Late Eighties in Mesopotamia

I was traveling from northern Iraq to Istanbul Turkey, by bus. It was cheaper that way and gave me the chance to see Turkey from the ground instead of the air. It was during the Iraq-Iran war, an event known by everyone in the world. What was not known as widely or perhaps just ignored by the international community at large, was the yet unaccounted, unmentioned war between the Iraqis and the Kurds. If one goggles the word Kurd, a short definition pops up immediately: Kurd = A member of a largely pastoral Islamic people who live in Kurdistan; the largest ethnic group without their own state. Not even a mention there about their numbers in Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
Well, despite a definition like that, the Kurds of Northern Iraq around the city of Zakho, the point of my departure, insisted that they were not at all “a largely pastoral Islamic people” but lots of them were Christians of the Coptic or Chaldean faith.
What is Coptic? Again, if one goggles it as well, this information probably will pop out: Coptic = The liturgical language of the Coptic Church used in Egypt and Ethiopia; written in the Greek alphabet, the Coptic religion being the ancient Christian church of Egypt.
Almost as old as the idea of Jesus itself.
What are Chaldeans – well – apparently the Assyrians that 3000 years ago were a powerful empire. They spoke Aramaic. They still do, today.
They are those that built the ancient city of Nineveh with its 19 gates guarded by enormous winged bulls with human heads. Ashur, Sargon, Semiramis, Nineveh, Nimrod, the Epic of Gilgamesh are all Assyrian names and places.



It was about 7 or 8 p.m. when we left Zakho and headed for the Turkish border. The bus was full of Egyptian, Turkish and Lebanese men that were working in Iraq and now they were traveling to Istanbul on their way home to their respective countries. The only women in the bus were I and the wife of an engineer that my husband worked with in Iraq for the past 18 months of his contract. She was sitting next to me. Beside us, there was also an old Syrian woman in her sixties that were traveling with her youngest son.
The night fell and from the neighboring hills on both sides of the road, like fireworks launchers, the Khalshnikows begun to roar. The red-orange dotted lines of the bullets drew almost continuous lines across the valley, above the ribbon of the road on which our bus was moving imperturbably towards Turkey.

I was young and had no fears at all. The crossfire was not new to me – I saw it before in the Shatt-Al –Arab Delta, at Basra and in the middle of the desert between Baghdad and Amara. There it happened between the Iraqi Army and the Iranians. The missiles they exchanged made a different kind of noise or damage than the machine-guns and the mortars. The explosions were far away, in the oil-fields or army barracks and still shook the ground under our feet or made the windows of the bus vibrate almost to the point of cracking.
Here, near Zakho the fight was between the Iraqis and the Kurdish Resistance.
Somehow I grew accustomed instantly after my arrival 3 months before to the fact that those two wars were not mine, nobody aimed at us, the guests.
Both parties’ members or sympathizers in any conversation we had, tried to reassure us that nothing will ever happen to us, foreigners. We were Guests. We were welcomed there, because our family members were there on work contracts ratified by our country of origin and Saddam’s Hussein’s government. We had the right to be there and the right that our neutrality and presence be respected. We had the right to visit the sites of ancient Mesopotamia and we were assigned sometimes a small military Jeep with some soldiers to guide our bus to Babylon, Nineveh or Ur on the shortest, safest roads possible.

That last night of mine on the Iraqi territory I was looking through the window at the starry sky, the moon and the fiery exchange of tracers and I asked the two Egyptians sitting behind us if they were worried. Not at all, they said. I assumed that much because they were obviously in a good mood, chattering and laughing, happy to go home to their loved ones.
But I wanted to know why they were so sure that nothing would happen to our bus that night.
Cannot some poorly trained fighter aim at us by mistake? No, they reassured me, because both sides knew that two European ladies were on board. I thought they were kidding and wanted to know how anybody would have such information.
I was explained that the Kurdish guerrillas had spies that informed them about the passengers. They would never harm Christian ladies from abroad, because most of them were Christians themselves. Besides, the bus belonged to a Turkish company and if a mistake happened and damage to the bus or the passengers was done deliberately or through human error, the Turkish army would punish a lot of people for that mistake.
On the other hand, the Iraqi department for the control of the foreigners also knew who was on board because that was their job. With so many people in charge knowing, they said, the bus was safe. Mainly and foremost thanks to our presence.
True or not, I wasn’t scared, either way, watching the exchange of fire like I was watching some news or a movie on TV.
The only way I reacted to it all was remembering how I met some of those Kurds only few days ago.


