Azzi: I grew up eating with my fingers, and I won't accept appeasement over peace

I grew up eating with my fingers.

Growing up Lebanese in Manchester, New Hampshire, I wasn't taught on which side of the plate I should place the fork when setting the table or taught to put my left hand in my lap as I ate with my right.

I never learned bread belonged on a "bread plate."

Unleavened Arabic bread ("pita bread'" to non-Arabs) was baked by my grandmother — Sittoo — on a wood-burning Garland stove in our basement. We ate bread with every meal; gently torn into small portions from shared loaves, used as scoops with which to eat our meals, from fried eggs for breakfast to lamb kufta with rice and vegetables.

I didn't figure out until grade school that not everyone ate as I did — as I still do.

It has taken me a lifetime to figure out many things about my parents' adopted homeland: some things I may never figure out and other things I'm still working on (like improving my grammar and punctuation).

Beyond understanding that there's a universal yearning for humanity to communally break bread, I've come to believe the following:

I believe in the First Amendment. Not only does it make my work as photographer and columnist possible, it enables me to speak, publish, assemble, protest, petition, critique, worship — or not — as I please without fear of government abridging my rights.

I believe in the Fourth Estate, a concept Thomas Carlyle attributed to Edmund Burke in 1787:  "Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all," affirming, as I understand it, to this day journalism's role as watchdog over governmental and institutional abuses and excesses.

I also believe in a Sixth Sense. I believe in "gut feelings," believe in muses, intuitions, nymphs, jinns, irrational fears, and enduring loves; in spontaneous speech, in instincts that draw us along straight paths toward beauty and truth and away from danger; that caution us when driving through an intersection, guide us toward unexpected delights.

I have also come to believe in the existence of a Fifth Column that threatens my existence, threatens all Americans and the aspirational values of our nation.

A Fifth Column of racists, QAnon supporters, 3-Percenters, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Big Lie supporters, deniers of bodily autonomy for women, creationists, climate-change deniers, seditionists, insurrectionists and others harboring resentments and grievances — all rallied and excited by Christian Nationalists, power-hungry narcissists, authoritarians, and corrupt oligarchs — all mobilizing to overthrow a democracy yet to celebrate its 250th anniversary.

A Fifth Column that denies sustenance to the needy.

"The world is full of great criminals with enormous power, and they are in a death struggle with each other," theologian and social activist Thomas Merton wrote in 1961. "It is a huge gang battle, using well-meaning lawyers and policemen and clergymen as their front, controlling papers, means of communication, and enrolling everybody in their armies."

Within Merton's "death struggle" for privilege, power and profit it is the disinherited, the weak, the oppressed, the vulnerable, the sojourner, who are disenfranchised, marginalized and victimized.

We have become a nation challenged by, as theologian Khaled Abou El Fadl describes in "The Search for Beauty in Islam":  “ …  pirates of intellect, who possessing no intellect of their own, rehabilitate their ignorance with intolerance ... ” who have crippled the judgment of many Americans.

Peopled by barbarians who embrace a vision of America based on racism, xenophobia, nativism, replacement theory, and violence; peopled by pirates of intellect whose intolerance is inimical to our democratic and pluralist interests.

As I believe we have been made into nations and tribes so that we might come to know one another I'm occasionally responsive when I receive a call suggesting I break bread with those whose perspectives differ from mine.

It was once tempting to accept those calls. As recently as twenty months ago, prior to the insurrection and attempted coup of January 6th, I held out hope for confronting demagoguery with dialogue, for bias with reason.

Such pleas often come from politicians and pastors, often from those who never learned to eat with their fingers, often from mostly-white would-be-saviors whose privilege has generally insulated them from marginalization and violence.

Speak, they ask. Try to find a middle ground.

I have tried. I really have.

I have tried to find the middle path except with those who attempt to deny my humanity, my faith, my right to be American.

I won't break bread with those who expect appeasement rather than peace, nor with people who invite me to "go back to wherever" I came from — ostensibly to go back to a place where people eat with their fingers.

Today, I am reminded of MLK's August 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail" where he addresses "  ... white ministers, priests, and rabbis ... " who " ... have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows."

The battle against white Christian Nationalists and their allies is not the battle of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Secular Humanists, and others. It is the battle of "white ministers, priests, and rabbis" who have permitted their scripture to be rent by blasphemers and racists, permitted their scripture to be weaponized and shaped into a white supremacist manifesto.

Once upon a time in America, I remember, while visiting a church, being attentive to the sound of an unleavened communion wafer being snapped as the celebrant prepared to offer the Eucharist to believing communicants.

Snap: The sound of breaking bread meant to gather humanity in worship, dignity and respect resonated through the sanctuary.

Snap.

Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Azzi: I grew up eating with my fingers