Sorrow

Speaking of total insanity and injustice, I met a girl named Khadara at a coffee shop the other night. She's Somali. We started talking about the Somali and Arabic languages and their similiarities and differences. We talked about what it's like to be an immigrant. And the conversation wove itself into one of the most humbling experiences I've had in awhile. She started to open up about her life.

I listened to her for hours. Sorrow, a cold, hard constant in this young woman's life, was pouring out of her lips. It was like she was laying a sick child in front of me and I could do nothing to help. Aas a young girl she was forced to flee her home, with her mom and dad, because of civil war. She then endured the constant threat of rape and injury while at a refugee camp in Kenya. More than once, her mother literally risked her life standing up to gangs of criminals who wanted to kidnap or assault them. They were brought over to the United States, which turned out to be the land of freezing temps and poverty. Then, September 2001 hit. A month later, her father was standing outside a mosque. He'd just finished evening prayers and was waiting for the bus, to return home to his family for the night. Someone saw him come out of the mosque. They came toward him with a baseball bat in hand. They crashed the bat into the back of his skull. He was in a coma for two weeks before dying.

Now, in her life, there is more violation. A year ago, she turned the wrong way onto a one-way, at night, downtown. Two cops pulled her over. Apparently without impetus, they proceeded to beat her. And when their hands were scarred from scratching against the pins that were holding her hijab in place, they claimed she had attacked them, bitten them. They slammed her to the ground and broke her wrist. Then, they put her in jail for four days. She was not allowed to wear hijab in jail. But she would pull her t-shirt up over the back of her head and let it frame her face, in a make-shift attempt at modesty. After being released and being told she would be tried as a felon if she did not sign on the line saying she committed a misdemeanor, her case has been taken up by a human rights organization. She will sit in a courtroom with those two cops in August.

She told me all of this with absolutely NO amplified drama. She was very simple and straightforward. She didn't tell her story as though anyone should feel sorry for her.

It was her flat tone of reality that hit me the hardest. I walked home and cried the whole way. HOW? How can my life be so blessed? How can I live so selfishly on a truly broken planet, amidst truly injured people? Why must people live lives that are so punctured with sadness? God, help us.

I was listening to 'Night', an audiobook about life in a concentration camp. In one part, the author talks about commemorating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, after months in the camp. At this point, he and the men around him are mere shadows of humanity, totally broken down. Yet while they eat, the men begin to recite the traditional verses that say: "Stand up and praise the Lord your God, who is from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise."

In light of all this, how embarrassing it is for me to whine. Ever. How utterly ridiculous for me to even feel sorry for myself for one moment. How much more I should ponder the undeserved beauties and crushing battles of life in light of an Almighty.