Sweet Victory

Every now and then in life you have one of those moments of triumph. One of those moments where you, a humble human being have the opportunity to show the world just what you're made of, and you're made of good, tough stuff that can handle anything. A few days ago I had one of these moments.

I was on my home on the metro. The car was fairly busy and there were many of us standing. As we approached a stop a woman left her seat to walk to the door and another woman took her place. In the seat the first woman had left a hair pin. The second woman handed it to me, to hand to the first.

I knew I had to act quickly. I reached out and tapped her on the shoulder. No response! What to do? I tried again and she continued to walk away from me. I can not overstate the pressure I was under at this moment. I felt completely unprepared and incapable of dealing with the situation. And then, before I even realized what was happening, before my brain had time to to think about what my body was doing, out of my mouth came the words “min fudlik” (“please”). Miracle of miracles, I came up with an appropriate Arabic word!

Even better, I said the exact right word and said it clearly enough that she had understood! She heard me. She stopped walking, and turned around. Success! If ever there was a moment in life I wanted to do a fist pump, this was it. (But I held it in).

In the end, the hair pin was not hers and I handed it back to the other woman. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is that I communicated. In Arabic! Maybe it was a small triumph and not really a life changing kind of thing. Min fudlik is about as basic as it gets. But you have to start somewhere. And it felt good.