Just a week before my return to Istanbul, we were wandering around the streets of Zakho, as tourists do, when I saw a funny looking skeleton made of wood and metal rising above the roofs, not far from the bazaar. It was some type of construction like improvised scaffolding, holding a big cast iron bell and a small shabby cross on the top. The cross was somehow bent on a side rather than standing straight, like someone aimed at it with stones and hit it.
We walked towards it but as we approached, the buildings around us grew taller, hiding it behind their roofs. We became lost for direction and asked a man passing by about the bell and the cross in English, French and German. The Arab did not speak any of these languages but understood something though and mimed the sign of the cross with his right arm across his chest and an inquiring expression on his face. We nodded.
Very friendly and obliging as always the Iraqis were to us everywhere, he guided us to a maze of shantytown-like streets to a very small building, made of mud bricks and painted neglectfully white with lime. Part of the roof was affected by fire and the damage was patched up with all sorts of bits and pieces.
In front of it, on a small porch by the door, there were a multitude of shoes and boots, like in front of any mosque, a sign that there were people inside. It was a late Sunday morning and we understood that the modest building, not bigger than the surrounding shabby houses was a Christian church and that a service must have been going on inside.
Being the first such place we were about to visit there, my husband and I were quite curious to see how such a church in an officially Muslim country looked like.
The first things that stroke us were the shoes. We were familiar with that aspect of the mosques but we never imagined that Christian churches in the Middle East required also to be entered barefoot.
It was early March and still cold, so reluctantly we took our warm boots off when an old man dressed like any other Arab in the neighborhood came out and insisted gesturing frantically that we put them back on. We did not want to stand apart from the people inside and tried to make that clearer to him. Using a half dozen Italian words, the man tried to convince us that he knew that for Europeans, entering a church barefoot was not customary; that he understood and knew that fact; that we were guests, and therefore privileged; and that it was too cold for us to be barefoot. Apart from that he mimed in a universally understood gesture that our “expensive” boots might be stolen while we were inside.
He kept on bowing and showed us such respect and humility, I felt embarrassed.

The warning about possible theft surprised us because the Iraqis we knew, were extremely honest and would never steal. Just the other day in the markets after buying some oranges I forgot my little coin purse on the merchant’s stand. There was not much change in it, just coins. I kept the paper bills in my bag.
We were almost two streets away when the panting, sweaty man who sold oranges caught up with us. He must have had quite a run. He was yelling “Madam, Madam, takeeka!” (Madam, wait!) But I did not react to that because I did not imagine he was calling me. Once he reached us finally, he tapped my husband on the shoulder, as the local custom did not allow him to touch me, a woman, although he handed my purse to me and not to my husband. I realized only then that I forgot something on his stand.
He also refused the tip I wanted to give him for his trouble. But did not refuse the cigarettes I gave him in the end, for which he bowed several times. I wanted to thank him somehow and since everywhere we went we were offered cigarettes as a sign of friendship, I gave him a pack of Marlboro which was apparently all the rage in that country cigarettewise.
That, would have never happened in Istanbul for example, where people were mugged New York style whenever the thieves had a chance to corner someone on an isolated street or even in a cheap hotel’s lobby. I saw it happening.
I concluded that theft in a Christian neighborhood was more common that it would be in the Muslim one.

Inside the church was warm and crowded. The happy event was actually a christening of a little boy.
The interior walls were uneven, improvised and the mud plastering was smeared with the same lime as the exterior but a bit of sky-blue pigment was added. On the bumpy walls there were 2 or 3 small icons of Jesus and Mary and Joseph, none larger than a postcard. Next to them, some newspaper pages with photos of some Greek-orthodox and perhaps Coptic high hierarchy priests were pinned or glued, so yellow with age, it was hard to distinguish the Arabic and Greek writing as well as the faded portraits. I thought one of them to be the Archbishop Makarios. Perhaps was in fact the Pope of Alexandria. I was wondering what was he doing in a Coptic Church if it was Makarios indeed. There was one oil candle lit up under Jesus’ tiny icon on the wall. There were no benches, but just one small row of very shabby, very old chairs in front, by the “altar”. Nobody sat on them. They must have been reserved for important guests. The worshipers were seated on some cheap rugs straight on the mud floor, like in a mosque. The altar itself was in fact some sort of a kitchen table covered with a “made in China” tablecloth on which some pious hands had embroidered a bunch of very colorful crosses and Greek symbols.
The parents of the baby being baptized were striking in more ways than one.
First, they were extremely young, not even 19-20 years of age. The father, very dark haired and with one continuous thick black eyebrow, had a typical Middle Eastern complexion. He was dressed in the traditional Kurdish daks, with the torso covered by a regular shirt on top of which he was wearing the traditional short, tight coat looking more like a waistcoat with long sleeves than a jacket. He had a thick belt around his waist and his head was covered with a turban. He looked like most men in the streets outside, except for the fact that his clothes seemed brand new, definitely for the unique occasion of the day.
He was a bit short but very handsome and apparently very flattered by our presence there, which made me feel extremely uncomfortable.
His wife was evermore arresting: blue eyed, her hair was a natural reddish-blond, thick, long, wavy, exquisitely beautiful, covering her shoulders and her back to the waist and flowing freely like in a shampoo commercial. Her brilliantly white, fresh, young skin had natural brown beauty spots here and there and on her little nose and on her cheeks there were some freckles. Her blond eyebrows were accentuated with a black pencil in a very visible effort to make them more visible. She was wearing lipstick and eyeliner and she looked very very pretty.
What made her stand out of any local crowd was what she was wearing: a light brown classic cut inspired business suit – jacket and knee length pencil-skirt – very poorly tailored, obviously by some village seamstress who probably made the effort to copy something from a illustration in some magazine. She was manifestly not very used to cut patterns like those for the local women. The whole outfit was a clear courageous and probably perceived locally as outrageous attempt at western fashion for this young mother. Her attire was so unusually looking to me, after the 3 months already spent in Iraq that I had to make efforts not to stare.
I saw plenty of women dressed similarly in Baghdad, but that was the capital and if they were that adventurous, they were wearing a black bourka on top of the suit (even if it was worn casually open, like a lawyer’s robe, letting the viewer see the front of the body) or if they did not wrap themselves in that black mantle, then their skirt was ankle-long or maybe their hair was covered by a scarf. Or any other little compromise of the sort.
The blond Kurdish beauty here did not compromise in any way. She was making a religious statement apparently: I am a Christian and my religion allows me to be a woman; to have a waist, to show my gorgeous hair and even a bit of my legs.
I have a feminine shape and I’m proud of it. My man is my lover and he is proud of me; he is open-minded and we are a modern family.
This is what transpared to me from her personal statement.
The baby was fair, with a thin yellowish tuft of hair on the top of his had and very dark eyebrows for a baby. He looked pink and fat and healthy and was totally wrapped up and tied tight with a white ribbon, like a parcel, proof that the baptism where he was dipped in water 3 times, was over.

