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2009-12-12 11:55:43 UTC
Nathaniel Anderson
The car’s window cranks slowly open.
“Traitors! You libs want the Islamics to strike again?!”
Her smile lines twist in hate. Blue, laughing eyes tear not in mirth, but in fury. Lips that scant hours ago had kissed a precious grandson adieu now glisten with foamy spittle.
The face of Mrs. Margaret T. Barker is a paradox.
Why does a lady of such poise, such kindness, pause to yell at roadside protestors? What drives her to denounce them as un-American? She would contend that hers is an ideology of common sense, a reaction to a dangerous world inhabited by idiots and terrorists.
Today, however, her politics have made her some ten minutes late. Ten minutes can be decisive when it comes to flying cross-country on standby. She sits alone by a concourse window, watching the planes taxi by, sipping a cheap Thursday morning latte, and wondering when she will at last be able to leave this place. Already, she misses her little Christopher.
Finally, her name is called along with one other. She grabs her luggage and, thanking God for her good fortune, steps through the threshold of the jetway. Behind her, Margaret sees a woman about her age, bowed over and walking with the assistance of a cane.
The woman is wearing a hijab.
Margaret cannot help it. Even as she waves hello and turns back towards the plane, her pace quickens. Her heart pounds in her cheast, and she finds the short tunnel warmer than it had been just seconds ago. Some part of her wants to turn around, to pass this strange foreigner and run back to her own safe, real America. But Margaret is a woman of extraordinary social grace. She grits her teeth, minds the gap, and proceeds to seat 30B without a word.
Some minutes later, her seat is leaned back as she waits for taxi and takeoff. She begins to nod her head, half-dreaming of bosses to please and presentations to give, when she feels a subtle tap on her shoulder. It is, of course, the Muslim woman.
“Excuse me,” she hums in a heavy Eastern European accent, “My seat is this.” Her gnarled hand gesticulates at the window seat next to Margaret.
“Oh, um, pardon me, erm,” mutters Margaret. What else is she to do? Even as she reels with thoughts of two heavenly towers felled, of soldiers struck down in the field and even at home, she is a proper hostess, if a reluctant one. Nonetheless, she dings the cane as she stows it for her new neighbor, telling herself that it was an accident.
Minutes pass. Stewardesses inflate iridescent orange life vests and demonstrate the proper way to exit what is apparently a Boeing 767. Margaret usually ignores these lectures, but today she feels a certain angst, a certain need to be more alert than usual. Every now and then, her eyes dart swiftly to her left and back again.
The engines start up, and Margaret percieves a slight clicking in their clamor. She focuses on it as the plane taxies, throttles up, and takes off. Anything but the woman in the hijab. Anything but the danger her plane could very well be in.
At last, some 10,000 feet later, the jet-age percussion stops. To Margaret, the eager communicator, this means she may as well be trapped in a soundproof room – alone. She needs to be spoken to. She needs to have a conversation. She needs something to link her with the world outside of her thoughts and fears.
And so she turns to the Muslim.
“So…where are you from?” inquires her cracking voice. There is a gauche pause.
“I am from, how you say? Armenia?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of it. Isn’t it next to…erm…Iraq, right?”
The woman frowns from underneath her scarf, “No, no. East Europe. We, eh…border…? Border Turkey. Yes.”
Margaret reddens. She has no headscarf to conceal the blush, and so she turns her head in Western modesty. In American embarrassment.
Perhaps an hour goes by before Margaret attempts conversation again. She asks something trivial, tries to make small talk. The woman does not respond. Margaret wonders whether she was ignored or simply misheard. She excuses herself and walks deliberately towards the farthest of the Economy restrooms.
As she passes a stewardess, she briefly considers reporting the Muslim woman to her for something, anything. A necessity and a betrayal, she thinks. No doubt the post-9/11 zeitgeist would justify her. But what would she even say? She does not follow through.
By the time she again takes her seat, Margaret has returned to a more rational mindset, if only out of poise. How can she salvage this plane trip, she wonders? How can she acquaint herself with her plane-mate?
Like any grandmother, she soon has the answer. Margaret takes her seat and audaciously taps the Muslim.
“Do you have any grandchildren?” she begins.
A few painstaking moments pass as the requisite translation is made.
The woman opens her mouth. The last, best hope.
“Yes. Yes, I do. You like to see pictures, yes?”
By the time the plane is on final approach, the two