As Americans, we so often travel only within our own national borders, whether to visit far-flung family, experience the wonders of the national parks, or simply wandering through this vast and varied landscape. I love road trips, and Dambara and I take them often.
Traveling outside the US is a different experience entirely, and it always allows us to glimpse others' realities, which is vitally important in our ever-increasingly polarized world. I am hopeless when it comes to recognizing cultural characterizations. I would never be able to tell you a person's origin, simply by observing their body type, manner of dress, facial qualities, or gestures. And yet midway in our journey yesterday, an opportunity presented itself that I found enchanting.
We had a layover at Heathrow airport of about 4 hours, which gave us plenty of time to sit down and have a meal together. We found a deli-type restaurant with delicious sandwiches and miso soup, and since the seating area at the front of the shop was loud and busy, I explored a second, more sequestered room with a couple dozen tables and settled into a quiet table with our luggage while Dambara waited for our soup.
We were in the restaurant for perhaps 45 minutes, which was enough time for most of the tables around us to fill with patrons, then empty, then fill again, a pleasant, leisurely ebb and flow of fellow travelers. Perhaps because of the secluded nature of this dining room, perhaps because this was Heathrow, perhaps because of the airlines assigned to the nearby gates, for whatever reason, almost everyone who flowed into the room and ebbed away again, were Arabian.
I can't narrow it down any more than that, and can only offer that small piece of information about cultural identity because all of the women wore long black dresses, dresses that gently swept the floor as they moved about, their hair covered by black cloths that flowed around their necks and tucked into their clothing.
The size of the room allowed perhaps 80 or 90 people to be gathered together at any one time, and I was probably the only woman present whose hair was uncovered and wore pants. I dress modestly by nature, but if I had allowed myself, I could have felt quite garish and immodest in that crowd.
But here's the thing. I was struck by the gentleness of the people around me; gentleness, respectful, gracious, softness. The women moved smoothly into the room, settled themselves and their children softly and graciously, murmured together, smiling and serene. The children skipped and pranced away their pent-up energy, but even that was quiet and respectful.
They were wonderfully in sync with each other. As the time came for each family to leave, one person would stand, gather her belongings, and the rest of the family would quietly rise, gather, and gracefully ebb out of the room. Men were there, too, a few here and there, but the women were so enchanting, I can't tell you anything about the men.
Experiences such as this are not available at any of the national parks or urban settings. One can only experience another culture by traveling to where that culture remains intact, ebbing and flowing with rhythms sculpted over centuries. How lucky we are to be able to witness other realities, to feel an inner flow that differs from our own daily lives, and which most likely differs from the image wedged into our imaginations about people who are different from us, and how they must act and live their lives.
We are lucky to have such diversity in our world, our wonderful world, and we are lucky to glimpse even a wisp of that diversity, tucked inside a secluded dining room, surrounded by the busy-ness of a vast, international airport.
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