She Is Wearing a Headscarf.

I had to get some lentils.  I wanted an onion.  A bottle of Shiraz.  What else? I’m out of these spicy peppers.  “Give me half of that piece of Brie.  And about this much of the peperoni, sliced thin.”  There are three or four other shoppers in the little market at our clubhouse. 

I’ve got what I need.  Rapid fire Chinese.  “Yes.  Two bags, in fact.”  The woman who’d been walking around with the small boy of four years has lined up behind me.  She is wearing a headscarf.   The child is lovely, naïve, and like her seemingly of Arab descent.  I recognize my surface ignorance.  If this were Middle America and someone looked vaguely “Asian” I would likely be able, with some consideration of the language they spoke and the general phenotypic summary, place where it was they were from.  I couldn’t begin to surmise the difference between Syria and Egypt.  Morocco and Iraq visually, aurally.  

“You getting some candy?”  “Sometimes you need something.” Said the mother.  “Are you already done with your Halloween candy?”  “It’s hidden”  “Ahh.  Very good.  Dole it out carefully.”  “Yes.  Very carefully.” 

A friendly exchange with a supposed neighbor in the market.  Am I being extra friendly because they appear to be of Arab descent?  Am I trying in a way obsequious to ingratiate myself to this child and let him know he’s well received?  Nothing to fear sonny, in this world that fears Islam.  Is it terribly obvious that I am making an effort?  Does it roll of my shoulders as something natural or something influenced by the events in Paris a few days back?

We couldn’t be further from the Paris here on the other side of the Eurasian landmass.  Still, sociability on this neutral territory can’t but help to be affected.  My core empathic sensibility is a human one.  I am pungently aware that the aperture could so easily switch from Islam or Arabic, to all things Chinese.  Western opprobrium, U.S. vitriol blown, like dormant coals up and into flame. Living the hate of otherness that is my family, that is one side of the bridge I’ve tried to build.  Then it will be me who is eager for people to reach out.  Then I will be suspicious of all the obsequious people in the line at the market.