Ashraf

I was 2.5 seconds away from writing about my crappy cab driver yesterday. Either my Arabic is terrible or he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. I'm going with the latter considering the majority of the people in this country understand me at least 75% of the time. 

But just as I was going to put my pen to paper, Laila, the school director, said my name. "Jenniferrrr...." I laughed and told her, "That's just how Ashraf says it. With the long rrrr." 

She smiled and asked, "Ashraf at the school?" 

"Yeah. He's always saying my name like that." 

She told me then that they recently discovered that he's developed lung cancer. At age 9. The doctors said that it had most likely been caused by some of the components found in an improperly disposed of computer. Something from the electronic waste had been broken and released chemicals to which he was exposed at some point in his young life among the waste. My heart broke a little. Ashraf usually has a runny nose, dirt smudged on his cheeks, and I've never heard him say much more than my name. Now I see this kid who may not make it past twelve or even that long if his parents can't move him to a cleaner environment with fresh air and clean food. 

I wish knowing someone was ill didn't change the way I look at them, but it's as if all of the sudden I want to make his life beautiful and tangible in a way it might not have been before. Yet as I was thinking this, I thought that it shouldn't take knowledge of a terminal illness to want to make someone's life beautiful. I should do it just because he's a little boy who laughs and wrestles and lives and breathes. Because maybe if I talk to him a little more, or make a funny face when he rolls my name off of his tongue, or hand him another Kleenex to wipe the green goo off from beneath his nose, he might smile an extra time that day or at least know he's also loved by the foreigner who keeps randomly showing up at his school. 

I'm learning lessons in love all the time, but the thing that's left the most lasting impression is that love kind of hurts. It's kind of uncomfortable and it changes the way you see things. It makes your current routine unacceptable. And it usually quickens the blood to some sort of action - action that is rarely convenient. I guess I always knew I'd probably learn more from being with them then they would from being with me. But it still catches me by surprise when a snotty nosed kid calling my name from the back of a passing garbage truck makes my heart sing and cry all at the same time. 

"Ashrrrrraaf!" I yell back and wave. And he's still rolling his arms and pointing at me as the truck rolls away into the twilight distance and turns the corner out of sight.