Cross-Cultural Marriage - Abuse, Money, And Good-Byes, But Moral Duty Done, An African Tale

Marfa Chapin was nearing thirty, not so old in today's youthful culture, but old enough to begin to wonder about the possibilities of marriage and family. Marfa had never pursued men.  She was content to be pursued just like her mother had been. 

'Oh, your father made a beeline for me', her mother said, 'and never stopped until I said yes'.  The marriage had been wholesome - and that was saying something in an age of dissatisfaction and divorce.  Mrs. Chapin had no cause to complain.  Yes, her husband was desultory in bed, an unenthusiastic partner, but he was a good provider, faithful, and an engaged father.  More than most women could hope for. 

Growing up in such a household, Marfa never had dreams of marrying a prince; but assumed that the right man would come along at the right time.  Most women she knew were either married or in a relationship so her time would come; but it didn't.  Whether she was looking in the wrong places or the eligible men were taken, or because there had always been something tellingly unapproachable about her, she always came up empty. 

She shifted gears, became the pursuer instead of the pursued, but that had not traction either.  She was not adept at that kind of thing and came across as a bumbler.  She accosted men at the National Gallery, on the Red Line train, at the Old Ebbitt Grill, and in Lafayette Park to no avail. 

At the same time and perhaps because of her failure at love she joined the progressive movement and vented her frustration and used energies on the canon - climate, diversity, inclusion, and the redistribution of wealth. She was not particularly passionate about any of these issues - her family was Republican - but they sufficed to take her mind off marriage and give her at least some purpose as the months wore on. 

Now, Marfa was a very credulous, even naive woman; and within the progressive movement to restore the black man to dignity and his proper place atop the human period, was embedded a longstanding myth that the black man as a super-stud, an inexhaustible lover of immodest proportions, and the very epitome of virility.  Black men loved women and could not do without them.  While such extreme sexuality carried with it some 'irregularities', it was still a potent, desirable, objective. 

There was a curious purity in Marfa, a kind of narrowly focused vision and one which sought the original, the real thing, the source.  American black men were too compromised, too ghetto, too pimped out and grilled for her.  She wanted the motherlode, the being of the forest, a man of sentience, forest wisdom, preternatural intelligence, and native sexuality, the African. 

Where she picked up these ideas was a mystery. Her progressive sisters were partly responsible for the elegy - after all civil rights had been their main course for years - but their idolatry ended in asexual protests on the Mall.  

Marfa's interest certainly couldn't be Mungo Park and Rene du Chaillu who wrote of African tribal savagery, slavery, and Paleolithic backwardness; or even Sir Richard Burton, intrepid African explorer, ethnologist, and adventurer who with Speke set out to discover the source of the Nile or Graham Greene who wrote of his travels in The White Man's Grave. 

So where did this fantasy come from? Sociologists, Africanists, and development experts had all recorded the peculiar sexuality of the African.  Sex was for him not just a marital affair or a conclusion of a love interest, but a compelling, daily ritual.  A day was not complete without sexual release.  The Baby Momma syndrome in the American inner city was a living legacy of this sexuality.  

While women like Marfa were quick to point out the irresponsibility of such sexuality, they secretly wanted to be a part of it.  White men, especially after No Means No, had been so intimidated by feminist demands, that they were timorous and hesitant in bed.  Ugh.  What woman wanted that?

And so it was that Marfa went to Africa as part of a locally sponsored effort to provide education and counselling to young mothers about the importance of breastfeeding and proper weaning.  This would be her chance to discover Africa, to breathe its air, feel its vibes, and perhaps find a mate. 

To her credit most white women are so racist to not even consider the prospect; but the fact that one prejudice always tops another is common. Marfa was open to blackness per se, but held to this fantastical premise that all black men were insatiably potent lovers. 

Victor Ngoma worked in the Department of Health in the province where Marfa had been assigned. He was a youngish man with some French education, a modest salary, who was well-groomed and well-spoken and paid particular attention to this American woman come to Africa to help the poor. 

He, like most simple Africans with only slight, desultory acquaintance with America, assumed that Marfa was wealthy. Of course by African standards she was - as rich as a Gao princess - and a worthy prize.  As culturally naive as he might be, he knew that many white women came to Africa for sexual tourism.  The myth - actually the reality - of African male sexuality drew thousands of women to the continent every year.  

Most women came and went, sexually gratified by paid gigolos, but there were some who, coming out of a peculiar American political ethos,wanted more.  Their sense of justice and morality led them to intimacy, not just quick satisfaction, and Victor sensed that Marfa was one of them. 

So he wooed her, courted her, treated her royally, and finally seduced her in her suite at the Hotel Independence, the five star hotel built by the country's President-for-Life for foreign dignitaries and development workers. 

