Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal,
after learning my flight had been delayed four hours,
I hear an announcement: "If anyone in the vicinity of
Gate A-4 understands any Arabic,
please come to the gate immediately."
Well - one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate.
I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian
embroidered dress, just like my grandmother wore,
was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
"Help," said the flight person. "Talk to her.
What is her problem? We told her the flight
was going to be late and she did this."
I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke
haltingly. "Shu-dow-a, Shu-bud-uck Habibti?
Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?"
The minute she heard any words she knew,
however poorly used, she stopped crying.
She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso
for major medical treatment the next day. I said,
"No, we're fine , you'll get there, just
later, who is picking you up? Let's call him."
We called her son, I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got
on the plane and ride next to her. She talked to him.
Then we called her other sons just for the fun
of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke
for a while in Arabic and found out of course they
had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the
heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets
I know and let them chat with her? This took up
about two hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life,
patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled
a sack of homemade mamool cookies - little
powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed
with dates and nuts - out of her bag - and was
offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined
one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from
Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely
woman from Laredo - we were all covered
with the same powdered sugar. And smiling.
There is no better cookie.
And then the airline broke out free beverages from
huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran
around serving us apple juice and they were covered
with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best
friend - by now we were holding hands - had a potted
plant poking out of her bag some medicinal thing, with
green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling
tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to
somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones
and thought, This is the world I want to live in.
The shared world. Not a single person in that gate -
once the crying of confusion stopped - seemed
apprehensive about any other person. They took the
cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.
This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.
Naomi Shihab Nye, "Gate A-4" from Honeybee