When we entered the church the priest stepped aside for a second – and we felt very guilty and embarrassed for the interruption - and invited us to sit down on the front row on those fragile, limping chairs. We did and few minutes later we were asked by both parents and the priest to bless the baby. I was never too sure about that but I think that we were instantly bestowed with the honour of becoming some sort of godparents, or honorary witnesses or something like that. So flattered seemed the whole congregation by our presence.
We were thanked profusely for our presence, for our “gracious” attitude and a lot of other similar and blown out of proportion things.
We were invited to the house to celebrate with food and dance, but we had to refuse, since our driver was supposed to pick us up in less than an hour and take us to Mosul. The priest spoke English well enough and interpreted for us. He was able to convince that extended family and their friends (I hope) that we were not making up excuses to get away, but we really were at the mercy of our driver who was pressed by time.
It gave me a bad feeling that we had to go, because their hospitality would had been the most valuable and worth rewarding with an acceptance, as in their view we were “brethren in faith” from far away, a once in a life-time occasion.

For me it was a very emotional event, that visit to the Coptic Church. Mysterious and explanatory at the same time.
I am not a very religious person. I do not really go to church unless somebody invites me to a christening or wedding or funeral. I go there out of respect for that people’s event – loss or gain, happiness or pain.

This time though, it was different. I really understood for the first time what a third world country meant.
How people saw the facts of life there.
What disinheritance meant.
How conflict evolved, why and how the act of faith for some people equals the importance of the physical act of survival.
That was a faith as primordial, as pure, as strong as instinct.
The very existence of that shabby building there, amongst the golden, elegant, rich, dominant minarets.
I looked around at that shabby church without a bell-tower, with its crooked cross at the top, its dirt floor and its newspapers with human saints on the dilapidated walls. The burned roof, the empty walls, made me compare in my mind the European luxury of our cathedrals in which spirituality was lost or shattered in tiny bickering bits and pieces of dogmatic arguments of a multitude of confessions (in fact petty & stupid differences). I realized there and then that like Christmas, the Western World’s Christianity is nothing else but a commercial state of facts, bank accounts and statistics; nothing more for most people, especially those in charge of it – from the most modest of the country priests to the heads of the Church themselves.

Years later, having a random a chat about the Chaldeans and the Copts with an Ethiopian priest, I was told that probably the young family in that northern church in Iraq might have actually been an Assyrian family ( "Nestorian" )and not necessarily a Kurdish one.
Fact is, we did not ask what they were, we just assumed. That was heart of the Kurdish country, what else could they be?

Then, in the Eighties I decided that I should look at mosques built in Nesblandia with a bit more sympathy and tolerance – although it seems they are as rich and as shiny in Nesblandia as they are in the countries that invented them. But the Christian Churches in the Arab world were not so shiny.


It’s the best I can do for two opposing causes that I do not believe in, I thought - compare them.

Today, reading about the fate and misfortune of the Assyrians in Iraq, I don't know what to think anymore. I am struggling hard not to let go of that left over shred of tolerance I was so proud of in the Eighties.
How sad is that?

About SmallTalk in 3000 Words

http://www.flickr.com/photos/roamin/19381750/

I don’t think I react well to disappointments. When it comes to people, that is.
I give everyone a chance from the start, usually. Any person can be nice until it turns out not to be. Sometimes it happens.

I work with this older lady that everybody seem to like at the office. That is rather unusual because they are not a loving bunch entirely, the same way they are not all lovable. Some don’t want to be, some cannot and others do not know how. Amongst these last ones, some do not know because they haven’t been taught/shown that while others have learned how, but they cannot be bothered to make the effort.

Anyway, this lady (let’s call her Rhonda for the sake of discretion) seems to be generally accepted and loved. I liked her too.
Still, the other day I felt something that other people might not feel like I do. I questioned her niceness, but kept that to myself. I never shared that impression with anyone at work and never will.

The lady in question is the type that smiles to everyone and nods and approves of you when passing by. She seems to be equally friendly to all. She also apologizes a lot for the most insignificant things,like she wants to show you that if she did something wrong she’s aware of it. That, I think, might be the secret of her popularity.
She also seems to listen intently to everyone when they talk to her. Unless, of course, she interrupts. Then she starts talking very fast for about a minute, pointing out that she understood it all. Then, she sort of wakes up from that little "trance" of fast-fast-talking and apologizes 4-5 times in a row for interrupting you. It’s hard to describe it, but this is how she is.