Marfa did everything in her power to convince her sponsoring agency to send her back to Africa to complete her mission, and before long she was thinking seriously of marrying Victor, bringing him to America and leading a model multi-cultural life. 

Had she done her research, she would have found a trail of disappointed, unhappy women who had trod the same path.  Getting on in years, unhappy in love, progressive in their bones, they had gone to Africa, met, fell in love with, and married an African only to be left on the curb, abandoned, bank account emptied, and despairing. 

Yet she didn't.  She had heard such stories, but believed they were one-off misfortunes.  With Victor she was in an entirely different place with a loving, respectful, honorable man. 

Of course he was nothing of the kind.  He was as deliberate, cautious, and canny as a Nigerian scammer, and took every precaution to promote and safeguard his interests until it was time to go.  By the time he was finished, he would have money in the bank, an American green card, and an unlimited future.  He would repay those in Africa who had sponsored him, and he would continue to be a man of Africa while leading the good life in the United States. 

Burned but not twice shy, Marfa never lost her attentiveness to the black cause and blamed herself for her innocent mistake.  Victor wasn't such a bad man.  He was simply a man concerned about his family and their welfare, and did what he could to provide for them.  She was collateral damage, but not much harm was done.  She had done the right thing and would do it again if the opportunity arose. 

Fortunately it did not. She got over her fanciful ideas, retained a modicum of interest in progressivism, married a prosperous tax attorney, and made a good home for him and her family.  The old adage, 'Given enough time a liberal will always become conservative' was as true as the rising sun in Marfa's case.  Not that she gave up entirely on the black man, she just gave him more room.

La Belle France, Not So Belle Anymore - The Africanization Of The Sun King

Muhammed Abubakar grew up in northern Mali near Timbuktu.  His parents had been goatherders and his grandparents and great-grandparents camel drivers along the salt route from Mopti to Algiers.  The sedentary life - tending a few goats, the small plot of millet and the garden - was a far cry from the old days.  Mohammed loved to sit around the fire and listen to the tales of the desert, the starlit nights, the groaning of the camels, the creak of the harnesses holding the pillars of salt, men's talk about the days of old. 

That was all that was left of the desert life, the Muslim life, the pure and simple life of Africa. Now those distant days were only memories fictionalized over time and telling, songs of the Arabian Nights, nighttime mysteries and magic. 

His family was poor, almost destitute as the rains failed yet again, the desert encroached further south, the crops produced little, and the animals died of thirst and hunger.  Muhammed's father prayed to Allah to relieve them of their burden, but year after year, life became harder and more unbearable. 

'It is time for you to cross the sea', his father said, speaking in ancient Koranic language. 'Only there is hope'; and so it was that Muhammed became one of the migrants crossing the Mediterranean in open boats for Europe, foundering, lost, and finally stumbling on foreign shores. 

The journey to France was even more difficult, stowed away in the back of long-haul lorries, paying traffickers with his last euros, but finally arriving in Paris, in the northern suburbs where most of his people had gone and which were now more African than French - open markets, Bambara spoken everywhere, Friday prayers at the mosque, and unemployment.  Where to find work when everyone was unemployed, living off the welfare of the state, barely enough to keep body and soul together?

'Join us', said Babucar Diallo, his neighbor in the housing estate. 'There is nothing for us here', and so it was that Muhammed joined Diallo and his band of restive young men with nothing but hostility for their adopted country, a white, privileged redoubt of racists and Islamophobes.  The French speak of inclusion and 'We are all French' racial solidarity but want nothing of the sort. Black men are still treated like slaves, tribal savages only recently come out of the forest. 

'But now we are millions', Diallo said. 'Just look around'.  At the Gare du Nord, the central Parisian terminus for trains coming from the northern suburbs, there were only black faces and a Tower of Babel of Bambara, Lingala, Wolof, Yoruba, and Soninke. 

But when they walked around the 7th and 16th Arrondissements, there were nothing but white faces, high-toned, wealthy, privileged white people who looked the other way when they passed. 'This is the enemy', said Diallo to his new friend, 'and they must suffer'.  

'I am fine here', Muhammed wrote to his family in Mali, but he was not.  He lived with ten others in one room in the Victor Hugo estates, a high-rise slum in Chateau Rouge, had little to eat, few clothes to wear for the approaching winter, and little to do. 'We will take what is ours', said Diallo. 

And so it was that Muhammed after only six months in Paris had become desperate, radicalized, frustrated and hateful.  Diallo was a charismatic leader and was the chief of a group of over a hundred young African men who were faithful to him, to Islam, and to restitution.  It was their mission to strike fear into the hearts of the French, to take what was theirs, and to carry on the crusade for an Islamic caliphate. 

