Some Far and Distant Place: Muslim-Christian Encounters Viewed Through the Eyes of a Child

Born in 1957 in the little town of Murree, in the mountains of northern Pakistan and in sight of the Vale of Kashmir, Addleton (Undermining the Center: The Gulf Migration and Pakistan) is the son of Baptist missionary parents who devoted their lives to saving Muslim souls for Christ. Although he knew their home in Macon, Georgia, only from the three-year furloughs granted them at five-year intervals, he sometimes dreamed of becoming a U.S. president as well as other unlikely American icons. Yet it was the beautiful hills of Sind, the sound of creaking spokeless wooden wheels of the ox carts in the village lanes, the holidays, rituals and daily life of the Muslim community that were his symbols of home until he was sent to college in the United States. Steeped in his family's Christian devotions, he was unaware until much later that his father was frustrated and deeply depressed over what the elder Addleton considered his failure to save many souls. ""We have not turned the world upside down as we thought we might. Islam has remained unyielding,"" his father wrote in his diary. But the missionary became so attached to that Muslim Pakistan where he thought he had failed that he ""ached"" for it when he was on furlough, preferring it to the ""godless and materialistic"" United States. His son delves into family history here, drawing a rare picture of the missionary community of his exceptional boyhood and of the colors, simplicities and complications of rural Pakistani culture. He is now back in Pakistan as a U.S. Foreign Service officer with the Agency for International Development. (Apr.)