My roommate: a story of alleviation and tolerance – The Second Part

It is always said that beginnings are the hardest part of each new experience, but I do not think this was the case of sharing a room with Daniel. It has been six weeks now since we started living together and sharing all our stuff in a room. Honestly, I did not think that we would be this much good as roommates, but my thought could not be further from the reality! I would explain this in three main examples.

First, sleeping! I recently have acted so much like a night owl, waking up at 9p.m. and staying up to attend the classes of the next day, then go to bed! Very unlike me, Daniel sleeps early and wakes up early. Considering that we are living in the same room, we had to talk about this issue and come to an agreement. He suggested that I stay in the room while no light would be on. However, I knew that even if I would do this, the noise I might make would disturb the sweet dreams Daniel would be having! Consequently, I decided to stay in the room for as long as Daniel is not going to his bed. Once he wants to sleep, I leave the room and continue studying in the study room of either my dorm or the library.

Second, worshipping. Unlike sleeping, this is not a doing mutual between us. Daniel is an Atheist so he never practices any kind of worship. In contrast, it means so much for me to worship Allah through five daily prayers and reading Quran regularly. I sometimes forget the prayer rug in the middle of the room; sometimes I would unintentionally read Quran loudly, and I may invite some Muslim guys to pray together while Daniel is in the room. He was completely okay with all of this, and he never complained about it to me or even just showed some inconvenience. To him, it could be just a way to tolerate my practice of my religion, but to me it absolutely meant way more. I believe it is not always easy to tolerate “completely” different beliefs, and I am the kind of really religious Muslim. So when Daniel accepts that I practice my deep beliefs, which severely contradict with his, in front of him and daily, this is absolutely some kind of treasure and luck I have found!

Third, using each other’s stuff. This specific example is the largest part of why I entitled this post with its name “My roommate: a story of alleviation and tolerance”. Remember the first part of this post last week? When he sent me a package of sheets and necessary stuff for a freshman. When Daniel arrived, he got a micro-fridge and a stand-light. One day when I had bought some cheese and bread for suppers, I was going to put these in the fridge available for all residents of Catawba, and I had to write my name on it and get to the kitchen whenever I want to make a sandwich at 3a.m.! Without me asking, Daniel offered me to use his micro-fridge for storing all and whatever I buy. It was really so generous form him, and I had nothing but a deep sense of gratitude and respect and all that I could do to reward him for caring about a person he met just few weeks ago. Another day when I was doing some “nerding”, the dim light at the ceiling of my room was not enough for my poor eyes to still look at the book without pain. I looked around and saw the stand-light Daniel had next to his desk. I texted  him to ask to use his light and here is how our texts went

“Hey Daniel! Can I, please, use your stand-light? I am finding some kind of hardship studying on the dim light of our room.”

“absolutely man! It is yours, too!”

And anyone reading this could feel how much he alleviated the pain my eyes were having and the burden of going to study in the library, where no music or loud reading is allowed.

 

My roommate: a story of alleviation and tolerance – The First Part

      When emailed that the web portal for housing on-campus was opened, I got very anxious about the choices I had to make: the hall, room, roommate and what to bring with me here. It was really hard to decide, and rather frustrating. I needed to know a fellow student who would just 60% match the person I believed I could share a room with, who would be able to visit the campus, compare the residence options with one another, and choose what would be best for both of us, and who also would be tolerant enough with a Muslim Palestinian getting out of Gaza Strip for the first time, ever!

      I knew that I had to make an announcement of what kind of roommate both I would be and would like to live with. Therefore, I went to the Facebook group of all freshmen and made a post that I still did not have a roommate, and shared some basic information about myself. Then, I do not know what unearthly luck I got. Daniel Osborne, an American freshman from North Carolina, saw my post and seemed interested in roommating with me. We chatted for almost two hours about our studying, eating, drinking, and sleeping habits, the basic principles for a perfect match. Thank God, we met each other's expectations and believed we could be the best roommates for each other, or at least I did! Later, we went into deeper information about our religious and cultural backgrounds. I have to be honest enough to admit that it was immensely vital for me to live with a tolerant roommate, who would accept me praying in the room- alone or together with a person or two-, who would not be bothered because I could neither drink nor party, and who would appreciate that I was coming from a very under-served region of this world. Here was why Daniel would be the best roommate for me. Not only did he seem even more tolerant than I wished, but he also happened to know about Islam and Palestine very much, which I felt truly good to know!

       After agreeing to be roommates, we had to choose where to live. We, at first, thought New Hall would be perfect for us, but Catawba was more affordable for me. Catawba also is where most international students, like me, live. To make a wise decision, I and Daniel agreed to wait until SIM day, when Daniel visited the campus and saw New Hall and Catawba, and he took some pictures from there. At the night of that day, he sent me the pictures, and spoke seemingly so happily about Catawba; how the rooms are spacious and how living in a suit would be a brilliant choice. Now, maybe I have not told Daniel that he was doing a lot for our favor, as if I was his brother! I truly looked up to how supportive, appreciative and kind he was to me.

       When moving-in day approached, Daniel and his sweet family were very generous with me. Because I would be new to the country and would arrive early on campus, they offered to send me a package of sheets and some necessary stuff for a freshman. I thought it was very kind of them to do so for somebody they have never met before. I very appreciatively and gladly accepted it, and Daniel mailed it to my mail box on campus… .

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This was the first part of the story. The second will be published next week, hopefully, and I will discuss in detail how we both are dealing with one another as we now are living together.

