I Saw You Today

Recycling in Istanbul

I saw you today.

Walking past my office window,

dumpster to dumpster with drag foot strides,

I saw you, – all of you.

You two mothers pushing finds in converted baby buggies,

babies slung over bent backs,

one tugging at the slack edge of a scarlet head scarf.

Your three and four year olds –

boys in rags and broken sandals –

trailed,

sometimes behind, sometimes squirting ahead,

but always walking wearily,

wary of the ways of the back of your hand.

Harsh hand and harsher words carry them down dumpster lined streets.

The four year old’s mother

hands an unpeeled orange to his open hand,

rescued from refuse, but fails to peel it.

He makes a marvelous mess of pulp and juice before she,

the giver, the guardian,

slaps it from his greedy fingers.

On they walk,

on into their gypsy life,

their wandering life,

their hungry life,

And they disappear.

Later,

a father came.

A father with another four year old

and another converted baby buggy

and another journey down and Istanbul street,

dumpster to dumpster, market to market,

meal to meal to find to find.

He stops the buggy behind a black Mercedes,

says stay – to the buggy and the boy,

and crosses to the waiting meal in the market trash.

The boy stays,

lips moving – presumably for himself though I could not hear,

fingers fondling the days find.

But then a man approaches,

middle aged and well dressed,

talking kind words to the boy, beckoning –

And the boy goes without qualm

quickly on his heels and into the next door store.

But then the father returns,

smiling at the two bruised apples and smashed orange in his hands

to find the buggy but not the boy.

I see it then.

I see how much love he harbors in his tired heart for his son.

I see it in the fear that creep into his eyes.

I see it in the terror of his movements

and in the two new  bruises the apples receive

as they hit the concrete at his broken sandals.

I see it in his hands, cupped around shouting lips –

And finally,

I see it in the flood of relief that his snack smiling son

gives him when he bolts from the store,

cookies clutched in jubilant hands.

Relief comes.

A broken heart is not broken more.

The middle aged man walks past the two,

a silent Samaritan not letting left know what right had done.

On he walks,

on into his Muslim life,

his secular life,

his blessed life.

And he disappears.

Later,

I walk home along the sea,

praying for grace and discernment  to understand,

to be salt and light.

I stop at the store,

mindlessly buying four kinds of noodles,

not knowing what we’ll make with them.

My groceries and I make our way to the tunnel where I will cross the tracks,

and there

On a concrete bench

Sit two tired teenage boys.

“Mister, we’re hungry.  Do you have any food?  Do you have any money?”

I stop, taken by surprise.

“Would you like some noodles?”

I offer to blank stares and then add –

“You can cook them at home.”

Their look tells me they may not have a home.

“We’re hungry mister.  Do you have any money?”

“No.”

I turn and walk

And cross the tracks

And walk from them

And disappear.

But the five lira in my pocket doesn’t disappear.

And the words of Jesus don’t disappear.

“You will always have the poor among you.”

Among you.

It seems now more a command than a fact.

A command I’ve missed through the sham of  fact.

Among you.

If the poor are not among us,

Could it be we disobey?

I surely did today.

__________________

I wrote this poem nearly two years ago now.  I’ve learned a lot since then and my hope is that in sharing it here, you will see in some small way the power of moving to another culture, of travel, and of learning another langauge.

There is power for change in moving out of our own environs, out of our comfort zone.  There is power to change ourselves, power to grow, power to become something new, something better.

This growth, this change – it is often painful.  It hurts to be forced to look in the mirror of self, to see the places in our own character that lack, to see our own hypocracy and to realize we are not as good as we had hoped we were.    And yet we must look into that mirror and confront the prejuduces we carry.

We must do so or we’ll stagnate in the morass of a life lived unexamined.  Moving into another culture more often than not forces our hand in this.  It is uncomfortable.  Learning the langauge can at times be humiliating.  The culture grates against our sensibilities.  If we stay long enough, we’ll be forced to confront the whiny, petulant kid that lives in all of us.

And that is a good thing.  For it is in facing that kid that we can grow up in maturity of character, that we can begin to become better people.  Deep down better people.

How about you?

Have you had an experience in another culture that has changed you?

image credit

*Read this great post by Donald Miller for more on character.

**I originally published this poem at another blog of mine, Stories from Turkey