My Accidental Jihad
By: Krista Bremer
A memoir:
Finding love and meaning in a different world.
From the cover:
Fifteen years ago, Krista Bremer was a surfer and an aspiring journalist who dreamed of a comfortable American life of adventure, romance, and opportunity. Then, on a running trail in North Carolina, she met Ismail, sincere, passionate, kind, yet from a very different world. Raised a Muslim—one of eight siblings born in an impoverished fishing village in Libya—his faith informed his life. When she and Ismail made the decision to become a family, Krista embarked on a journey she never could have imagined, an accidental jihad: a quest for spiritual and intellectual growth that would open her mind, and more important, her heart.
Why should you read this book?
My Accidental Jihad is more than a love story. It’s about discovering love and family regardless of cultural backgrounds or belief systems. This book, from Krista’s point of view, gives the reader a sense of what that journey may look like. She sheds light on how we can bridge the gap between our cultural differences and learn to better understand those who are different from us. Krista also openly shares her own wrestling of faith along with Western expectations of women and family. This book is about her slow transformation and finding meaning in a place she never expected.
Excerpts:
“For as long as I could remember, I had understood life to be a game of acquisition, much like the board game I had loved to play as a child. The key to winning the game of Life was to start with a college education, because it meant receiving a bigger fistful of colorful bills each payday I passed on my way to the finish line. The next step, after a short bend in the road, was to get married: to add a little blue peg beside my pink one in the front seat of a car whose backseat allowed up to four children. Each passing year would bring more: a starter home, twins, a pay raise, a family cruise vacation. I would spin the wheel of chance and count my steps forward, and my life would progress as an unbroken series of expanding opportunities. At the end of the game, when I reached retirement, I would reside at Millionaire Estates or Countryside Acres—each of which had its own distinct appeal. Then it was time to count the money. The one with the most cash always wins.
An older, darker, poorer man was not part of this game—especially not this middle-aged man with his thick accent and tiny apartment he rented for three hundred dollars a month, to which he invited me without a trace of shame or self-consciousness, as if his possessions had nothing to do with who he was. Perhaps this aspect of him felt more foreign than anything else.
The only piece missing from the board game, its past and future laid out in tidy squares, its neat calculation of the dollar value of major life events, was unbidden emotion. When Ismail laid his hand over mine at his kitchen counter, my heart was not troubled by the cheap wood paneling on the walls behind him or the chips in the mismatched cups on the linoleum counter. The heat from his palm passed through my skin and into my bloodstream, then flowed straight to my grateful heart, which received it without criticism or judgment.”
“Love like an anvil had cracked my locked heart open and unleashed an excruciating flow of tenderness. To rise to the occasion of this love was to endure the sting of daily misunderstandings and the terror of this unexpected pregnancy. There was the fear of the unknown as well as the pain of severing from my past and letting go of fantasies about my future. From where I stood, trying to imagine love without hurt was like trying to imagine the ocean without waves: without it, we would be talking about a whole different body of water, smaller and shallower and safer.”
“Ramadan was not ten minutes of meditation or an hour-long sermon; it was an entire month of deprivation. Ismail’s god was the old-fashioned kind, omnipresent and stern, uncompromising with his demands. During Ramadan this god expected him to pray on time, five times a day—and to squeeze in additional prayers of forgiveness as often as he could. My god would never be so demanding. My god was a flamboyant and fickle friend with a biting wit who liked a good party. My god was transgendered and tolerant to a fault; he/she showed up unexpectedly during peak moments, when life felt glorious and synchronous, then disappeared for long stretches of time. But Ramadan left little room for dramatic flair. There was no chorus of voices or public celebration—just a quiet and steady submission to God in the privacy of one’s home. For some Muslims who lived in the West, the holiday became even more private, since their friends and colleagues were often not even aware of their fast.”
“The purpose of fasting during Ramadan was not simply to suffer hunger, thirst, or desire but to bring oneself closer to taqwa: a state of sincerity, discipline, generosity, and surrender to Allah, the sum total of all Muslim teachings.”
“According to Ismail, the prophet Muhammad taught that the greatest jihad, or struggle, of our lives is not the one that takes place on a battlefield but the one that takes place within our hearts—the struggle, as I understood it, to manifest humility, wisdom, and compassion. Ramadan threw me into my own accidental jihad, forcing me to wrestle with my intolerance and self-absorption. And I had been losing ground in this battle, forgetting my husband’s intentions and focusing instead on the petty ways I was inconvenienced by his practice.”
“I thought then of something a Sufi Muslim friend had told me: that Sufis believe that our essence radiates beyond our physical bodies—that we have a sort of energetic second skin, which is extremely sensitive and permeable to everyone we encounter. Muslim men and women wear modest clothing, she said, to protect this charged space between themselves and the world.”
About the Author
Krista Bremer is the associate publisher of The Sun magazine and the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation award. Her essay on which this book is based, “My Accidental Jihad,” received a Pushcart Prize. Her essays have been published in O: The Oprah Magazine,More magazine, and The Sun, and she’s been featured on NPR and in the PBS series Arab American Stories. Her website is www.kristabremer.com.