'There is no morality within immorality' said the Imam of the Northern Jama Masjid, the central mosque of Chateau Rouge, 'but the most moral are the ones who defy immorality.  It is our duty to Allah to extirpate and expunge the devil of the Christian infidel.'

'Our poverty is his doing', the Imam went on.  'He enslaved us, brutalized us, raped our women, stole our lands, and sent us fleeing into the forest.  We will have our revenge'. 

Such a message of religion and social justice resonated with the young men of Chateau Rouge who had nothing but penury and continued discrimination before them; and it was not difficult for Diallo to create a band of militant, unrepentant, angry men to do his will. 

On one fine May day Diallo's young men and those from the many African neighborhoods of the northern suburbs, joined forces and marched on central Paris. Their leaders did not intend a peaceful protest, but a violent demonstration of black power, the beginning of a holy war, an insurrection, the righting of wrongs and the establishment of sharia law and Africanization. 

Dressed in black hoodies, faces covered with balaclavas, armed with staves, iron pipes, and Molotov cocktails, they descended on the Champs Elysees and torched every shop on the avenue before the police mobilized to stop them.  They willingly took beatings by the riot squads, for footage of the brutality would be seen throughout France and the world generating sympathy for their struggle. 

When word of the demonstrations spread, a thousand more Africans joined the organized marches from Chateau Rouge, and the growing mob was unstoppable.  The police under orders not to shoot or use deadly force were unable to stop the rampage, and the violence and destruction spread from the Champs Elysees into the surrounding neighborhoods. 

When it was over and Diallo, Muhammed, and their brothers-in-arms returned home, they celebrated.  They had defeated the white devil on his own turf and they would return. 

France under successive socialist governments which joined with the American Left in a pursuit of Diversity Equity Inclusion and a multicultural society, opened its doors in act of contrition, reparation, and brotherhood.  France owed it to its former colonies to generously afford Africans all the privileges they had once denied them. 

Once admitted and segregated in the northern suburbs, these African migrants were forgotten.  France had done its duty, Africans were now French, and France's storied culture would work wonders.  These black men would soon be as French as the Parisian with a baguette and beret. 

Not so of course.  These political idealists completely misjudged Islam, naively and ignorantly assuming it was a peaceful religion like any other and would nourish France's long tradition of religious expression.  Despite the Islamic radicalism growing quickly within its borders, French governments took no action. Trapped in 'We are all French' and Liberté, Égalité, and Fraternité ideology and a progressive agenda, radical Islam took over the country. 

The conservative party leader, Marine Le Pen is poised to take the Presidency in the next national election, and she has vowed to stop the violence, deport all those illegally in the country, close mosques and ban public prayer, jail insurrectionist imams, and begin the process of Europeanization. 

Too little, too late as the damage has been done.  There is no way that she can stop the now endemic, insidious, universal anti-European, ant-Christian, and anti-social Islamization of France.  She can make a start but the process, even if continued without political opposition will be a long one. 

Muhammed Babukar's parents hardly recognized him when he was arrested, deported, and returned home.  He was filled with hate, incendiary revenge, and a desire to return to France to complete the Islamic revolution that he helped to start; and within months of his return, he had found a way to once again cross the Mediterranean and enter Europe. 'Allah be praised', he said as he stepped into the country craft boarding in Libya and headed for the small Italian island of Ischia. 

Randomness, Luck, Circumstance - Life As Ricocheting Balls On A Pool Table, A Troubling Prospect

The Chris Wilton character in Woody Allen's movie Match Point says:

The man who said "I'd rather be lucky than good" saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose.

 

The movie's seminal scene is when Wilton, who has killed his lover and her landlady and taken the landlady's jewelry to make the murders look like robbery, throws the incriminating evidence into the Thames. Walking away from the river he realizes that he still has the landlady's wedding ring, so throws it towards the river, turns away, and walks off.  Unbeknownst to him the ring bounces on the railing, could go either way, into the river or back onto the pavement, and bounces back. 

A drug addict finds the ring, and when he is murdered by an unknown assailant, the police find the ring, engraved with the landlady's name and wedding date.  Police attention is drawn away from Wilton as the murderer and placed squarely on the addict.  

Tolstoy in his Second Appendix to War and Peace expounds on his theory of determinism.  Napoleon lost the Battle of Borodino not because of a loss of his usually canny battlefield strategy, but because his valet forgot to bring his gum boots on a cold, rainy day. As a result the Emperor caught cold and on the day of the decisive conflict was congested, feverish, and not his sharp, perceptive self.  As a result he made a series of errors which led to Russian victory.

Tolstoy does not stop here.  The valet forgot to bring the Emperor's foul weather gear because he was distracted by his wife's infidelity.  The wife's infidelity with a sheepherder was precipitated by her long frustration with her husband.  The sheepherder, himself in an unhappy and unrewarding marriage sought comfort and pleasure with the valet's wife.