My ‘disappointment’ was when I discovered something that other people did not seem to notice about her.
Once that happened, instead of feeling disappointed by her, I felt disappointed in myself, because I was such a bad person. I behaved badly towards a nice co-worker, right? How could I be disappointed in someone when everybody likes that person? How could I go against the general consent/opinion/approval/trend?And this is what makes me say that I do not react well to disappointment. The guilt. My bloody conscience. I must be bad somewhere at the core. And so on.

Rhonda spends much time on the phone. It’s the nature of her job. Whenever you have to ask her a question or interact with her – work-related – she is busy, very-very busy. She is on the phone with a customer and she really goes apparently out of her way to help them. This is the general consensus in the office. Up till here, it is fine by me.

Being a customer myself everywhere in this world, whenever I have a problem to sort out, or a public service to go to, or simply organize a trip or buy a fridge or god-knows-what-else, I believe that I have a good understanding of what a customer wants. I know their needs and how they should be dealt with.
I think I’m a professional customer by birth.
When I call somewhere and they put me on hold and keep me on for a very long time I, the customer, become angry with “them”. But if, let’s say somebody – a human and not a machine – tells me to hang on a minute, because they have someone else on the other line, or somebody showed up at the counter, I understand.
Why should I not? I'm not the only one in this world and I’m quite sure that other people have things to sort out just like me. Chances are that someone called 1 minute before me. Understandable. Not 100% pleasant, but understandable.

Maybe this is why after a while, having a couple of experiences with Rhonda, I started doubting her just a tad.
Sometimes I must talk with her, not necessarily to socialize, but to resolve work related problems. After few months working here,I begun to grow tired of standing for 5 minutes around Rhonda's desk, waiting for her to notice me discreetly. It goes like this: she looks at me and she continues to talk on the phone like I wasn’t there. At the beginning I thought that in between two calls, she’d have a second for me too. But, the sooner she finishes with a customer, she is taking another call or she shuffles some papers on her desk or takes some notes or checks the fax-machine. Until eventually the phone rings again.
If I try to get her attention during that shuffling and notes taking, she just lifts her arm, showing me the palm of her hand, a well-known sign of “be quiet”.
She never says to a caller 'Excuse me one single moment please, I have a co-worker here with a work related problem, won’t take more than a second.' She could, and I'm quite sure, most people would understand the same way I understand when I am a customer myself.

After a while, I started to believe that this was a bit of a habit: look at me, I am the most customer-service oriented person; I am dedicated; I am zealous; I am brave; I am perfect; I am busy; I am here for them; I work hard; I dunno-what-this-office-would-do-without-me. kind of thing.

I have work to do too. I work hard as well. I have things to finish too, and although I do not have to spend time on the phone as much as she does, I still feel compelled to finish my share daily. Waiting and waiting for somebody else to get off the phone just for 5 seconds, so I can go on with my job, would be greatly appreciated.

Having to deal with Rhonda, became for me after a while, a very unpleasant task – like having to call my telephone company or my Internet provider and then having to wait for thirty minutes, listening to music that I would not listen to, otherwise.

I tried all sorts of methods. I tried phoning her first – but that did not work because her extension was always busy. When it wasn’t, she told me she had another call coming right then.
I wrote her e-mails – but that was not practical, because the amount of time wasted on explaining what I needed from her, took almost as long as waiting behind her chair for my presence to be noticed.
In the end I decided to leave on her computer monitor post-it while she was on the phone or shuffling things. The same way I do with other people when they are not at their desks and I want to contact them on their return.
The only downside of it is that the answer or document or information or whatever I needed from her, comes back to me half day too late, at least.

I did not say anything to anyone because people would have hated me for that. Or they would probably have misunderstood the whole thing.
I put up with it the same way you put up with public transport going bad – you hate what it's happening, but is nothing you can do.

Everybody likes her. Fine by me.
I suspect they all love Rhonda because she hardly has to interact with anyone directly. She works only part-time. Her workplace is isolated from ours and out-of-the-way so to speak.
To compensate for that, she feeds us: she bakes an incredibly sweet loaf of a kind or another every now and then.
Then every now and then, she brings some stuff like crackers or other sorts of nibbles and leaves them in a bowl in the kitchen with a note: ‘Help yourself, I bought too many and have no place where to keep them at home’ or something like that.
I fell for that several times when I was new in this job. After a while I discovered that the stuff she brings in it’s always very stale. It was either expired when she bought it on some sale, or she kept it in the pantry for a year. Whatever the reason, it’s never fresh or less hard than granite.

Anyway, everybody seems to appreciate ‘the gesture’ enormously. Fine by me. I’m happy to appreciate it too, just by looking at the nibbles, and when my turn comes to tidy a bit the kitchen based on the roster, I’m rather happy to throw those things in the bin. The cleaning lady does not know what to do with them. She must be as surprised as I was if she tasted them. But I don’t think she ever gathered enough courage or initiative to discard them. She might be a Nesblandian too ( aren't all the cleaning ladies Nesblandian everywhere?) and might think we are some strange officers with exotic/strange tastes.

