The Missionary and the Atheist

I first saw our Bangla teacher, Dr. Lynn Silvernale, in a small, dimly lit and very crowded bookshop. She was seated in a chair while the rest of us gathered cross-legged on the floor like kindergartners eager for story time. Her hair was the bright pearly white that my grandmother's once was. She seemed both regal and diminutive in her simple wooden throne. I had been in Chittagong only a week or so and had tagged along with some of the faculty to see her speak.

Lynn came to Chittagong in 1961, before Bangladesh was even a country. She traveled on a freighter carrying train engines with only one other passenger for 51 days from New York through the Suez Canal stopping in India along the way to the port city I now live in. She had a clear and very deeply felt mission-- to go into the wilderness of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and convert Muslims and Buddhists to Christianity. And that's what she's done for the last fifty years, this tiny woman, all angles and bones, wrapped in a modest sari. She's also become fluent in Bangla and translated the Bible into the Bangla, a project that took over twenty years to complete and had never been done before.

I listened to her speak that evening and often found myself uncomfortable or in disagreement with her conclusions, but I also could not shake a very sturdy awe building inside me. How brave was this woman to step onto a ship on one side of the world, leave everyone and everything she has ever known, and emerge into the jungle without a cell phone or internet or real roads or understanding a word of Bangla. That kind of devotion, that raw commitment to a cause, not to mention her sheer nerve are qualities to be cherished. And it reminded me that even those you think are dead wrong can still have so much to teach.

After she spoke she opened the floor up to questions. The reverence with which the Muslim men treated Lynn was incredible to watch. While thinking nothing of cutting each other off, dismissing someone else's point of view, whenever they spoke to this 70 year old woman who'd spent her life in their country and with whom they shared a common piety their tones held the same respect and awe I felt in my silence. That she had devoted her life to Bangladesh and God seemed to eclipse all other details.

Ramadan started today. All around me people are waking up at 4:00am to eat before the sun rises and cannot so much as drink a drop of water until it sets again. I don't know how the rickshaw drivers can manage. As I walked home this evening, restaurants were setting out food by the side of the road for folks to break the fast. Many at the University are observing the holiday as well, including my friend Samiya.

Samiya is a young, soft spoken, lovely woman. A glance at her smooth face and its demure features would betray someone no older than twenty-five but her feet tell a different story. I remember glancing down at them one afternoon and in seeing their weathered, hard, calloused skin I for the first time considered she was not a girl. Samiya and I have adopted each other somehow over the last month. I think we share a similar loneliness. I'm new and far away from home. She's from Bangladesh but she's a rarity here: despite the fact that she will fast for the entire month of Ramadan she confessed to me in hushed tones not long ago that she does not believe a word of the Quran. She does not believe in God at all.

What is most fascinating and also sad about Samiya is not her specific beliefs or non-beliefs. It's her attachment to secrecy. She told me with real fear in her voice that I couldn't tell anyone what she had confided (and I actually changed her name and a few details in this post since this is going on the internet though it's doubtful anyone from AUW will read this). Her parents and in-laws are not aware of her lack of faith. And she seems so isolated within her own culture. Her difficulty in making real friends in a country that is so outwardly pious and that does not accept the notion of doubt is a predicament I completely understand. I remember growing up in my small Georgia town, that rigidity of belief, that inability to question or wonder or even consider another way without condemnation is something I felt almost every day at Gainesville High School.

The volunteers have arrived and they are wonderful. I've been running around like crazy this past week with the busyness of campaign work. But at night, as I'm crawling into bed for much needed sleep, I have a few quiet minutes to reflect on the uniqueness of an experience that offers me the chance to meet both Samiya and Dr. Silvernale in the same month, in the same country, in the same spirit of kinship.

Who will I meet next?