Ghosts

Henry Fuseli 1780

“Oh, my prophetic soul.” This is what Hamlet cries out when he sees the Ghost, his father, who had been murdered by his own brother. Hamlet had had his suspicions about the guy, and now his nastiest ones were confirmed. He’s torn up inside, and when he sees his uncle kneeling in the chapel, he wants to run him through right then and there. But he doesn’t. Because he isn’t content with seeing justice served. No, he wants punishment. He wants his uncle to burn in hell. So he waits. And because he chooses revenge, he brings his whole world down around his ears. He’s responsible for the death of his girlfriend, her father, her brother, his own mother, and finally, his uncle. And the kingdom is lost. Sure, he gets his revenge in the end, but at what cost. Everyone close to him dies. Innocents die. As Shakespeare well knew, “If you live by the sword, you’ll die by it.”

In these days of wars and rumors of wars, we have ghosts walking among us. They wear the faces of those who have died, and they call out to us “hard things.” They mean to have blood, and they provoke us to violence toward those who have done nothing. And they are Christian.

“End those people before they walk in!” they cry. “Holy War!” And they appeal (just as Paul said they would)  to “Peace and security.”  

We have all seen these ghosts. And because they wear the faces of people familiar to us, wearing our skin and speaking our language, we are seduced. We are powerless to resist them. There is only one voice that counters, but we can’t bear it.  The message is too hard.

Today I was invited into the home of Mohammad, an Algerian who has lived in Canada with his family for twelve years. He was the security guard at a pizza place near where my Syrian friends live (four year old Hammudi thinks that all pizza is called pizza pizza). When one of our group went there to order pizza, she met him, and he offered to help the family with translation and anything else he could, even finding Rashad a job. The next time she went to order pizza there, he paid for the entire order before she got there, drinks included. He treated us all, and we hadn’t even met. When I entered his home today, his wife had snacks and drinks on the table. They have their own Arabic version of “mi casa es su casa,” so I now have a home in Canada where Muslim Algerians welcome me. At one point in our conversation, I must have said something that he especially agreed with, because he grabbed my hand in both of his and said, “Yes, sister.” I was startled, since Rashad won’t shake hands with women. Maybe my surprise showed, so Mohammed added quickly, “We are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.”  And so we are.

Mohammad’s daughter is 26 and suffers from some unpronounceable disease that causes pain even when she breathes. She wants to go to college, but she can’t leave the house to ride in a car.  What do you say to someone with such suffering? “I will pray for you,” I said. And here is my prayer: “God, heal Fatima from this disease. And may she know you did, for love.” She wore a long red velvet gown, and since she’s unmarried, she had her hair down. She has enormous black eyes, and she translated from Arabic to English for me when the group was laughing because Rashad had played a joke on me, getting me to say nonsense that tickled them. She was eager to help. The whole family was. “Call me anytime,” Mohammed said. “I can go to the apartment if they need me.”

I am friends with two Muslim families. Syria and Algeria live in my back yard. They do not fill me with foreboding. They cheer me. They dispel ghosts.

Come dispel your ghosts with me.