tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post8709453110873528526..comments2024-03-15T00:12:57.489-07:00Comments on Covenant Zone: Egyptian Slave Freed From Slavery... In Americatruepeershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-1606520120962884922008-12-30T21:14:00.000-08:002008-12-30T21:14:00.000-08:00What a terrible story to have to even think about,...What a terrible story to have to even think about, much less write about.<BR/><BR/>It's quite sad when slavery is still thought of as acceptable, especially when that mindset is smack in the middle of a country which fought a war to abolish the act.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-20137378011305259652008-12-29T22:52:00.000-08:002008-12-29T22:52:00.000-08:00Thanks Charles, interesting story.a welcome remind...Thanks Charles, interesting story.<BR/><BR/><I>a welcome reminder to keep faith in the possibility of happy endings</I><BR/><BR/>Well, if we can talk of happy endings at age 19, she has one because she found herself by great fortune in a country that has been made modern through Christianity. Back home in Egypt, her own family thinks she is in the wrong and the slave owners have another girl in chains. This is for such people an age-old story. Good for Shyima that she refuses to speak or think in Arabic.<BR/><BR/>So, faith in the possibility of happy endings has to have a specific religious character, or else the story with a happy ending will just be primitive myth: that which hides (it is not even conscious of) its own dependence on sacrificial victims, just as the happy family shown partying in the video was dependent on the little slave girl to scapegoat to make their lives seem blessed. (I bet the confusion of the slave owners' kids, when interviewed by police, was largely genuine and not simply a case of being caught in a conscious lie.) <BR/><BR/>America sent the rich Egyptian woman to prison, but couldn't cure her of the desire for another slave. Only engagement with the demanding faith of Christianity could have worked such magic, but the result would not have been "happy" in any kind of ritualistic-mythic sense, but rather the kind of happiness that can only come with the hard and patient and never-ending work of fighting to know good and evil and also to accept patiently the necessary limits to our attempts to build the Kingdom of God in this world.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.com