BELONGING TO MANY WORLDS BUT BELONGING TO NONE

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FROM THE MARGINS | BY PATRICK AZADIAN
Los Angeles Times Valley Edition | Glendale News-Press | July 29 2006

Of beards, bombs and hypocrisy

"I had a feeling you'd be calling," my therapist said when I gave him a jingle a few weeks ago. I was a bit surprised. After all, Jake is supposed to be a psychologist, not a fortune-teller.

His response was clever: "Well, I knew the World Cup ended, and I figured there would be a void in your life."

Right, he was about the void(s) -- but not about the cause of my phone call. That week, I considered myself cured. I had called in for someone else.

When I escorted my out-of-town friend to his office for some advice on bulimia, Jake had another observation up his sleeve. He said: "Patrick, there is a certain Zidane look about you today."

For those of you who are not familiar with soccer, Zinedine Zidane is the famous (now infamous) French star of Algerian ancestry (this last bit of information should be irrelevant for the politically correct). Zidane head-butted Italian defender Marco Materazzi during the recent World Cup final. Allegedly, Materazzi had some harsh words for Zidane and his family on the field.

I did not tell Jake that was not necessarily a compliment.

Immediately, I knew my procrastination on shaving my facial hair had produced undesirable dividends. On a clean-cut day, I could pass as a Southern European. Better yet, I can even pose as a Romansch speaking Swiss.

But avoidance of this daily Western male ritual can instantaneously rocket-launch me over to the troubled region we all refer to as the Middle East.

I did not take Jake's warning seriously; it took me a few days before I took up my razor.

His comments were the beginning of a few days of strangers engaging me on the topic of Israel's attack on Lebanon.

First there was the Irish Roy at a club on Friday night as we were both headed to talk to the same redhead named Sciera. As our swords crossed for a second, and with little introduction, Roy asked (read with a heavy Dublin accent): "What do you think about Israel's invasion of Lebanon?"

This was not the first time I had regretted not taking my dad's manly advice seriously. He used to say: "Dgha jaan, khntroom em ed morookud makree (Dear son, shave that beard, please). Oh well, tomorrow was a new day.

Later that night, there was Dave at Fred 62 on Vermont. As I positioned myself at the coffee bar (individual patrons do not get a table), he turned to me and after making it clear that the waitress was his girlfriend, asked me a question on the topic of the evening: "What do you think about Hezbollah's shelling of Israeli towns?"

Neither Roy nor Dave could engage me in a political debate. It was Friday night. And both inquiries were missing something. As corny as this may sound, neither of them asked me what I thought about the individual lives lost or damaged on both sides.

I have never experienced war. But some friends and family members have been caught in the middle of conflicts that they had nothing to do with.

For some, there is no escape from a lifetime struggle with the memory of heavy shelling of their neighborhoods, or the horrid bombardment of their residences. For others, the images of open corpses are a lifetime curse since childhood. And the memory of those who inflicted those evils upon them, regardless of their political or religious ideology, will not be easily forgotten.

We live in sad times.

Hypocrisy, use of violent force to resolve conflicts and utter disregard for human life seems to be the motto of our times.

In response to Zidane's reaction to the verbal insult, the French sport magazine L'Equipe wrote: "This morning, Zinedine, what do we tell our children, and all those for whom you were the living role model for all times?"

That's relatively easy, an apology will do the trick.

But what message do the men in power have for the children of today?

Copyright 2006 Glendale News Press