Sometimes I meet Rhonda in the bus, going to or coming from work.
Sometimes if there’s room, we sit next to each other and do the small talk. Some other times, there’s no room at all.
There were few occasions when I was under the impression that she pretended not to notice me, although there was a seat next to her or next to me, we did not sit together. Which by the way, for me was not too bad – I always carry something to read in the bus and I prefer to do that at any rate; the ‘small talk' never does much for me. I'm not coming from a ‘small talk’ culture. Where I come from, we discuss politics, religion and other ‘taboos’ quite passionately, and nobody really knows what small talk means. I think we gave up on conversational taboos about 1000 years ago. Nesblandians, as everybody knows, are quite uncivilized, right?

When we did the small talk, Rhonda and I, we went with the usual:
‘How was your weekend?’ ‘Fine, how was yours?’ ‘Good. I did-this-and-that-or-the-other. It was great’.
Another popular topic was ‘ How is your family?’ ‘Good, thank you for asking. How is yours?’ ‘Excellent.’

Now don’t take me wrong.
I know the rules. When she asked me for example how my mother was, I told her she was great. Even if I spent the weekend at the emergency room in some hospital because let’s say, my mom broke a thumb. I still said she was great. I think if my mother would have died suddenly, I might have still told Rhonda that I had a ‘great week-end’ because she was a Local Inhabitant by Birthright ( I could call them Libs, for short ) and the importance of her personal disposition was more relevant to the fate of the World than my eventual ‘lack of positive thinking’ would ever be.

I know the rules so well that I hardly go into trivial details telling when something really happens, how it happened. Most of the Natives ( or Libs ) here do not want to know such things. That’s why they invented small talk. Light informal conversation for social occasions, the dictionary says, light meaning in fact meaningless/boring/with no substance/irrelevant/insincere/time wasting/hypocritical exchange of words and not ideas.

The purpose of small talk is not to coerce people (God forbid!) to show concern or compassion for a problem, or a person, or a country, or even a continent they don’t want really to know about, because it's your problem and not theirs.
The
Non-Nesblandians ( or Libs) are very proud of the fact that civilization and history brought them to a level high enough to master the intricacy of small-talk to the most refined level – the driest of all times.
Since the problem is yours and they are not getting any material advantage from it, that might ruin their day, shadow their mood, or simply force them to pretend to have compassion. That would be an effort involving perhaps some acting, and nobody wants to go into showbiz for free.
People that live outside Nesblandia hate such things.
To fill in the hole that the small talk embeds in their beings, no wonder so many need yoga classes or the Zodiac to put them in touch again with some spirituality, light, balance and compassion. For the sake of The Planet and the Universe-Outthere.

In Nesblandia for example telling a story would be fine – even a very personal one. They would really want to know and even advise you on what to do. There would be follow-ups over a coffee or even a meal. And that would not involve just the situations where some girl-friends-have-some-man-troubles, no.
But we do not live in Nesblandia here, so we should play by the rules of the place.

Time came for me to go in holiday one day. I had so many things to do, I was so stressed with preparation and travel agents and fluff like that. I must have looked very tired, even to the strangers that did not know me from Adam and Eve.
Finding myself in the bus after work, my Rhonda having an empty seat next to her, and finding herself in a mood good enough to notice me, I was invited to sit next to her. We did our small dosage of chitchat as usual.
Me, knowing the rules, I hardly break them. When I do, it's due only to lack of enough selfcontrol, (like right now, right here on this very blog ) and for her part, Rhonda belonging to the culture that invented the rules, never breaks them.
That day I broke some because I was so stressed out, my mind was all over the place, so I told her about my holiday preparations. Amongst other things, I told her that I had to double my expenses and errands because I had to take my mother with us to Europe, and I had to sort out things for her as well. That, was adding to the cost and the amount of travel arrangements to be made.
Rhonda seemed sympathetic and very understanding. I was almost happy that I broke the rules this time. It felt sort of good and nice to share my concerns with another human being.

Anyways, two days later, in the bus again, we were siting together on our way to work. This time she sat next to me because there were no other free seats around.
A thing lead to another in our regular chitchat, and she asked if all the arrangements were made for our trip. Then suddenly she offered to visit my mother in my absence.
Because – she said – she understood how worried I must be thinking of leaving her by herself for a whole month, while holidaying. She could go to my mother’s home and check on her twice a week if I agreed to.

I was flabbergasted. But then I recollected myself instantly and looked at the bright side of the picture: how nice of her to offer such a thing! No wonder everybody liked her at work, she was so nice.
She is quite a bit older than I am, so she must have forgotten – understandably - that I told her we were taking my mother with us. (Although somewhere in my sarcastic little mind I thought that she was too young still to forget like that, from a day to the next – but then I brushed aside that nasty thought).

She doesn’t know my mother, she must assume that she is a wreck, a totally senile creature that also does not speak English very well like all Nesblandians must be in their old age. She wanted to help.
I must have been a bitch – I thought – to ever suspect that her niceness was a façade, a phony thing, some well disguised ‘I-don’t-really-care but-I-know-how-to-pretend-that-I-do’ kinda thing.
I was very angry with myself for being such a terrible, terrible person. For thinking such terrible, terrible things about some people, instead of going with the flow and appreciate them to their right value. Like the rest of the crowd did.

