This photo on this webpage illustrates what I'm talking about pretty well
http://www.repubblica.it/spettacoli-e-cultura/2010/10/31/foto/street_art_baci_e_amplessi_sui_muri-8606468/1/?ref=HRESS-7

It's number 13 out of 14, with the Muslim girl walking by the mural.

Something disturbing

One girl comes to study, my best student. Before, the one major distinction with her was the fact that she would watch TV, and write her favorite stories in prose in English for me to check later. Doing this, her English has improved at an unbelievable speed. I'm able to have long conversations with her and only rarely is she unable to follow what I mean. I dont hardly need to simplify what I say at all. What made this even more special was the fact that she first started with me knowing nearly nothing (or else she wanted to start again from scratch, having studied some maybe at the lycee). She is very devout -- often telling me stories of how science is just now affirming the truth and wisdom of what the Prophet announced to the world 1400 years ago-- ''Science has said that the ideal is to fast one day for every ten normal days, which we do already, fasting 30 days in Ramadan and 6 more during the year! And science has proved this to be the right way!''. Most of her stories are moral allegories that concern parents and children, and the need to respect and obey them.

While her earnestness was unusual, none of this disturbed me until last night she said how she has stopped listening to music now, ''because I know the truth'' after watching something about it on television. So now its only drums and singing, but no instruments at all.

In my life I've gone through this same thing -- taking 40 of my heavy metal albums to sell at CD Warehouse back when I was an impressionable Freshman under the influence of an extreme-right church in Tennessee. In our service, it was acapella. The disturbing thing about this is the self-assurance much more than the self-denial, and of course the influence of television. And its disturbing in how it makes me sad, there's an even larger chasm between where I am and where this girl is.

The last thing after our lesson that night, I gave her two magazines that she could read to study in English, THE NEW YORKER and the SAUDI ARAMCO magazine. I flipped through the first one and took a pen to whatever was there that might be too risque, sometimes I took out a whole page. Did I feel ashamed about what those pages had on them? Not a bit. We can sit at a table and bond, certainly, but I feel a huge gulf between the place she is coming from and the one from where I am. If she were to occupy my inner life for some moments, it would be shocking--the books, the magazines, the values I have. But of course, those were things that would be difficult for the people from my old church as well -- they would get alone magnificently, if only they were to meet and bypass those barriers they erect between each other. Barriers that don't exist for me so much.