There Is a Moral to My Vacation

We laid together. I held her tight against me, legs folded, intimately, her back into my breast, my nose in her hair; our final hours together that would end long before the sun came up. The radio clicked on. Four o'clock arrived. "You gotta be kidding me." I pulled her closer, refusing to get out of bed, my last time in that bed, my last time with her. She reached behind her and held me by the back of the thigh. Talk radio babbled on about Sarkozy, Obama, and Wiki-leaks.
I pushed my nose into her neck one last time, then dragged myself out, grumbling at the radio and it's stupid clock and stupid 4 a.m. I got in the shower, got dressed, and gathered the last of my things. She laid in bed and watched me the way I had watched her so many mornings when she put her books in her bag and ate breakfast and sipped coffee. She went to the toilet, came back out, and put her arms around me. "I'm gonna be late if you hold me much longer. I didn't realize how much stuff I forgot to pack last night." She laid back in bed and I finished gathering.
I wrapped my neck in two scarves and pulled on my coat. Just before leaving, I crouched onto the mattress that laid on her floor. "This is it," I told her, trying to savor the last moments before walking out of the warm embrace of her flat, her bed, her eyes, and leaving into the cold morning to catch my flight. She looked back at me with a gaze I didn't understand. I kissed her goodbye anyway.
Staggering with a hiking backpack behind me, a school backpack on my front, and a guitar switching hands to allow them turns to hide in my pockets, I made my way further from her without looking back. The sun kept far away from the day. My breath lingered behind me. I reached my meeting point where Zaheer waited for me. We greeted with a handshake, put my things in the car, and pulled away for Paris.

"Where are you from in North America?" he asked me. We spoke slowly on account of the early hour and my minimal ability in his tongue, but shared polite conversation.
"Texas," I told him. "And you?"
"Pakistan," Zaheer replied.
"Oh, where in Pakistan?"
"Near to Islamabad."
I nodded, then realized I had no idea where that was, so asked.
"Close to the north." He asked about Texas.
"It's difficult because people say, 'Where are you from?' and I tell them 'Texas,' and they go 'Ahh,' with disappointment."
Zaheer looked at me confused. "Why?"
"Because of Bush."
"Oh, right," he replied understanding. He laughed. "It's difficult for me because I'm from Pakistan so everyone thinks I'm a terrorist."
I didn't know how to respond, so sat quiet. His comment didn't make me uncomfortable, but, is it worse to be called a terrorist than it is a Bush-lover? Or is the worst part not what people generalize us as, but that people make generalizations at all? I sat thinking about it, then looked out the window to the misty French countryside. The sun still hid under its blankets.
Zaheer and I spoke some more. Zaheer moved to France in 2003. He told me how beautiful the mountains in the North of Pakistan are - the mountains I have heard about only as terrorist hideaways - and how there is not much brush, but it is a lovely place. When I asked if he preferred France or Pakistan, he responded telling me, "France is good for work, but Pakistan is my home. People always prefer their home." I sat in his car, love behind me and holidays ahead, thinking about what he said. "Do you want to sleep?"
"No," I told him. Then, "Well, maybe."
He pushed a CD into the player. A language came on, not French. It sounded Arabic. A man spoke in verses, then another man chanted something I never heard before. I sat in the car beside Zaheer, barreling the ribbons that laced the hills of France between Angers and Paris, the sun peaking from its covers, and I was read the Qur'an.

My eyes opened as we pulled into a gas station. "Did you have a good sleep?"
"Oh, yes. Very good." I rubbed the crick out of my neck.
We went in for coffee. The stop was full of other early morning commuters who stopped for coffee and breakfast, gas and the toilet. Zaheer and I sipped vending machine coffee and talked some more, then got back in the car and on the road.
Further on, Zaheer asked me, "Do you have a religion?"
"My family is all Christians."
"Oh." He nodded. His words came out slowly as English was his third language and his accent was thick. "Protestant or Catholic?"
"Protestant," I told him.
"Christian, Jewiff, and Islam all have one God. They are not so different. They are very similar." Now I nodded excited to hear someone of faith explain to me what I believed. He continued, "But other religions like Buddhism and Hindu, they have many Gods and this is not right." My nodding stopped. "There is one God. If there are many Gods, it is like if there are many presidents. They would fight and nothing would be right." He seemed to have a bitter taste in his mouth at the thought of polytheism. I tried to explain my view.
"I believe religions are all the same, even if they have one God or many gods." Zaheer started to defend, then stopped himself to let me finish. "I'm not saying it's right to have many gods, but I think all religions are the same because religions are made of people who recognize that they are small and that something, if it's one God or many, is so great and so much bigger than they are, and they want to celebrate that. I don't think it is important how many gods you believe in, but that we all recognize that something is bigger than we are and we celebrate it." I paused and there was quiet. Only the road hummed. Then I said, "All paths of worship lead to God." Although he disagreed with one God and many gods being the same, Zaheer liked this statement. I didn't bother to tell him that Krishna said it in the Bhagavad-gita, Hindu's holy book.
We talked about Muslims in the US and the mosque in New York City.
"I was so frustrated by it. Why do we argue about that?" I told him. "We're supposed to be the United States of America, freedoms and all this, but we don't want Muslims to build a mosque somewhere because it offends us." I got fired up. "Muslims were in the buildings too! They were the fire fighters and police officers and victims."
Zaheer put into words what my jumbled mind struggled with. "It is politics." I became quiet. "They want to use this thing to keep the people mad at each other so that we think about the wrong things and don't see what the people with power are really doing."
The sun raised its eyebrows and we sped into the tail-end of traffic that snaked into Paris.

On an open road, the drive from Angers to Paris takes roughly three hours, perhaps less. Zaheer and I made good time until we hit the staggering traffic that wove for another three hours into the city. As we reached further into town the stagnant cars became more frustrating to us both. I had to meet a friend. Zaheer had to get to work. He mumbled slight profanities under his breath as we sat at a stop light with cars curving one way and another, perpendicular to each other, car hoods inches from car doors and mopeds trickling through slight gaps between bumpers. "Damn it," he breathed. "Shit. This pisses me off."
I sat thinking to myself, Why would I think a Muslim wouldn't get frustrated with traffic or say curse words?
I breathed quietly to myself and considered the drive and the three months I spent in Europe; three months meeting friends of friends, strangers, drug dealers, prostitutes, goths, Muslims, socialists, atheists, artists, activists, coffee shop proprietors, local bar tenders, North Africans, Dutch, French, Italians, tourists, beggars, vagabonds, and residents. All the perspectives I discovered, all the people I met, rolled over each other in my mind as I sat quiet beside Zaheer, considered them, and breathed.

I paid him the fifteen Euros we agreed on for the ride and took my things out of his car. We shook hands. "Thank you so much, Zaheer."
"You are welcome. You are my first time to do this."
"Oh, really? I hope you enjoyed it."
"Yes. Have a good day."
"You too, Zaheer." I put one bag on my back, one bag on my front, and as I reached for the guitar, Zaheer honked. I turned around. He waved to me with a smile.
I waved back to him, got the guitar and walked downstairs into the metro station to meet my friend one last time before going home.