City Conversations

I was at a LARGE eyeglasses shop trying to select new frames for my new prescription.  I update my glasses about once every 5 or 6 years because insurance covers such a small part and I tend to like only those designer frames.  I think eyeglass frames are the biggest rip-offs on the face of the planet and if I had decided to be a designer, that is the direction I would have headed.

But this is not about my going slowly blind and broke.  This is about the people one meets on that journey. 

On my drive to the large shopping center with the large eyeglass store (I spend way to much time the country and am impressed by size) I noticed an unusual number of women wearing headdress in hijabs walking along the roadways and in the housing areas as I approached the mall.  These were the traditional dark lengthy coverings with neutral head covers...not the exotic mysterious clothing where only netted space for eyes is allowed.  They were all ages, some alone and some in groups.  It reminded me years ago when shopping this same mall I rarely heard English spoken in the stores.  I rarely heard any accent I recognized spoken although all the shoppers were at that time all in western dress.

Now I see many Middle Eastern people in western and traditional dress wandering the mall.  The eyeglass store employed ONLY Mid-Eastern people, all dark skinned, dark haired, dramatic looking people speaking with Mid-Eastern accents. 

When I had selected my expensive eye wear and handed the tray to one of the clerks, she bubbled brightly helping me choose among the selection as hubby has not a clue.  As we measured my eyes, talked about the gazillion choices in lens types she was most friendly before turning me over to a young man for the sale.  He and I discussed  discounts, insurance, and warrenty and as we waited for the computer to change screens, I said something about data and expressed that probably the NSA was inputting my eye prescription to their database and that was the slow-down. 

The young man with a mustache and wearing glasses looked away from the computer screen and smiled and said (he had little or no accent) that he was sure the NSA was tracking him and his computer and phone calls.

I asked if he thought that was because he was from the Mid-East.  He responded that "No." he had been born in Connecticut, but his mother was from Afghanistan and currently worked as a contractor for the US Army and was in Afghanistan translating.  We talked briefly about the book "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled  Hosseini and "In My Father's Country" by Saima Wahab, the latter a true story about a woman who was doing what his mother was doing. Like US Southern writers, Middle-Eastern writers have their unique style which means they tend to have a rich way of describing things and a great complexity in their characters.

The flamboyant, dramatic looking woman returned at the end of the sale to measure me for sunglass frames which were next on my way into debt.  Since we had been chatting so comfortably about love and marriage and having children...something us old folks can get young folks to do...I asked why there were so many people from Afghanistan in this area.  She responded that the Afghan government paid for them to go to school here, paid for their airfare, their schooling, their living expense and their health care!  She could not explain why this area was the one selected, but we were close to DC so that might have something to do with it.  Clearly they brought their large families along.

I could not help but feel chagrined that we send our young men and women to live in tents, eat canned or dried food, and risk their lives every day, so that these very wealthy citizens of another country can come here.

It did not ease the sour feeling in my gut when upon leaving I passed a beautiful young woman in a flowing pastel silk hijab sitting on a bench in the mall center using her cell phone which was attached to a huge jewel-encrusted chain around her neck looking like someone who belonged on Rodeo Drive in California...or more likely in a nightclub in the Mid-East.