In other words, each action was determined by a previous one in a chain that dates back ad infinitum. Events are not random, but conditioned by the past. 

The two arguments for randomness and determinism when taken together dispel and dismiss the notion of divine or secular purpose.  John was not 'meant' to find Mary, Bob did not die a miserable painful death because he deserved it, Amy did not discover a life-saving drug because she had been chosen to do so.  All were propelled by the ineluctable influences of the past altered only by random bits which do not change the equation but only alter its mathematical direction. 

Discussion about such things is not new.  Philosophers and theologians have argued for centuries over them.  The disquisitions have never been just academic.  It matters to everyone.  A world without meaning is unconscionable, unthinkable, and frightening. 

Aquinas in his Summa Theologica spent a thousand pages trying to prove the existence of God; but of course, despite the efforts of this, the world's greatest theologian, he had to rest on faith and faith alone.  At the same time he built the foundation for the Catholic Church which contends that true belief is a function of both faith and logic. 

 

The philosophers of the Enlightenment were logicians, but the application of intellectual rigor was not a willy-nilly exercise.  Logic, objectivity, and exegesis were the handmaidens of faith.  Logic was to be used to better understand divinity and the mysteries of the universe. 

Frederik Nietzsche was a nihilist for whom there was no meaning in the world; and the only validation of the individual was the expression of pure will.  Sartre, far less harsh and peremptory hedged his bets, and suggested that doing good could alter the existential emptiness of the world. 

Marfa Potter woke up in a cold sweat every morning, bolted awake by the same nightmare she had every night.  She found herself alone in a cold, dark, empty place with only a thread of light on the horizon. There was no sound, the air was frozen and still, the earth was featureless and flat. Everywhere she turned she saw the same emptiness and stillness and felt the penetrating cold.  It was the end of the world, the end of existence, and there was nothing left.  No life and no God.  She screamed and woke up. 

The George Pal 1960 movie made of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine evokes the same desolate view of the end of a world approaching entropy, the complete absence of energy.  The sea has no movement, no ripples, no tide.  The air is still. The landscape is shapeless, bare, grey, monochrome. 

Wells is neither determinist nor nihilist, but there is only one way to interpret his chilling ending of the book.  All human enterprise, good, evil, morality, love, and feature will ultimately end in nothingness.  Given that, what is the purpose and meaning of life? Nothing at all. 

The Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men explores this theme.  The psychopath Shugur is a nihilist for whom the only arbiter of value is the flip of a coin. Heads, you live; tails you die.  No value at all. 

'If the rule you lived by has brought you to this', Shugur says to Carson Wells before killing him, 'of what use was the rule?'  Rules like any standards and guideposts of behavior are meaningless, temporal, artifacts created to confer order but without any inherent, absolute value. 

Marfa Potter conflated two of man's greatest concerns - that he has done nothing significant in his life and will die without legacy; and that nothing he has done or could have done has any meaning at all. He will die soulless, neither condemned to hell or ascended to heaven but simply extinguished. 

In Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, Kurtz's last words are, 'the horror...the horror', for at that moment he realizes that the tribal savagery he has witnessed in the darkness of the jungle was universal.  Human beings by nature are savage, brutal, and soulless. 

Conrad believed in traditional good and evil, morality, ethics.  Lord Jim spent his whole life atoning for his sin aboard the pilgrimage ship Patna which he abandoned when he thought it was about to sink, abandoning 800 souls to drowning and certain death. 

In his novel Victory, the main character flees the world and seeks solitude and refuge from evil; but of course, says Conrad, this is not possible; and he is visited by men without a scintilla of moral justice.

As horrible as this human evil is, it is preferable to a world without meaning.  Evil gives meaning to life just as good. 

It was the total absence of meaning, the complete aloneness that made Marfa's nightmare so frightening.  Danger, pursuit, threat, violence would have been better than this complete abandonment to a meaningless, horrifyingly empty existence. 

Marfa was an old woman, so her dreams were no longer intimations, but reality.  She like Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich would soon be facing death, a black, empty, cold, and unremittingly dark place of eternity; and so her nightmares not only persisted but worsened in fright and intensity. 

Nihilism, stoicism, existentialism were of no use.  Perhaps had they taken hold much earlier in her life, she would have incorporated them as a foundation on which she would take her last breath; but she had been schooled in religion, propriety, good taste, and enterprise all of which were the ingredients of the final, desperate horror of death. 

Perhaps she will have Ivan Ilyich's epiphany. 

He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it.
‘Where is it? What death?’
There was no fear because there was no death.
In place of death there was light.

 And then, 

“So that’s what it is! What joy!”