a smile reminder

coming back from an orientation meeting this afternoon i was walking with one of my new colleagues  down the streets of a very popular/shaaby neighborhood just a few miles from where i live.  my friend is american, but of korean descent.  walking down the streets I knew that we would get attention, but for the most part i thought the attention would be directed at me as a woman.  i put on my stink face in preparation.

what ensued though was overwhelming and confused me.  nearly every single person in the street that we past (young men/children) didn't pass without making some comment to my friend, some derogatory, some inquisitive, some joking, some cruel.  the first group, two young boys first yelling out 'chinese chinese! Nigger nigger!' which we both managed to simply ignore.  the next encounter a group of 9 year old boys, screaming out at him 'chinese! hello! neehoa! chinese!'  which my friend responded to with laughter, hellos, and then insisted, 'no no korea!' all with a smile on his face.  I was amazed at his ability to keep a smile on his face throughout the entire walk to the metro, where more similar encounters and looks followed.  After living here for nearly a year now I've gone through all the phases of reactions to this type of harassment... i've shouted back, i've ignored it, i've mumbled mean things under my breath, i've laughed it off, i've empathized, i've said hello back, i've engaged, and i've been straight up rude.  Most of the time I hate the way that i respond to such interactions.  while walking through the street today i felt nothing but anger running through my veins as we passed these people, listened to their comments.  What's even worse is that sometimes i carry that anger towards people when i don't even here the comments, simply because i've begun to expect them now.  it's against everything i try to be.

i guess what i wanted to point out though is that i had an example right beside me of a much higher and respectable reaction.  my friend smiled, responded kindly, correcting any misunderstandings respectfully and then kept walking.  While this friend is new, i don't know what thoughts were running through his mind, and i don't know if he always responds this way in these interactions.  Perhaps he too chews on the same anger that i chew on when i walk through the streets.  He's only been here for 2 weeks though... 

Egypt (and the middle east) has put me through a lot of tests.  at my school i often fell week to the pressures and stresses that the school and children put on to me, so much so that i began treat people and act in a way i never thought i was capable.  it's quite scary, and it's humbling.  for someone who tries so much to preach love, who tries to carry it everywhere, i've found the most challenges in this place, and i've lost many battles.  I guess today though i was given a reminder that you can rise above it.  I don't know that my friends way of responding was 'the best'.  I have become better also in such interactions now though because i choose to simply ignore them and continue in my way.  i just wish that i could find some type of middle ground for these interactions that leave a since of understanding between the two people.  i wish that there was a way to respond to the pessimistic and cruel attitudes that i often encounter here that left both parties with feelings of mutual respect rather than distaste and rebuke.  

how do you foster that in a community?  

in some ways i feel like it's a product of over-packed city life....  when people become so distant from each other expecting that they'll never see them again.  it's fine to hurt someone if you know you will never have to face their response.  why are these the types of instincts we have though, and how do we overcome them?

an image I drew at the beginning of my stay here.  figured it'd like to get out.

lovebodybodylove

I’ve been thinking recently about what it means to be thankful for what you have and are.  It started last week when I had to have an abscess removed (a minor operation really, but one that required anesthesia and an over night stay in the hospital).  Since I was lucky enough to be an AUC student with health insurance I was treated as a special case in the hospital (there is a woman designated to deal solely with foreign students who come into the hospital).  My room was more like a hotel room, overlooking the Nile, a single, at the end of the corridor, quiet and secluded.  While lying in bed I contemplated what this experience might have been like had it been a month earlier, when I didn’t have health insurance, nor was I an AUC student officially. Where would I have gone?  What would have happened differently? How much more pain might I have suffered, both physically and in my pocket is well? Sometimes the things I’m granted here as a white American foreigner come to stand only for the injustices that are done to others (that not what I get is wrong, but what others don’t get is…)

 

Nevertheless, politics and world order are never my hot topics to debate about, so let me return to my point.  Lying in my bed, watching the Nile pass slowly as I dazed in and out of sleep I could only be thankful that I was safe, that I was out of pain (with the exception of my iv… which after a week still has left a date sized bruise on my arm), that I was breathing, that I was there. 

 

As this past week has gone by, my small wound continues to go through the process of healing, yet another phenomenon that I’m awed by every time I get to be in the presence of it.  Today was actually the first time I got a chance to see the wound with a good look (it’s not in the easiest place to spot…).  I little hole on the verge of closing.  It had a personality to me, like a little baby that was humming softly in the sleep of a fading fever.  And as I peeked back all I could think was, ‘thank you’.  Of course this was at first a reactive response to knowing that the painful little sucker that was there before was now gone.  With a second of thought though I remembered that this body I have goes through amazing things. It develops, changes, breaks down and rebuilds.  It was like a moment of awe and recognition for something so amazing that I have.   The pink flesh still waiting to regroup under the beige skin hovering over it seemed like the underworld of my life that I never take time to remember. 

 

On the way to the bus, this phrase ‘thank you’ kept rolling over in my mind.  Of course, as someone still search-learn-ask-grow-ing and confused… I asked who/what am I to thank for this exactly?  The obvious and easy answer is God.  But of course, since I don’t like easy answers, and my knee jerk reaction is to always dismiss the word “God” as a cliché more than anything else, I asked myself another question…. Does it really matter who or what I’m thanking as long as I’m thankful?  It’s automatically built into the phrase “thank you” to direct thanks to some one –you.   I could say ‘thanks’ I guess… seems to informal though right???  Either way it seems that “thanks” -as a concept- is always a response to gaining from something, rather than an expression for appreciation and love for what one has/is.  

 

So instead of going back over the never-ending argument in my mind about “God” and who I should thank…I simply decided to thank my body, and appreciate it. Sitting in the luxury of an air-conditioned bus I went over my entire body in my mind ---toes, hairs, freckles, skin, flesh, bones, muscles, fat, organs, thoughts, feelings and gave them all a kiss and told them thanks.  I thought about the wrinkles on my forehead that have appeared and grown deeper in the past year and thanked them for reminding me of everyday that I’ve lived--- if anything they are the ones that have seen everything that I’ve overlooked, that reflect my growth, my neglect (for sleep and sunblock…), that reflect me.

 

I love loving my body. Yet often times I feign this love by simply saying that working out or not eating something ‘bad’ is a way for me to really show that I love my body.  True we must treat our bodies with respect, and it’s true also that those nagging decisions we make to ‘protect and keep’ our bodies are what allow us to live and love them even more.  Today though, I focused on the love part rather than the action.  I loved my body for 10 straight minutes on that bus in a way that I had not realized I had the power to do before…. and for some reason it felt deeper and stronger than any run I’d been on …

 

with the exception of a few…J

 

I guess it’s just all to say thank you wound… you’re a love saver.