So, I thanked her effusively and explained once again that we were taking my mother with us. for the very reason that she was old enough (although alert and perfectly sane) to worry us, if we left her behind for one month.

Another couple of days passed, and then one other morning in the bus we had another chat. I suspected that finally, Rhonda was trying to take some interest in me after all. The people at work must have been right all along – she was nice and selfless. I, on the other hand, must be a judgemental bitch who cannot tell a genuine person from a phony.

She is a widow, and she likes to mention that, very often. In every conversation. Even those about nothing. Like for example when she asks about my weekend she always adds that hers are not that good as they used to be when her husband was alive, although they are still fabulous weekends she adds. Because she has children and in laws. She doesn’t go into details much, andI did not try to invade her privacy with too many questions that she might find too nosy. The rules would not allow me to.

That morning I was in for a new surprise when she brushed by about her dearly departed husband again. While I showed my understanding somehow, mentioning knowledge about that sort of thing because my father is dead as well, she asked me how long ago my mother died.
I refreshed her memory with the mention that my mother was packing her suitcases for Europe right then. Dear Rhonda apologized profusely and continuously for about 3 full minutes, talking very fast and concerned, as she does.
After which we went to the more neutral season-and-weather-analysis and pretended both that nothing happened. We were very good at that too.

One of these days in the kitchen at work, during the lunch-break I was busy making a sandwich when Rhonda came in. She started the routine with the weather because there were another two persons as busy as I, fussing around the grill and the microwave and we had to talk about something in order to show that we are civil people.
God knows what I did in my hurry to quench my hunger, but opening a drawer to get a knife, I broke a nail. That is a "neutral" subject and gross as it is, it’s better to mention it within the chitchat frame even at lunch time in a kitchen (!) than other things. Like let’s say the fact that the Catholic Church was again in the news due to some paedophilia cases; or the fact that some illegal immigrants were arrested in a boat by the coast-guard; or the last flood in China, or whatever other more dangerous subjects there might be.

It slipped, as simple as that: 'Damn, I broke a nail!' I said, contributing to the degradation of silence in between two breaths, and the monotony of sunset-overcast-sunshine-clouds-cold-warm-rain litany.

Needless to say that our Rhonda interrupted her weather analysis with a warm, appreciative, deeply heart-felt:
‘That’s nice, dear!? Excellent.”

Why I like Humans but not People

I am probably a bad person.
Or maybe not bad, but perceived as such.
Or maybe just too boring to others and not so aware of it as I should?
Or my face looks mean to some.
Or perhaps because I tend to spot easily hypocrisy and other things as such, instead of keeping it entirely to myself I share some of my opinions at times. Well, it doesn’t seem that I make a good impression at first. The hell knows what I do! I must be doing something wrong.
I asked some closer friends about it in the past and they did not illuminate me. I could not clear it up, although I tried.
So, whenever I meet somebody new, I try to change the approach a bit. I’m thinking that in that way maybe this time I will make a good impression from the start. It doesn’t really happen much, no matter what new conduct or behavior I adopt every time.

What puzzled me besides that is how nobody ever forgets me.
I might make that bad impression and I might need to have to use lots of words to correct whatever I suspected goes wrong – even if I don’t have a clue, but after a while people rather like me. The more we interact, the more they feel comfortable with me. After a while even too comfortable. Especially the very young ones. And then a rather unpleasant familiarity and a very cocky attitude replace the previously rather unfriendly or resentful one.
Then, let’s say I move on and we don’t see each other for a while (that can be 3 months or 10 years) and when we meet again, they behave so enthusiastically that it seems we were the best of friends. Although we weren’t, at all.

That has always puzzled me a lot, especially when it comes from someone whose names I cannot even remember any more, because our acquaintance or interaction was brief.

I am basically rather a sad person that likes to laugh a lot.
I love to laugh, it’s one of my favorite things in life; but I’m sad very often despite of that.
People upset me a lot.
I see things every day and they have an impact on me every time.
I see bad things happening and they ruin my day so to speak.
I think that sadness might be very often all over my face and that turns off some people. I don’t know for sure, I look in the mirror at myself only when I make up my face in the morning a little bit. The rest of the day I even put lipstick on occasionally, without the help of the mirror – the privilege of years of practice.

Here is an example of what makes me sad and adds eventually one more line on my face in long term.
One day I was in a junk food outlet.
I hate those places in general – they are rather filthy, greasy and bad smelling. At times, some very crowded ones are noisier than a sports arena. I never understood why everyone feels compelled to speak so loudly in these places to the point that everybody actually yells in the end.
I detest all those trays left behind, full of cold, hard, greasy french fries, shriveled and dark looking, scattered around; and the half full glasses of miserable watery drink they call pompously coca-cola; the half bitten into burgers, laying around throughout the whole joint.
It irritates me when nobody is bothering to collect them or clean the tables.
I hate the spilled drinks on the floor that make the sole of my shoes sticky like glue; I hate the cloth with which they come sometimes to wipe the top of your table clean – unhygienic-bad-smelling-dark-grey-dirty-pieces-of-rag that leave a scent of sewage behind.
However, sometimes I have to go in there (alas!) and buy quickly something fast and cheap because I am broke and in a hurry and I have let’s say 10 minutes only to gobble something and go back to work or whatever the emergency is. It happens about 2-3 times a year, what can I do.

