A girl once told me she loved me, but she could not be happy for me, could not even associate socially with me, because I had not been “saved.”
Several years ago I attended school with the daughter of a close friend. After class, she and I would sit in the parking lot for an hour or so and talk about class and — stuff. Except religion.
It’s not that there were not opportunities to talk religion. We were in class to learn to become Emergency Medical Technicians, and some of what we were learning could easily call on one’s faith to accept. I asked her one night — she, the Jehovah’s Witness — why she avoided talking about her beliefs.
“You can’t talk religion with a Catholic,” she, a Jehovah’s Witness, replied.
We made a deal. Neither of would try to convert the other, but if one or the other of us converted, we both would be happy.
I was reminded of those instances in my life while writing a story this week about a 17-year-old high school student from Iraq who is visiting Gettysburg — and is afraid to go home.
He came to our country nearly a year ago to learn about us. He thought things would get better at home in the year he would be gone. Things have not become better. He talks with his mother and watches the news and he knows.
Those he calls “terrorists and insurgents … are killing more and more Iraqis,” he said.
He knows he certainly would be killed, likely along with his entire family, if his secret gets out that he spent a year going to school in the United States — on a program sponsored and funded by the U.S. State Department.
What kind of a world is it in which a teenager should have to confront his own mortality — and that of his family — and be forced to choose whether to go to them or stay away?
If I went back to my college town, I suspect the young woman who loved me though I had not been saved would be there still, managing the health food store. She would not open on Saturday no matter how much she loved me and all the other of her customers whose day of worship Sunday or Friday. But she would not kill me.
I have made choices in my life about my career and where I would live — none of them based on worrying that I would be killed because I have disagreed with my political or religious leadership, or worse, have actually visited the homes of those who disagree with the political leadership.
“It’s not easy,” he said of his decision to not return home. “It’s hardest to leave my family — I don’t know if I’m going to meet them (again) or not.”
“If I apply for asylum, I cannot return to my country … until the country gets better.”
And if word gets out at home he has even asked for asylum, his fate, should he be made to return, likely would be sealed.
But he believes his only choice is to stay away from them, and hope someday the situation will improve so he can return to help rebuild what senseless hate is tearing down.
I have disagreed rather strongly with my government and my church, and have not been threatened with death.
No 17-year-old should have to face that kind of outcome, but this one has, and he has decided to ask our protection.
I hope we give it to him, and find a way to make things better so he can go home and help rebuild his country.
© 2007 Readers may contact John Messeder at jmesseder@comcast.net
