Human Beings are climbers, not just dwellers on the plain

Found this interesting piece of commentary worth posting. Source

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The communication to me came from Ronald Lewcock, whom I met half a century ago when we were both young travelers in the Middle East. An architect and historian, Ronald went on to a distinguished career in England and this country, becoming the Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Architecture at MIT. He has also served as a consultant to UNESCO, dealing with the restoration of historic buildings and districts. He made the first measured drawings of ‘skyscrapers’ in Sana’a, a city that has been named a World Heritage site. In telling of his most recent visit to Sana’a, Ronald was not only enthusiastic about the international team now excavating the Great Mosque – Italians, French, a Palestinian, a German – but especially about the local inhabitants. “Sana’a is a delightful place,” he wrote, “and in December I have had two weeks among the happiest (and some of the most impressive) people I know of in the world. Perhaps because it was never colonized by Europeans, and Sana’a is remote … the culture still seems to be that of its most prosperous period when it supplied spices to the world.” He went on to comment that “even the poor laugh, joke and dance all the time; everyone wears a smile and is concerned to help everyone else. What a price we have paid for technological progress …”

Despite that last rueful remark (and note that Ronald himself freely takes advantage of the tools of modern technology), the bright notes of the letter (sent to our newspaper office by e-mail) suggest a pair of important points. For one thing, it underscores that our tendency to view Islam as a seething cauldron of hatred and terrorist indoctrination (only encouraged by President Bush’s continuing invective against Iran) misses so much about the life of Muslims. For another, it reminds us that human beings are climbers, not just dwellers on the plain. An eight-story building may not seem so tall to us today, but, given the means of those early builders, eight stories was an impressive achievement. We are of course seeing many much taller buildings going up now in Brooklyn, and a cluster of relatively tall ones in what is now the wasteland of Atlantic Yards will easily be absorbed into the quite vast fabric of Brooklyn. Ronald’s letter is also a reminder that it is possible for people of different cultures to work cooperatively and well together.

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