TC: Growing up, were you exposed to the diversity of religions?
Saldaña: I grew up, until fifth grade, in Columbia, Mo., which was a college town, so I must have. My family had a lot of friends who were Jewish, so I certainly never thought it strange to be around other religions — that was something that was very normal to me in growing up … . But outside of that, no, this (her interest in Muslim-Christian relations) is something that I’ve really come to on my own. But what’s interesting about it is that I encountered religious diversity in the Middle East, which people think of as Islamic. I found that it was incredibly religiously diverse. And it was encountering that and learning about that that gave me the eyes to return to America and see diversity in my own country. So in that case, my experience in the Middle East was an absolute gift.

TC: How did you become interested in Muslim-Christian relations to begin with?
Saldaña: Well, after I graduated from Middlebury College (in Vermont), I received a fellowship called the Thomas Watson Fellowship to spend a year traveling and writing poetry. That year was the Christian Millennium, 1999-2000, so I was going to write poetry within the context of 2000 years of Christianity. I’d planned on only going to Israel and Italy, but when I was in Israel, I went to the West Bank for the first time and Bethlehem and I just totally fell in love with the Arab world and the culture and the people and their hospitality. So I changed my project and asked if I could learn about Christianity in the Middle East.
I traveled to Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Turkey and spent some time with Arab Christian communities and, for the first time, I learned about Arab Christianity in the Arab world, which I’d known nothing about. I also learned about the co-existence of Muslims and Christians in the Middle East and that they had been living together since the beginning of Islam and this was just something that had been completely foreign to me. I’d never known anything about Arab Christianity or about Muslim-Christian relations, and I decided that I wanted to study this more.
The next year I lived in China for a year, doing some journalism, working and teaching a bit, and I spent some time with Muslim communities in northwestern China in Xinjiang Province, which is near Afghanistan and Pakistan. Then, the following year, I got a job working as a journalist in Lebanon, which has the largest Arab-Christian population in the Middle East — about 30 percent, give or take. So then I had a real opportunity to live and experience the world of Muslim-Christian relations in the Middle East and to do some stories on religion, and all that inspired me to go back to school and to study Islam and to study Arabic. So that’s what I‘ve been doing these past two years.

TC: I know that you started your work at a newspaper in Lebanon on 9-11 (Sept. 11, 2001). What was it like?
Saldaña: Well, it was interesting. I had arrived on the ninth and had taken the day off from work on the 11th and another American and I were just sitting around, looking for an apartment. I didn’t have a place to live, I didn’t have my cell phone, I didn’t have anything.
We heard people speaking in Arabic and saying “America” and people just really panicking and we had no idea what was going on. Everyone around us knew, but we had no idea; I had no way to be contacted.
We just sort of guessed that something was wrong and then the girl I was with got a phone call, so we ran and watched everything on the news and went and got all of my stuff from the hotel and got out as quickly as possible.
At that point we were really panicking because we had no idea what our status as Americans being in the Middle East at that time would be. The next day, which was the 12th, is when I started covering it (9-11) and started covering reactions to the story, so it was sort of a double life of not knowing where I stood, being new, very new in Lebanon — and of course my family being very worried about me — but at the same time, really wanting to engage in the conflict and my job.
I think it was harder for my parents. For me, it was scary, but the thing about journalism is that when you’re out there and you’re involved in a conflict, it gives you some measure of control over it. You feel like you’re doing something and you’re engaging in it and you’re trying to understand it.

TC: The paper you worked for, The Lebanon Daily Star, is an English language newspaper there, right?
Saldaña:: Right, but for a Lebanese audience. Of course, after 9-11, its audience expanded, increased more. People from abroad were anxious to see the new Arab perspective.
But, for me, it was challenging because at that very moment where there was this “us” versus “them” mentality, I was in a situation where I had to understand the conflict from the perspective of the Lebanese themselves, or at least try to.
So from the beginning, I was in a situation that challenged me not to think in these polarized notions of “us” and “them,” but to try to see the perspective of people in the Middle East as if it were my own perspective.
And I learned a great deal from that and learned how important it is to bring that perspective back to people in America.