What do a Christian, a Jew & a Muslim do in Rural PA? (Part 1)

Megan, Noah & Ahmed: I'm so mad I don't remember most of the details of what happened this night. I only remember the vague generalities. This post sucks. But I had to put it out there.... I miss you Sir Noahalot!


So february was a big travel month for me. My work took me & my coworkers to various liberal arts colleges in Pensylvania. The first trip was to Bucknell College near Lewisburg, PA. Megan (the Christain) and I (the Moslem) landed sometime in the early afternoon at Harrisburg "International" Airport. We wondered what countries the "International" was refering to, and decided that it was prolly our neighbour Canada, and the popular spring break destination, Mexico. Noah (the Jew), was waiting for us near baggage claim. We quickly picked up our luggage and our rental car, and we were officially off on our first interfaith road trip!!

The 2 hour drive didn't seem to long. The scenery was beautiful, as we drove alongside the river for most part. Not long after we had left Harrisburg, I spotted a old train cart on the road side with the words "Jesus One Way" spray painted on them. We wondered what the author could have meant - that there was only one way to Jesus? that we had to drive "->" way to find Jesus? But soon we were distracted by Bryan Adam's "Everything I do" - and that is a video I will have to post. Noah recorded from the front passenger seat as Megan & I sung our hearts out... Look into my eyes, you will see... what you mean to meeeeeeeee... search your heaarrrt, search your sooooul...when you find me there, you'll search no mooooore... don't tell me, it's not worth fighting foooor... i can't help it, there's nothing i want moooooore... you know it's truuuuue, everything i doooo...i'll do it for youuuuuuuuu... umm, yea that was some seriously interfaith singing. But alas, it came to an end once we reached our destination: Lewisburg.

The next few days at Bucknell were business as usual... meetings, dinners, Noah's superstar presentation (for those of you unfamiliar with the great Noah Silverman, he is THE INTERFAITH SUPERHERO, the best one ever. For real. For real real).

At the end of our time at Bucknell, Megan suggested we go to dinner with a friend of hers, Ahmed, a Palestinian international student who attended Susquehanna University located in nearby Selinsburg. So we picked him up and drove over to BJ's Steakhouse. Lucky for us, it was Trivia night! The hostess strapped on one of those over 21 orange bracelets on our wrists, and into the arena we marched.

The first thing we had to do once we'd ordered our food, was pick a name for our table. "Free Palestine" said Noah, perhaps a little louder than we'd hoped. But it sounded like a good dream. If we won the trivia competition, "Free Palestine" would reign this night.

Round One. We were all very determined. Quickly, but carefully writing down our answers on the appropriately numbered lines. The air was tense. The smell of sweet success was so close. Or maybe that was just Noah's non-halal steak next to me. We waited as they called out the table names in order of rank. "Allahu Akbar!" swept across the room as they announced that "Free Palestine" was in 6th place. Ahmed and I sat quiet through most of the Noah's emphatic roar.

Round Two. Ok so we became a little over confident and went with speed over quality. We got more answers wrong than in the first, and we were more concerned with how we would react when the results were announced. It sounded like a bad Gross National Profit strategy for a growing third world country.

Round Three. By now we had pretty much accepted that we would not be joyously cheering "Free Palestine" at the end of this night. And we were more into actually discussing more important questions around the real situation in Palestine. "Where is Sierra Nevada Beer made?" - was of no real interest to us.

By now, partly from exhaustion, and partly from my lack of knowledge around the history of Palestine, I mostly listened to the intense discussion between Noah, Megan & Ahmed.

And it hit me: How much this little moslem had to gain from listening to her interfaithing friends.