“You are late today!” He exclaimed wagging his finger at me. He was sitting at his normal table with a cup of tea grasped firmly around his fingers. His friend sat next to him, a few papers, presumably for business sat next to them and they sat outside their shops chatting and drinking tea every morning. I’d been walking by and nodding and exchanging greetings every day for a month before this comment and it made me smile.
These sweet men knew my schedule. They knew when I was running five minutes late and they nodded in approval when I was early. As the months slipped by I learned of their families, businesses and schedule through snippets and smiles, eventually I had to add several minutes to my “commute time” to hear jokes along with the greetings and extend our pleasantries.
They looked for me each morning and smiled and waved and stood up as I approached. Last month I hurried on my way running later than normal. I smiled as I approached the intersection before their shop knowing the laughing and the finger wagging and the grief they would lavish lovingly on me for running late. I stopped studying my flashcards as I walked and begin thinking of witty responses I could say in @rabic to their banter. As I approached I was struck that the table wasn’t outside and there was just one gentlemen sitting there next to an empty chair without paperwork or tea. He stood as I approached and grasped my hands.
He told me his friend had died that weekend that he was walking and just fell over. My @rabic began to fail me as I listened, I am thinking from his quick description it was some type of stroke or aneurism but the why was lost in the grief of the moment. He leaned in and told me funeral details and I offered my condolences as best I could. He started crying. I prayed with him along that busy street in the language that did not roll off my lips as smoothly as that of my passport country but that spoke to his heart. I prayed for the family and friends that had been left behind.
I kept walking down the street. Tears clouded my vision and a weight hung onto my heart. It is amazing how little time and interaction it takes to interweave souls. This dear man had only been a part of my life for a few months but his smile, his friendship, his concern for those around him had impacted me, and he was missed.
The next day as I walked I practiced in my head the words I wanted to say. As I approached again there was no table, and one chair, again he stood up and clutched my hand and we were silent for a bit together. I told him that my heart felt heavy with grief that the earth would no longer know the smile of his friend. He in turn spoke a simple phrase, it is not commonly used here, it is an older expression but one that just makes sense. He told me,
قلبك جنب قلبي
“Our hearts our near to each other” (it is more beautiful in @rabic but this is my translation)
Shared grief, shared joy. The type that doesn’t always need time to draw hearts together. Sometimes I am amazed to think that out of all the places, out of all the time at this point in the history of the universe, at this particular place (where-ever I happen to be) my paths have crossed with another soul. Sometimes it is the vendors outside the fish store drinking chai and smiling, sometimes it is the vegetable lady who spins my children and exclaims with joy as we drink tea together, sometimes it is a friend who schools her children alongside me, a fellow mothers sitting across the MOPS table, the lady at the checkout line in front of me or a smile on the street, sometimes it is forged in Starbucks and others around a charcoal stove with coffee percolating but these experiences can somehow make two hearts that were once far apart closer to each other.
It takes me longer and longer to get to school each day. There is the lime lady, the fish vendor, the boabs and the kids teachers to greet. And truly truly my heart is so much richer when it becomes nearer to theirs. I am a different person then I was last year, and last month and the month before because my heart has become nearer to the joys, griefs and just daily living of those around me.
So this is a tribute to being late, to laughter, to interacting with whatever souls cross my path and mostly to the God who can draw two souls close and weave their paths to cross in life. Sometimes it is for long periods of our lives journey and others for short but regardless of the length, if we let Him, our God can take this point of impact to mold and shape us to know more of Him, through hearts that are closer.
