategists in other countries. These trade-offs will be considered most effectively if approached with calmness – the aloof, even if cold-hearted, approach personified by Henry Kissinger.

In an age of catastrophising, emphasing emotion, it is easy to descend rapidly into despair, rather than consider action from a long-term perspective. Diplomacy and strategy require the latter, which will be a key to success for those who emerge effective in advancing their interests in the wake of the American elections.