Come With Me

It was going to be another ordinary evening walk. Palm and banana trees. Running water. Stark mountains. Greeting the ladies I passed in the street.

I stopped and spoke with the lady washing her clothes in the stream. Simple stuff: what is your name, where do you live? Another lady joined us, and I chatted with her, too.

I wandered to a street I hadn’t been on before. More men there. Good reason to turn back. I feel very safe here, but no need to give the wrong idea by strolling midst the menfolk.

On my way back, a small, weather-beaten lady was trying to climb up a bank to the street. She jabbered something, and I hoped the right thing to do was to stop and offer my hand. She accepted it and clambered up. Then she handed me her change purse. Well, that was quick progression to a new level of friendship! No, she stooped and pulled her socks on, then took the purse back and thanked me, kissing the back of my hand.

She asked if I was walking her way (all of what she said from here on out is what I think she said, because I do not know for sure exactly what she said). I was, and I asked her name. I didn’t catch which part was her name, but I knew that she was talking about names because I caught an old family name that is similar to mine. She said it with pride. She greeted a boy we passed and explained that he was related to her somehow. She pointed out her house and said her husband was dead.

We kept walking. Past her gate. We walked together when the cars didn’t force us to walk single file. She didn’t quite walk on the edge of the road, but the cars that came behind us slowed and honked so that she would know to move. She stopped and greeted ladies who all seemed to know her. A foreign worker man greeted her warmly. She was matriarch enough for that. She gingerly moved a Mountain Dew can from the road to the side of the road.

She turned at the path that went by my gate. Uh oh, I thought. She hasn’t found out where I live and is going to play the Jesus & Zacchaeus trick, is she: Surprise! The party’s at your place today! When we were a step past it, I pointed out my place to her. She acknowledged it and referred to my landlord as “Papa.”

She asked if I were married and repeated “without husband?” to make sure that we both understood. I told her, “In the future, God-willing.”

“Ah, you are going to get married,” she said. Brief fear wafted through my mind as I hoped that she was not ushering me to meet someone suitable today.

I had asked her where we were going, and she explained that someone had died last Friday. Or maybe they would die this Friday, but I hoped she didn’t have that kind of prescience.

More ladies met us as we walked. They were wearing black. Wait, they usually wear black. Maybe we were going to a funeral. Self-check: I fit in. More “hellos,” “how are yous?” and “praise Gods.”

One girl spoke to me in English. After the greeting (during which she told me that she’d seen me before in the neighborhood), I asked her, “Where am I going?”

“There is a little girl who died last week [and she—my new friend—is going to pay her respects].”

“Is it okay if I go?” I asked, an edge of panic in my voice. Funeral crashing has never been on my bucket list.

“You know her?” she asked, pointing to my elderly friend.

“Uh, well, I think she wants me to come with her. I just met her,” I explained.

“It’s good [if you go],” the girl told me.

I was about to be inducted into a neighborhood rite of passage.

We reached the gate of a sprawling home. More ladies came out. More greetings and chattering. Someone asked me something I couldn’t understand, and I played my “I don’t speak much Arabic” card. I thought I caught a glint of a smile in her eyes and the soft word for “poor thing” on her lips.

Well, if the neighborhood ladies didn’t know me before, they knew me now—either as a funeral crasher or the trusted friend of a local matriarch. I hoped it would be the latter. I followed her and did what she did. Shoes off. Enter the hall area. Greet the ladies ‘round the room, counter-clockwise, shaking hands: “Hello. How are you? Praise God.” I had no idea who were neighbors and who were family members of the deceased. I prayed quietly and was somber with each, just in case.

The ladies made room for me on the couch. I sat with my friend for all of one or two minutes. A couple new ladies joined the throng. Then it was time to move on. “Let’s go,” the ladies say when they are saying goodbye. Again, I followed my friend. Again the handshakes all around the room.

We moved to a more intimate living room, where we ate dates, bananas, chick peas, and kidney beans with a few other ladies. Ten minutes or so there. Then my friend arose and left. Two of the girls wanted to talk. They spoke English and are the first girls here I’ve met who actually want to practice English! We spoke in mottled Arabish. They followed me to the door, where we exchanged phone numbers.

My friend didn’t wait for me. She was moving steadily away as the girls entered their names and numbers into my phone, and we performed the missed-call ritual. She disappeared out the gate. “By the way,” I asked the girls, before donning my sandals, “who was that lady I came with?”