A free posting on Medium

Evans’ Rag

Vol 3 Issue 42

Last year I wrote a story in memory of my mother-in-law, Dawlat Awad. This week’s blog is tangentially about a friend of hers and more broadly the politics of religion that seem to separate more than unite the country. After the wake for Dawlat’s friend, I was reminded of Christopher Hitchens’s essays on the Founding Fathers endorsing their purposeful separation of Church and State.

Hitchens is more popularly known for his dislike of religion—he would travel cross country to debate any and all on the subject—but he had an acute eye for history stemming from his reading and an encyclopedic memory. Born, bred and educated in England, he took the United States as his adopted country, if not uncritically. He viewed America as the child bettering the parent—England. It isn’t expressed as directly as that, but easy enough to recognize in the essays. I’ll admit it’s one reason I’ve read so much English history, to the detriment of reading histories of other parts of the world.

Quoting oneself isn’t terribly polite, but in this case has bearing on this week’s blog:

“This will be short, mainly because I don’t know as much about her as I should. She was an extraordinarily private person. Except that she left teaching art in grade school, packed up her painting and knitting and left Egypt quite a while ago, accompanying her husband, bringing their two young children to America. This was well before our country decided we hated immigrants from “shithole” African countries–or at least were polite enough not to admit it.” from Dawlat Awad

And a link to a piece on Medium about much ado about nothing.