Philosophical Conundrums, a Bird, and a Bag of Bread

I’m a human. Do I have rights?

In just a few seconds, his flowing Arabic words had translated into English in my mind. A sharp inhale. There I was, staring into the face of a stranger. Mouth glued shut. Eyes cringing; do I maintain eye contact? For the first time since I learned how to talk, I found myself without words. Doun kalam. In case you question the validity of that statement, I suggest you ask my ever-patient parents, kindergarten teachers, or grown-up acquaintances how I manage to weave words together from thin air, whether they need to be said or not. Ask the four-year-old who frustratingly (I say: lovingly) screamed “you talk too much!” over our board game just a few days ago. Even after reading Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet and his elaborate prose on silence, I still manage to “murder” my thinking with words, pouring out of my mouth and assassinating the peace of silence.

And yet in that moment, standing on a Viennese street whose name I have long since forgotten, I could not manage to form a single syllable in English, my native language. Or Arabic, his. I couldn’t even manage a head nod, a head shake; I was as still as the silver rod balancing his makeshift white tent.

And then, he cracked a smile. My blood started pumping again. That small upturn of his upper lift soon broadened to a laugh and he handed me a bag of soft bread from the table in front of him.

What’s your name?
Elysa.
Muhammad.

A Euro exchanged palms and I promised to come back.

And so, I did. Every week for the next two months.

In 2016, I decided to pursue a human rights course in Vienna, Austria. We would be digging into the philosophy, history, and modernity of human rights, focusing on the question of refugees. Some call it a “crisis;” I choose to call it what it truly is: humans forgetting how to be human.

Nonetheless, despite having encountered immigrants my whole life in Detroit (the capital of Lebanese and Iraqi immigration) and moving from city to city, meeting people who changed my life, I had never been outside of the country. I remember hesitantly boarding the plane, grasping onto the confidence that I would have fifteen peers from my university with me: I wouldn’t be alone. And even though I didn’t speak a word of German I somehow knew things would sort themselves out. Naivety met blind confidence, but in the end, I was right.

After a few weeks of being surrounded by fellow students, American “intellectuals” with shared experiences who I knew had to be nice to me, I decided to venture out and see parts of the city they were not at all curious about. That’s how I ended up meeting Muhammad – the man who would ask a question which would challenge every philosophical and ethical case study from my class -  held hours earlier and just a few kilometers away.

If you ask me now to sketch Muhammad’s face, I wouldn’t be able to. Because, in reality, we remained strangers. Every trip after was nothing more than him laughing when a bird longer than my arm flew into my face, drawing even more attention to the girl without the hijab wandering the Syrian marketplace neatly relocating itself to the streets of Vienna. Laughing as I spit out broken Arabic and smile at everyone. Did you know only Americans smile at strangers? Every trip after was nothing more than his nosy peers trying to understand our relationship, how a then 20-year-old girl had become a loyal customer, buying only from him and none of the other produce stands nearly identical to his. Nothing more than him asking a few questions about my coursework, my future plans, the kind of small talk you’d have with your hair stylist who is compelled to speak only because you’re in front of her. Nothing more than a brief introduction to my visiting mom, “This is mom?” he asked, “Of course, twins!”

While I bought at least 20 bags of bread from him, and I saw him at nearly the exact same time every Saturday, we remained strangers. Two people who should have never met sharing a smile and a joke over the unfairness of the state of the world, a smile which carried a deeper meaning: You are welcome here. Maybe even: I trust you.

We remained strangers, but to me, our relationship represented the beauty of this complicated, twisted world where one stranger feels compelled to ask another stranger if she sees him as human. Only to just seconds later share a smile, a laugh, and a bag of bread.