Close your eyes and picture this: Woman in Burka.
What do you see? Dark, flowing fabric? Face visible? Just eyes? Is she walking through a barren, dusty, rock-strewn landscape? Or seated in her home, comfortable but isolated, saved only for her husband’s eyes.
Or… is she walking down the halls of a hospital in Seattle, a refugee seeking medical care, cut off not only from her own people but also the people amongst whom she now lives.
I work at UW Medical Center, a hospital that serves a virtual United Nations of patients. Dealing with people from all over the world in life and death situations allows me to regularly encounter the heart of our shared humanity. Perceived differences between people can come crashing down in one familiar, empathetic moment of connection. In this hospital setting, I am constantly reminded of how alike we are despite language, tradition, culture and the garments with which we choose to cover our bodies.
Last week, heading to the espresso bar for my morning coffee, a man looking lost met my eyes and asked, “Do you work here?” I postponed my coffee run to help him. Navigating our way through the maze of hallways, I learned that he was Ethiopian and needed medical documents for immigration. In my mind I switched places with him, trying to accomplish a similar task in Ethiopia. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it, but it made me glad to be helping him. We parted with a smile and a handshake.
Back at the espresso bar, two women I see every day greeted me. Members of our housekeeping staff, also Ethiopians, they are constant presences to those of us who work in my area. We chat about our lives and our families while waiting for our coffee. One of them mentioned that it was her birthday and we ended up in a triple grande hug.
Finally, latte in hand, I headed down the hall to my office. A pedestrian traffic jam in the main hallway caused me to walk next to a burka-clad woman, our shoulders practically touching. I ignored my usual impulse to just walk by, (a response to the burka’s apparent message to keep distance between us?), and asked, “How are you today?” She looked surprised and responded, “Fine thank you, how are you?” in perfect English. After learning that I was an employee, she said that she thought this was the best hospital in the world.
“I was near death,” she explained. “I was in this hospital for a long time and they saved my life and showed me that life was worth living.” I asked what unit she had been on. The answer surprised me. It was the in-patient psychiatric unit. Then I learned where she is from.
She is Somalian.
I was struck as I thought about it afterwards at how little I know, really, about Somalia. I know the basics. I know it’s bad over there. But I have not taken it to the next level. I felt embarrassed when I admitted to myself that I didn’t even know where Somalia is in Africa. Or Ethiopia, the country of work-mates and where my daughter’s best friend is in the Peace Corps.
I began obsessively studying a map of Africa; learning the geographical relationships between countries and places on this vast continent. I felt ashamed at my ignorance but grateful for this encounter that propelled me on a mission to step outside my little world.
I googled madly. “Somali Women;” “Somali Women’s Plight;” “Somali Civil War.” This is a glimpse of what I learned.
Somali women in refugee camps (for two decades now) have fled their homes and their lives, grieve dead husbands and children and parents and siblings, are starving, forced to endure poor hygiene and sanitation, subjected to sexual violence including being raped and sexually mutilated in front of their children (their attackers given absolute impunity as the powers that be consider rape a weapon of war). They suffer trauma beyond our comprehension. Grief and resignation is what one reporter described as the permanent look on the faces of these women.
What had this woman standing next to me in the hall been through? What had landed her in the hospital after finally escaping this horror, with no desire to continue living?
Under that burka was a woman who had likely loved, borne children, enjoyed the warm sun and the flowers and the sweet smells of salt air and spring. A woman who, in another time and place, might have been a friend or a sister.
But that’s just it. She IS a sister. And a daughter. And a mother. The sooner we start looking at our world, at each other, that way, the better we all will be. We are so much stronger when we work together and try to understand each other than we are when we fight or try to build ourselves up by putting each other down.
A friend of mine emailed recently recommending a documentary called, I Am. “The film’s message is that the human race is meant to be cooperative, not competitive, and if we don’t start working together – helping each other – no matter race, creed, country – we will go extinct.”
When we focus on our differences we become participants in the funneling of hatred and fear and blame towards people, symbols and places. We become pawns in a larger, very dangerous game. Fuel for the fire. Instead, we have to turn our thinking around from an “us and them” mentality. A “we win – you lose” philosophy.
Naïve? Maybe. An original thought? No. A little “kumbaya?” Perhaps.
But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
We are all going to win.
Or we are all going to lose.
It’s pretty much that simple. And, unfortunately, that complex.
