We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men / Leaning together / Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! / Our dried voices, when / We whisper together / Are quiet and meaningless / As wind in dry grass ( T. S Elliot- Hollow Men)

During my more intense years of ‘struggle with myself’ in Australia, after I moved from Brisbane to the hedonic den of the Gold Coast, I made an attempt to ‘integrate’. 

An American classmate’s ‘Great Escape’, from what I presume was the humdrum monotony of American life, had helped me find accommodation with a Scandinavian couple, both students. 

The couple partied wildly. Australia’s sun, beaches, and beer animated them. 

One night, as I lay in my bed, sleep eluded me. The Scandinavians had gone even wilder that night. I angrily plodded out of my room and confronted them in the politest possible terms. 

The female partner, in response, wearing an outfit that was neither stylish nor classy, posed provocatively. ‘How do I look?’ she asked. I muttered something angrily and slid back into my room.

The next morning, after I woke up, a slew of empty beer cans lay beside my door. The entire flat was plastered with pictures of nude women. It was not art but visuals designed to provoke. 

I had obviously offended the Scandinavian girl in the wrong way. 

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Beer cans around the door and nude pornographic posters pasted on the walls were the ultimate provocation the Scandinavians could offer a Muslim.

Amazed at this hostility, I slid into the kitchen space, made myself coffee, and walked to the smoking zone of the apartment, the space that doubled as a corridor. A sealed envelope that bore my name caught my eye. 

I picked it up. It was from a person who I now think has had the most profound and lasting influence on my life.

The envelope had a newspaper clipping in it. Carried by the Australian Financial Review, if memory serves me well, the article was built around one of the greatest figures of modern Islamic history, Dr. Ali Shariati. 

The quotes attributed to Dr. Shariati were not about the integration of Islam and modernity. They were about the ‘completeness’, the wholesomeness, of the Muslim self in the modern world, the ‘organic intellectual’. 

In other words, how to be of the world and above it.

My interest in it was passing, but enough to ask this great Australian if he would like to be my teacher. The man, who had an incredible presence, not merely charisma, replied: ‘When the pupil’s quest becomes strong, the teacher reveals himself.’

The silence that followed was filled by the man’s remark:........

© Kashmir Observer