People are people everywhere. It’s a cliche, a platitude. It’s also as true as it is not.

I’ve lived in an Islamic country. An experience like that is where you learn that both the liberal and the conservative verities are both really fucking ludicrous.

People in different civilizational contexts really do think and perceive the world very differently. I can cite so many examples. Most Americans who declaim they are experts on Islamic matters have barely spent any time in the Islamic world, have not crawled the streets like I have, have not walked through neighborhoods they weren’t quite sure they’d walk out of alive.

I can read and understand (probably better than they can) all their pseudo-intellectual stotting, but they can’t tell me shit about what it’s like being there, meeting people, separated by inches of space but light years of perception.

“Inshallah!”

I heard that word (actually phrase, but it’s said as a single word) all the time. When a taxi pulled out into traffic recklessly without even checking, when a boatman just decided to proceed despite knowing the depth, when AK-47s were fired into the night sky: “Inshallah!”

It basically means, “If Allah wills it.”

Because I’m not a politically correct milquetoast Obama-style pushover, I’d argue with the taxi driver. “Not inshallah! Fucking look, man! Do you see Allah in this damn taxi? I’m lookin’, ain’t no Allah!” I’d say. It didn’t work. It didn’t matter. He (and it was always a he) would just glare at me and keep “inshallahing” all over the road.

I hung out with this translator nearly every day in Egypt. She was one of the few women there. We ganged up because we had a lot in common and importantly I wasn’t trying to get into her pants.

The key: she was a translator and spoke very fluent Arabic. She taught me some, but I’ve mostly forgotten it by now. However, she was fair-haired, blue eyes, pale white. No one in Egypt ever guessed she probably knew more Arabic than they did.

Anyway, it was always funny watching her walk into male-dominated spaces, have them say the most vile things about her in Arabic, and then hear her reply in perfect Arabic, “I don’t think you’re man enough to do anything like that.” That was a bit dangerous but it was so funny it was worth it every time. (I always marvel that I’m still alive. Every day I’m always like, “Isn’t that cooool?”)

But they still treated her like a trained dog or pond scum. Anyone who says Islamic society actually respects women by forcing them into hijabs, burqas and the like probably has never been in the room with many members of an Islamic society and a woman, especially an intelligent and powerful woman like she was.

Hard to believe anything I read or hear in the press — liberal or conservative — because I’ve seen the vast gulf between their authoritative banalities and the reality of being present.