cEdAr pOinT HaDj

Hello, I’m Me’s smarter brother, and I didn’t approve of his Pickles stunt. But we both love our niece, and we both have different stories about her. Here’s one of mine.

You’ve already heard about my niece’s propensity to try on identities, which is typical of adolescent identity development. But before she made the goth to wigger transition, she pulled a persona out of left field that gave even me pause.

Shortly before 9/11, she decided she wanted to turn Muslim. I know this sounds weird, but truth is often stranger than fiction. My brother, being open to his daughter’s willingness to experiment with finding out who she is, consented to her attending a nearby charter school, the Central Academy. Thus it was she donned the hijab and enrolled in a middle school attended predominantly by middle-eastern kids, mostly Persians, Iraqis, and Palestinians.

This is the tale of our field trip to Cedar Point shortly after 9/11. I say we, because I had consented to be a chaperone, and so it was that Hasar (her new Islamic name), myself, and her friend Jihad (FYI, Jihad means defender of the faith rather than holy warrior), boarded the bus and headed east.

Not wanting to jump to any conclusions about their ethnic allegiances, I should have been suspicious when a number of them whipped out Al-Jazeera modeling kits that included a tube of glue, two unassembled plastic skyscrapers, and an authentic replica of a 747. So off we went into the heart of Ohio, with them chanting anti-American slogans, and me wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into.

The only difference between the out-of-control Western middle-schoolers I had previously dealt with and this crew was the turbans and scarves they wore. Aside from the dagger juggling and sword swallowing, the trip was uneventful. Oh yeah, some of the girls had play magic lamps and were intoning their various genies to come forth and do their bidding, but I can only speculate on this, since my Arabic and Farsi is a bit rusty. Maybe they were trying to conjure up that genie from “7th Voyage of Sinbad,” after all he’s about their age, and kind of cute at that. Even I started to fear the reaper when Hasar and her buddy, Saddam, produced a Ouija board and petitioned “Captain Howdy” to join the hadj. Whatever the case, as we rolled eastward I daydreamed of my Moroccan childhood, when gun toting Bedouins raced their camels along the train carrying the Sultan to Rabat.

The Palestinians, in particular, employ a high pitched, falsetto yip that signals their glee at whatever impassions them. Think of a frenetic duet between Tiny Tim and Prince, and you’ve got some idea of what this sounds like. The day was stifling hot and the windows were open, which meant the recently traumatized, post 9/11 American gas guzzlers could hear this Quaida-ish caterwaul as they zoomed by our hell-bound train, err…bus. My charges would make sure the Demon Drop lived up to its name.

When we got there, the lines were long, which gave the fun seeking, hayseed flag wavers a chance to get a real eyeful of Osama spawn. They looked at me as if I were John Walker Lindh’s twin brother. Where was my “These Colors Don’t Run” button when I needed it?

I don’t want to say these Ohioans feared us, but every time my whirling dervishes lined up for a ride, the flag wavers (I like that phrase) scattered like chickens at a barbecue. They were taking no chances with these assassin suicide riders. Call it kismet, but somehow we got out of there without being mobbed by these Bush loving patriots.

On the way home, just outside of Ann Arbor, the bus ran out of gas. And, of course, I was elected to flag down a passing motorist, which is pretty hard to do when the only flag available is a Palestinian headscarf. But that’s another story.