The Foreign Student

Yes yes, so he was from an affluent family. Well-endowed, eh?

Nice nice, so he studied in London. For four years!

And he lived in a beautiful neighborhood! A student in a beautiful apartment?

But please, don't assume his life was devoid of anxiety, misery, or, even poverty.

Yes, poverty.
(And poverty, is an emotional condition. It would be wrong to assume that it was a material condition. Yes, it can have material causes. Very possibly. But the condition itself is really an emotional state.)

Don't you know how badly some foreign students can suffer from incurable cases of the inferiority complex? Oh, so mired in so much pain and anguish?

Even if you are rich in one country, you can be a nobody in another. Easy to understand, but no, you would never want to experience this.

And I'd hate to say this, but it's true. The inferiority complex is first and foremost for students coming to the metropole from the margins. (It can happen to students going the other way, but hey, what do they know? is my honest opinion.)

Oh, but of course, he should have dealt with his inferiority complex in a much, much, much better way. Oh!

That's why I am so frustrated.

I know, or I think I know, the foreign student's misery. His loneliness.

But the one who studied in London, he failed to understand that the Problem was inside of him, not outside in the world of U.S. tanks and suicide bombers.

His version of Islam, if it can be called that, was not spiritual at all. It was so materialist and image-ridden. Oh! That is not what any religion, or religious experience, is all about.

One knows that prayer, meditation, communication...these have to do with the spirit. Not chemicals! Not planes! Not guns! Not even guts.

It's complicated....

Ah, maybe I am assuming too much.