Classes at RC

CLASSES ARE TORTURING ME! These were the very same words I have been unable to stop repeating over and over “and over” again through the three weeks classes have been on! Seriously, when I first knew that I would have four classes for the whole semester, I was very happily surprised. I always was used to taking ten or eleven classes each semester in high school; or to be more accurate, I had to take this number of classes. However, I was not assigned to read some chapters, write a paper, establish a blog and post on it on a weekly basis, nor was I ever accustomed to having quizzes through each class! Maybe classes are not hard, but the different system is what is hard to adapt to? The too much work? Maybe, I always answer.

My communication class, which is the introductory class to my first possible major, is going very well. At the beginning of it, I thought it would be hard to read thirty pages for each quiz in each class, but my true passion for this field of study made it easier for me to adapt. I truly like what I study there, despite how hard it is for me to stay studying two hours reading a chapter in a second language. I liked that communication is a very broad, interdisplinary field of study, because it matches my other interests in psychology, journalism, counseling and public speaking.

My Economics class, which is the introductory class to my second possible major, is going less well than the first. I have thus far experienced in this class taking a take-home quiz, a pop quiz and reading three chapters in just two days! No one can tell how magical this would sound to me if I knew I would do it while in high school. I cannot deny that I did my best to manage to do well through it all, but I still failed that pop quiz and did rather well in the rest. Homework is almost always a paperwork which needs some thinking, math and graphs, so I can handle this very well.

My other two INQ classes are the real torture of this process. Too much work with something I am neither in love with nor good at is apparently a disaster. I really never studied literature in English, but now I have to deal with something of short stories and personal written experiences. In the past three weeks, I have been trying hard to do just fine through my class, and I have failed two quizzes and passed one. So I am just confused what to do. Never the less, the fact that I just dealt with two books out of the four required for this class is not giving me so much hope for what is to come. So I will just keep working and praying not to fail this course! My other INQ class is statistics. I have to admit that I was the only one who chose this course, because its name “Social Justice” appeared so tempting to me, but I did not fully notice that it was a statistics class! I really like and am accustomed to classes where both participation and interaction are so encouraged and present, but this class is of exactly the opposite type of classes where students are on and on instructed with very few chances of participation. The worst foes of students are boredom and sleepiness, which both are a result of little in-class interaction, and this is why I am not really getting along well with this class.

My first-ever experience

Since I was a little child, I have gotten a vast passion for engaging in conversations of different topics, and in which a diversity of beliefs, opinions and ideas would be presented. However, the fact that I was born in a very under-served, under-represented country did not help me develop that passion much enough. Always, I very much wanted to meet different people, talk to them and experience a variety of cultures and values. But that dream was as hard for me as for every other Palestinian besieged in the Gaza Strip. Thank God, I could get a scholarship to come to the United States to get my undergraduate degree from here, and RC is where I have been placed. Three days after arriving on campus, I had my first-ever chance to sit with two gays, a Christian, an Atheist and an Anti-theist! It was dinner time and we gathered in the cafeteria. We started chatting about each other's majors, plans and college level, while I was having my first-ever burger, which was as delicious as I had always thought! Matt, who was the Christian, started our conversation with multiple tough questions about Islam. He seemed to have read so much about it, and how it, as he said, restricted Muslims' lives. There were many points I disagreed with him on, and others I made clear and explained for him. For example, we debated homosexuality, women rights, marriage and war in Islam. A strong point that was hotly debated was: why women have to wear scarves, and how they should be treated. First, I explained to him that women, in Islam, are treated like jewels- they have to be protected and gently treated. Like religious Christian women, Muslim girls proudly and happily cover their whole precious body, and never expose to it to people other than their very close relatives- family, husband, and sons. This way, not every male can see her sacred beauty, and she gets so much less likely to be sexually harassed. Furthermore, Pet, the Anti-theist, and I debated how religions have made people get stuck in wars. Pet believed that religions should not exist, as they have caused much discrimination and many problems in the old and current world. However, I had a completely different belief. I believe that religions, all religions are existed to enhance the purity human beings were created with i.e. the essence of each religion is to educate its followers, to enhance their morals and values, and to develop their honesty, sincerity, purity, philanthropy, love and cooperation. But the problems he said religions cause are problems created by the wrong, extremist, and fanatic followers of religions, not religions themselves. Last but not least, I and Daniel, my roommate and the Atheist, debated the fate of human beings after death. He disbelieved that there is a Hereafter, and that there is God who will judge people for what they have done in their lives. To him, mind would be enough to understand and discover everything, and if there is God then our intellectual scientists would discover him. He could not believe in an abstract being. On the other hand, I said it would be kind of unreasonable that those who kill, steal, rape and do evil things and still do not get their judgment in life are going just to die and pretty much that is it! There, I believe, should be something following our lives so that all criminals, terrorists and evil people would stand before a higher being, who could be God or Allah, and get judged for what they have done.
In conclusion, even though it was my first time to see such completely different opinions and beliefs, it was a great first-of-its-kind experience for me to have. I really enjoyed it, and discovered that regardless of the huge differences among people, we could still sit, talk, understand each other mutually and even love the otherness! I also thought that if Palestinians and Israelis get to sit and talk this way, our conflict would come to an end. And I would no longer be unable to travel freely and engage in such chats with different people, as I said at the beginning of my essay. Finally, I believe that only when all officials of high political and
religious positions would sit and speak this understandingly and appreciatively, will global peace and international security dominate our precious world.