That day, I bought a Cesar salad and sat at a dirty table full of crumbs and circles left by the musty paper cups. At the opposite table was sitting this well-groomed yuppie, munching on a wrap and reading a newspaper.
A homeless man came inside and started searching with feverish eyes for some left overs. There were plenty, but in very small chunks. A half-eaten large burger and plenty of fries were abandoned on a dirty tray on the corner of the table where the yuppie was seated. He was blocking it from view with the paper he was so engulfed in. It wasn’t his; it was just there. The homeless man smiled at it and hastily walked straight to that table. The moment he was less than a step away, the yuppie’s face raised from his tabloid and said ‘Don’t you dare! Get out of here, don’t make me kick you in the balls, you hear me? Get!’ Then he went on reading.
The poor homeless man put his head down and turned around without a word. He went outside and sat down on the pavement. It shocked me, because I expected him to argue at least a bit. He didn’t.
I could see his back pressed against the glass wall by the exit door. He had a tin mug by his side, on the pavement. He was begging, I assumed and that was for coins.
When I finished the salad, I dag in my wallet for all the change I could find. It wasn’t much, but enough for a burger I assumed. Once outside, I stopped in front of him only to see that his tin mug was half full with coffee. His chin, covered by a wild red beard streaked with white hair was resting on his chest. He seemed crushed. The beard was wet with tears. He was sobbing like a baby.
My heart sunk the same way it does when I see children crying. Not brats that howl because mom is dragging them from the store without the toy they wanted – the other type of unhappy children. Those that cry when slapped across the face hard or those that tell me they lost a coin or those that cry because a stronger child just beat them up. Those that were really wronged.

I showed him the money without a word. He thanked me in a whisper and dragged the pocket of his battered jacket open so I could slip the coins in. He did not stop crying even after I left.
That made me sad for more than one day.
It still makes me sad now.
It actually makes me mad. It brings up in me violent feelings and all the regret that I did not say anything to that horrible yuppie with his styled spiky hair, white shirt and silk tie.
The bastard.

Fresh Air

There was this kid leaving the supermarket and when he passed the security guard he said “Thank you” to him in a fainted voice.
I was looking in my purse for the shopping list.
The security guard was busy checking the shoppers’ bags and took him a while until he looked towards the kid and then he said ‘Hey’ but by then the kid was out of the store and into the mall, walking steadily and he did not hear the ‘hey’.
‘What did he do?’ I asked the man in uniform, on half an impulse to hurry and get the boy. 'Nothing' he said. ‘Is he homeless? ‘ I asked while moving a step towards the outside of the store at the same time with the guard and glancing together at the small hunched back and the blond short hair of the very skinny child. He must have been about 8 or 9 years old, wearing a stripy polo shirt that seemed too large for him and completely inappropriate in the bitter cold of a rainy winter day like that one. ‘Yes’ the man said ‘I think he is homeless. But the problem is that he has a plastic bag he’s sniffing from’ he added. ‘One day I snatched it from him and right now I had no time to try. I'm too busy' he said, while stopping a tall African young man and a red haired girl to look into their backpacks. He was talking to me while doing his job, looking in shopping bags instead of looking at me. Then he stepped again outside for a second and pointing in the kid’s direction: ‘If you look carefully, you’ll see him sniffing right now, after catching some distance from me. Damn!’ he said.
‘I’m gonna go and snatch it from him myself' I said all of a sudden, feeling that it was some sort of obligation to do so, since the security guard could not leave his post.
I almost ran and caught up with the kid few meters down the road. He was with half his face in a small plastic bag and did not see me; I had to pat him on the shoulder.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked stupidly, not knowing how to start such a conversation with a 9-year-old. He looked up at me.
He was very skinny, shivering with cold and his eyes were a pale blue grey, rimmed with a bit of a purple shadow, looking very tired and although I know it sounds pathetically tacky, looking extremely sad and hopeless. ‘Are you hungry?’ I asked quickly, before he had a chance to answer anything, hoping that he would say ‘yes’ and I’ll gain some time in order to find a way to take that plastic bag from him. I was ready to buy him some warm food somewhere if I could convince him to take it from me. He followed my gaze and hurriedly he scrunched the bag in his fist and slid his had in the front pocket of his blue jeans. He was wearing quite clean clothes for a homeless kid and it looked to me that they were his own clothes, but it seemed like he had shaded few kilos and now they were hanging on him like a plump kid’s clothes on a skinnier one.
‘Am I hungry?’ he stoled after me instead of an answer, maybe because he was trying too to gain some time until he could make up his mind about this woman in a warm coat and what possibly she could want from him.
‘Why are you sniffing that rubbish?’ I asked, remembering meanwhile how he thanked the security guard at the supermarket and assuming that the man allowed him inside to nibble on some fruit or allowed the poor little devil even to steal a bun or a croissant. ‘This stuff is going to kill you’ I said, with the certitude that he had been told that before, even if the only other one would have been the security guard. I was searching frantically in my mind for something – I do not know what exactly, a way to try to scare the habit out of him while all my logic was fighting against that useless idea. But what else could I do.
‘So you must be aware that this stuff is going to kill you’ I said again. He sort of nodded quietly and continued to stare at me, his tiny back glued against a big, cold window, displaying dozens of shoes. He looked up and down the street a couple of times, undecided if he should run away or maybe ask the passers by for help.
It broke my heart to look at him. My chest was so full of pity, I felt like drowning in it.
‘Do you really want to die?’ I went on, and he shrugged his shoulders in a way that said clearly ‘So what!’
What would he know about death anyway at that age, I thought in despair, realizing that I made no progress and I wasn’t helping. Feeling as helpless as he must have felt; thinking of his parents and hating them for what they must have done to make him do what he was doing at such a tender, hopples, fragile age. And then I had an idea that at the time felt right.
I said: ‘ But do you know how much it hurts to die like that? You’ll wish you were dead already. It hurts more than it hurts if somebody is beating you with a big bat; much more than it hurts to fall from a bicycle in full speed; it hurts more that it would hurt if someone would pull out your hair strand by strand, or your teeth, one by one for days and days without even stopping. It hurts so bad this kind of death, that you would do anything to make that pain go away. You would gladly give away all things that you like the best, just to make that pain go away. You would give a million away if you had money, just to make that pain stop and if you had the coolest bike in the world, you would give it away too, just to make that horrible pain stop. That is not going to be a quick death. You are not going to close your eyes and bingo! you are dead. No. It's going to last for days and days and days. Even if they take you to a hospital and the doctors will try to help you, it will still hurt and hurt and the doctors cannot make all that death pain go away entirely, no matter how hard they try. And after a while they will have to give up on you.’

