The neighborhood:
McCarthy, Abigail
Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy THE NEIGHBORHOOD DISTURBANCE IN WASHINGTON A STROLL in our Washington neighborhood can be exciting. The world is always with us. One morning this past summer...
...Despite the fact that demonstrators broke their plate-glass windows when they had just moved in, they took down the "reserved' ' signs on most of the curb space near the chancery...
...Not your usual neighborhood scene but we take it in stride...
...A few blocks away children staffed a lemonade stand on the street corner...
...Do they find the frank stares of our tourists offensive...
...They elected a Socialist, after all...
...Picketing...
...We have an interest in the solution of every problem, because that problem is ours, too...
...Not only high-level diplomatic decisions affect our neighborhood...
...They seem partly strange, partly familiar...
...We agree, for example, that the Chinese are splendid about things...
...For the most part our relationships in this Washington neighborhood are surface relationships but they are relationships which remind us every day that we are not alone in the world and that we will never be totally self-determinant again if, indeed, we ever were...
...While the struggle was going on neighbors on their way to shop downtown or out at the shopping malls calmly detoured around the mosque when they sighted the flashing lights of the police cars...
...The children running about play the same games other Washington children play...
...Evidently life within was less decorous, too, and full of contention...
...He called the police...
...We went out one day, shortly after the Mitterrand election, to see with amazement a corps of staidly-dressed French diplomats picketing their own embassy...
...Predictably violence erupted...
...Perhaps, on the other hand, we do not worry enough about what they think of us...
...Now residents of the neighborhood without assigned parking spaces of their own leave their cars in the unused driveway...
...we feel the effect of foreign domestic problems, too...
...While we may not reflect upon it very much, this very proximity, this lack of distance between cultures makes us realize, as perhaps residents of no other American city do, that we are inextricably bound up in international struggle and rivalries...
...One morning this past summer joggers and dog-walkers were startled by shouts, ululating wails, and screaming police sirens...
...the official imam was set upon and beaten...
...Riot had broken out at what Wash-ingtonians call "the mosque," the Islamic Center at the edge of Rock Creek park...
...Sometimes we get hints of their puzzlements a Chinese guest looks around an apartment and asks, "You have all these rooms to yourself...
...But the end was not yet, since even the more peaceable of the congregation were offended at the sight of shod officers in the sanctuary...
...They picketed on the sidewalk holding a huge banner proclaiming a "Saudi-CIA " plot...
...The Ethiopians' reserved parking spaces along the curb have not been opened up to us, however, much to our disgust...
...During a great shouting melee, fifty-two of the dissidents were arrested (and one local religious correspondent who could not persuade the police of his identity...
...Perhaps unwisely the authorities chose the final feast of Ramadan for the reopening of the mosque...
...When one of the employees grazed a neighbor's car, a polite note was left, and a check presented promptly over tea when the first estimate came...
...The Muslims and their affairs are part of the neighborhood scene...
...We do not know whether to blame the State Department or our dilatory city government...
...Sometimes we have more brutal reminders of feelings deeper than puzzlement...
...For a while it was in control of the dissident group who are largely former Iranians and whose view of Islam is that of the radical conservatives like those who follow Khoumeni...
...They made huge banners to announce to the passerby that their "First Amendment rights" were being violated and their "freedom to worship" denied them...
...The women who drive car pools to the Center school in the morning may wear head covering and a robe, but as often as not beneath the robe you glimpse sneakers and jeans...
...The board erected a fifteen-foot-high spiked fence tasteful but effective and walled them out of the forecourt...
...While the offenders were carted away by some of the police, other policemen were asked to stay to make sure that the ceremony could go on in peace...
...American Muslims were challenging the right of the board, composed of the ambassadors of the Arab countries which contributed to the building of the center, to choose the imam, the religious leader responsible for its direction and services...
...Unheard of, grumbled the retired foreign service people among us...
...American dogs...
...Our local radicals did not cool easily...
...They held worship services in front of the building in the forecourt...
...Well," sniffed one of the ladies watching from a distance, "what can you expect...
...I looked out just in time to see a man in a white robe and an African cap reel past a gap in the buildings crying "American dogs...
...Each week the courtyard had the look of an impromptu bazaar or flea market as racks of secondhand clothes appeared and stalls were set up to purvey books and food to the Friday worshipers...
...On the next corner a skeletal custodial staff cuts the grass and watches over the Ethiopian Embassy, empty for the same reason...
...Diplomats...
...So it also seemed to be here...
...Those of us who live nearby have been vaguely aware of strife at the mosque for some time...
...But we are often pleased that they are the law-abiding neighbors they are...
...Our neighborhood is affected by international events...
...They marched and shouted...
...On one corner the Libyan center stands abandoned, the sign heralding its reconstruction left standing forlorn among high weeds...
...I awoke one night, for example, to hear shouts echoing hollowly between the buildings on the street behind me...
...What had caused him to give solitary vent to his hostility at two in the morning...
...AUbuilding halted when the United States withdrew recognition from Libya...
...Life at the mosque seemed less decorous and formal under their regime...
...We fuss at our international neighbors occasionally over zoning laws and trash removal, over whether their plans for tree removal will blight the neighborhood, over the unfortunate tendency of some of them to use diplomatic immunity to shield them from responsibility in traffic mishaps...
...Do they wonder about numbers of scantily clad Americans of both sexes galumphing through the streets night and morning in the summer heat and the winter cold...
...Three months before the riot the board evicted the local imam and his followers and closed the building for refurbishing and "a cooling-off' period...
...Regular members of the congregation came to his rescue...
...But diplomats there were, demonstrating for cost-of-living raises...
...Ramadan, the thirty-day holy period of fasting, observed by Muslims, is often a time of mounting tension in troubled countries...
Vol. 110 • October 1983 • No. 18
