Beyond the doors: Part 1

Just before Christmas I was at Samuel’s baseball game when I met a very interesting person. Often I’ll see families on camp that have several people in them, women totally veiled, lot’s of kids, and only one man. This is happening for several reasons. Many wives, they cannot go anywhere unaccompanied, or it is their brother. So on this dark evening, my kids were horsing around near a local family, much like the one described above. There is usually little or no interaction between us because of the cultural and language barriers. Up until now, I had never been spoken to by a local woman – except an employee here on camp.

Much to my surprise, one of the women – there were four or five, walked up to me and clear as day says, “Hello. How are you?” Uh…Uh… (lots of people know this basic phrase – like’ como esta?’, in Spanish) So I wasn’t sure how much to respond. But she just took off in perfect English. Most importantly she wanted to know if I knew an English tutor. I told her I didn’t and that she didn’t need one anyway. Her English is wonderful. (except for some funny things that we haven’t used in a hundred years, like ‘as you wish’. Although Si loves that she uses that phrase.) I told her , “I don’t know one. But if you teach me Arabic, I’ll teach you English.” She was funny, laughing, and quite confident. I think it took a lot of guts to walk up to me and say hello.

Turns out she was with her sisters, sister in law (these were here children), and her brother. They knew someone whose husband works for the company. That’s why they were there that night. They live in the small town off the camp, and have all their lives. Their dad took a job with our company, moving the family hundreds of miles from the main core of their family, to this tiny little city. Pretty rare in the Middle East. He worked here for 30 years and retired ten years ago. They come on camp because there is absolutely nothing to do here. I mean that in a frank way, not a whiney way. Nothing. So coming on camp IS something to do. We exchanged names and numbers and left it at that.

Her name is not Fatimah, but I like that name, and I don’t like to use people’s real names. So, we shall call her Fatimah. (this is the name of one of M. wives, and a popular name here, BTW.) I had invited her to my house the following week. She told me her mother would have to come with her, which was fine with me. The more into this culture I can get, the better for me.

I got a call the day before our meeting, and she asked if I could come to her house instead. Her mother wasn’t very excited about Fatimah learning more English, telling her she didn’t need to know any more. Fatimah has a bachelor’s degree in English, and taught school for a short time. I can see her mother’s point, and hers as well. She had asked me at our first meeting where I was from. She ONLY wanted to learn conversational English with an American. She wanted American English. Funny.

So it was a Friday afternoon, after church, that she called and said, “We are ready for you know.”

I took a taxi off camp, just after four. Prayer was a four forty and I wanted to be there well before then. We had discussed a meeting place, the perfume shop near the ‘singer’ store. And had left it that I would call and be in touch, as she lived very nearby. You need to know that this little city is VERY third world. Dirt, rubble, garbage, rusty rebar, people sitting on the curbs, cars EVERYWHERE, is just a little glimpse into life here. The side streets are lined with a mish mash of ten foot tall cement walls on all sides. Short, tall, set back, dark, light. Every now and then, a set of double doors just appears on these cement walls. Some of the doors are ornate and beautiful, some are simple, and some are dirty and falling apart. And rising behind these doors are cement ‘houses’. Cinder block, flat roofs, with rusty satellite dishes on most of them. They are usually square, muddy colored, only a couple of windows, many with iron grids over them, and two or three stories tall. When we first moved here, I didn’t even realize these were houses. Maybe some sort of apartments. But at any rate, what lies behind these double doors had been a total mystery until now.