women
On the way out of town we pass the huge new ‘halal’ slaughter house. It may be modern, but thankfully, the shepherds walking the landscapes maintain the lifestyle Mesopotamia developed and Abraham perfected. As we cross the plains the huddled houses blend into the landscape. Only their carefully shaped piles of dung stand out. Each stack is built to allow rain to run off every carefully, hand shaped block of manure, ready for winter heating. In a treeless world nothing could be more ergonomic. Walk the animals, feed them plenty of summer grass, and in return they give you winter cheese and fuel. We pass grannies squatting and stirring their dried soup mixes, another step towards winter. It’s the season to ferment wheat with yogurt, grind it, dry it, and store it for one of the healthiest diets the earth contains. Young girls squat with their sheep, content in the silence of the wide plain or steep mountains, alone, but for the sheep and dog. Mothers bend double in garden patches hoeing. As the bus whizzes by they don’t even glance up.
How different from the young girl who joined us for tea. Hair dyed in blond streaks over black, nails in bright green, with ultra large jewelry in every spare place, she lives on a small pension left to her when her father died. Her day consists of moving from friend to friend, drinking tea, and chatting. While the lifestyle of the other women appeals to me much more, this young lady walked through an open door and gained Eternal Life. Or shall we say that God can meet people where ever they are? He used her propensity for drinking tea and being available to help her bump into people who shared the Good News with her. Now she uses her gift of tea drinking to meet others.
Not to say that you need green nails to find an open door. The next woman I met found her Peace last week. She had been living with years of guilt and shame, crushed by grief that her marriage ended in divorce. She felt that she had ruined the life of her one daughter, but could find no way out of her situation, except mourning. Last week she learned that there is forgiveness. Her radiant smile is all it takes to show the change is permanent.
Yet both these woman are urban. What of the women who are distanced by rural mountains, cultural walls, and religious legalities that keep them locked behind barricades of gendercide? More and more we hear of those who are becoming second, third, or fourth wives at the dawn of puberty. Honor killings are on the rise. When asked, women in this culture believe they should be beaten - ‘the Kuran told me so.’ Not far away, over a few more mountain ranges, the people of Pakistan lock up their women for the crime of being raped. It was their fault, you see. And the penalty is death.
Strange, twisted world. Strange that the halal slaughter houses are carefully modern. Why is it that people can be caught up in 'doing things right' and yet go so terribly, terribly wrong - and remain blind to it? How do we cross those insurmountable odds and change this?