I was threatening a little kid with stupid words, not even knowing if he really was listening to them or if he grasped any of the meaning. I was determined to terrify him; but was I? I had no idea.
‘I saw that before’ I said ‘ because I am working in a hospital, you know’ I lied.
He continued to look at me and his eyes grew wider, his mouth slightly opened. Maybe in his little mind this woman was crazy and he was more afraid of her lunacy than he was of her meaningless words. I was thinking to scare the hell out of him and the only thing I knew children of that age feared, was pain.

Pain made him find refuge in the dizzy world of sniffing. Pain was what he tried to avoid when he filled his lungs with those fumes. The pain of being abused, or neglected or abandoned or whatever had happened in his little life that nobody cared about for the moment, but me and some young security guard from a supermarket.

‘You know what?’ I said. ‘You must give me that bag. It will only kill you and I am trying to stop you dying tonight’ I said. ‘Then you will not feel the pain of dying at least another day or two, you know. It can happen any day. You never know when it could happen. Might be today or next year, but it will happen for sure. Unless you give up on that stuff.’
He nodded again, this time a bit more energetically but not entirely convinced, of course.
I went back to the innocent, motherly conversation and asked him again if he was hungry. ‘Not really’ he said. ‘Not right now, anyway’ he mumbled. I thought of the “Thank you” he addressed the man in uniform. 'What about later?’ I asked. ‘I dunno’ he said. ‘Maybe. Can I have some money then, please?’
‘I’ll give you some money if you give me that bag.’ I said. His hand moved in his pocket.’ He shook his head in disaccord. ‘No’ – he whispered. ‘Look, it’s a fair deal” I said. ‘I give you some money, you give me the bag’ I said. He looked down and mumbled something. ‘What did you say?’ I asked. ‘How much?’ he whispered and then looked down again, unsure and miserable. ‘5 buck’s I said. He reflected a few seconds. His hand came out from his pocket with the bag, hesitantly, reluctantly. Then it went back in. Then came back out with the bag still held onto tight. He did not raise his arm, but kept it along his hip, still looking down. I pulled a bill of 5 from my purse. He still didn't budge. Then he looked up at me again, for just an instant, then down again and without a word handed me the bag, without taking the money. I grabbed his hand and deposited the five in it. He closed his skinny, little fist on it and did not put his hand back in his pocket, waiting for me probably to change my mind and take the money back, now that I had the bag. A terrible scent of glue was emanating from it as I was holding it in disgust, with two fingers. ‘You can go now’ I said. ‘ Do not try to follow me, because I'm not going to chuck it here so you can get it back from some rubbish bin’ I said. 'I’ll throw it away somewhere far away, after you are gone’ I said. He nodded, still not moving. I patted his shoulder. ‘Go now.’ ‘Thank you’ he said. ‘Bye’. He walked away.

Back to the supermarket I went. The security guard was still checking bags randomly. I handed him the bag asking him to discard it somewhere inside the store. My hand stank from it. The man took it in surprise: ‘ How did you managed to do that?’ he asked, looking outside to see if the kid wasn’t running after me to get his gooish stinking chemicals back. The kid wasn’t there. ‘ No, really, how did you manage to take it from him?' he asked.
‘I bought it’ I said. ‘Do not put yourself in danger’ he said fatherly and that made me smile. ‘How much?’ he asked. I told him. ’You did a good thing’ he said. ‘Bought him a few hours of fresh air’ he added.

That was true.
All I could do was buy that kid few hours of fresh air.