Underthecurrent

When I was finishing studying there was a joke about listening to Mad World all the time for people in our course as a coping method, a kind of meme-before-memes.

Right now it feels like the world has gone crazy all around us but our life is somehow still normal.  The work we were doing before the pandemic continued, projects planned for the year are on track.  A trip to a wedding was cancelled, but it was just an air ticket because I’d been too lazy to book hotels and connections.  This year had been a year where we planned to close in for a bit and focus on some things anyways.

If you’ve ever really been in a storm, there’s a strange feeling in the air before the worst part arrives, a literal eerie calmness that can feel a bit dreamlike.  I’ve felt it twice in my life.  Sometimes, it feels like this now.

I walk through the city and see all the gaps, niche shops suddenly empty and cafes where the fixtures have disappeared and the sign is scrubbed off.  On the weekend the parks and shores are abnormally full because everything else that would normally occupy people – sports, community events, parties – has been cancelled for almost half the year already.    The fallout hasn’t hit us but it’s happening around us and we wait and watch for more signs.

People where we live have generally been calm: no one bought all the toilet paper or groceries like a lunatic, everyone dutifully wears masks everywhere and seems to be patient with each other, people are generous where they can be and grateful for help.

Listening to some maudlin song while the worst possible things in life were some exams, imagine.

[Two years earlier]

If the trip were three acts, the first was Latin America, the second was the Muslim world and the third will be East Asia.  This was a practical accident, a decision made by the ease of connections, a consideration of seasons and a handful of places that we knew we probably wanted to visit combined with others that made sense on the way.

Today we took a ferry through the Maldives, the equivalent of a public bus in a nation of islands.  Most people, who maybe haven’t thought much about the Maldives, have a picture that looks like over-water bungalows and pristine white beaches.  This is true.  Also true is the comically dense main island of Male, scaffolds and high rises with what may be more scooters than people, and the small towns scattered through the atolls.  While the resorts have cocktails, and I assume bacon, the rest of the country is strictly halal.  The hipsters in Male, there are many if fashion is the arbitrator, don’t have craft beer but they do have fifth wave coffee shops with arty magazines and what felt like many pizza options on a per capita basis.  Male is also home to what has to be the most scenic Burger King in the world.  You’re not permitted to run around in revealing swimwear, unless you stay on a resort island or find one of the designated secluded “bikini beaches,” but it seemed like every version of Muslim dress was on the streets today, hijab to niqaab.

*

Our first stop had been Dubai, which reminded me strangely of… Las Vegas.  In the way you stumble across small renditions of European landmarks out of context, or find versions of famous restaurants tucked in odd places (like a mall or a casino), or how the whole place is designed to allow you to avoid going outside if the weather isn’t cooperative and to live in a climate controlled bubble of entertainment you never particularly thought about wanting but suddenly wonder if you should see.  The lines between secular and Shariah were, admittedly, sometimes confusing.  Of all the Muslim places we visited Dubai felt distinctly more conservative, though purposefully more globalized, at least in terms of incorporating Western and European references.  I wanted Islamic art and Bedouins, and found some of this, but also found myself culturally disoriented at a Shake Shack after more hours than I would care to admit inside a hypnotic mall.

It’s a complicated place.

We moved on to Sri Lanka and ended up, inadvertently, mostly in two Muslim towns, even though Islam is a minority religion.    Instead of beer and techno music, watching the sun go down on the beach in quiet with families seated all around us doing the same.  In the evening, when the heat dropped, children would play in the streets, people ran errands, we’d explore.  In the morning, we got up before the sand was hot to hike out past the elephants and crocodiles in search of empty ocean.  It was peaceful and we were reluctant to move closer to the nightlife areas nearby, permitted and tolerated, but somehow suddenly jarring.

Then, the Maldives, where we still didn’t miss alcohol.  We were chronically unable to remember when everything would close for prayer but otherwise spent an idyllic stretch watching ocean fauna and considering endless shades of blue.  Here, we celebrated Eid al-Fitr, which culminated in a community show where we understood pretty much nothing and enjoyed absolutely everything.  In the Maldives, it felt like the lines and expectations were clear but not unfriendly, we met long term foreign residents who shared the same sentiments.

Finally we ended up in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia, where the majority are Muslim, and Malay people are Muslim by law, but diversity in religion is tolerated and officially celebrated.  The friendly chaos of KL charmed us, even if we spent an unusual amount of time trapped in the transit system with the wrong mysterious plastic tokens in hand; we seriously regretted not spending more time in Malaysia, planning our eventual return before we’d even left.

*

The more I saw the more I knew I didn’t really understand any of it.

The visual and theological aspects of Christianity are familiar to me, I’ve spent more time in that world.  I can’t pretend to grasp Islam in the same way at all, even if I have cursory education respecting the history and rules and some of the factions and debates.  I hesitate to write how I felt in each of the places because it is so specific to my experience, and I’m wary of being overly enthusiastic or critical.  “I had a great time in this place and therefore the people are good” / “I had bad experiences in this place and therefore the culture is bad.”  But I’m glad to have had the opportunity to pass through each of these places, and to see them in relative succession, to try and experience the differences between each, even in a clumsy way.