Today was like most every Thursday since I have been here. I woke up close to twenty minutes before the time work started, threw on a pair of pants and my last almost clean button-down shirt without a tie since it was Thursday, and started the walk to work.
The work day progressed like most work days. The morning swiftly turned into lunch at Sara's, a local Kurdish restaurant. Many people think it is one of the best in the city, but I've heard that about so many restaurants that I am starting to think that the word "best" might not mean what I think it means.
I always order the "sada" at Sara, which is a bowl of rice and about four bowls of beans or soup that get poured over the rice. They tell me its very traditionally Kurdish. I consider it a great appetizer to the post-dinner tea.
The after-lunch work hours went as quickly as the morning, with lunch turning into 5 o'clock before I knew it.
After work every Thursday we go to a English learning center and practice conversation with locals wanting to learn English. Its an easy way to meet very interesting people and a consistent place to see them weekly.
This week John (fellow intern hailing from San Diego) and I showed up late. We walked in at the same time and kinda hung near the same people most of the night. There was one kurdish man whose name started with an "s" that I never actually caught who kept approaching us trying to monopolize our attention. He was not rude about it, he just made it evident that he was interested in speaking to us. Eventually, John sat down with him and I sat at a nearby table and started playing cards with a high schooler from new jersey and an 12 or 13 year old arab boy. I think they called the game Russian Poker.
The night went on and I talked with other people, but eventually I found myself back at the table with John and "S-kurd."
The man was talking about his passion for learning the english language. He had only started speaking a few months ago and was already very understandable. He said this was because he had a background in reading and writing English. In the midst of this mundane workday and very simple surface level conversations, this Kurd said something that floored me. I don't even know if he realized it. He was talking and I was listening, which means I was really half listening while enjoying a wonderful lemon cake between sips of an Americano. In broken English he said something like this:
"if you don't have any thing to hope for, it is better to be dead."
He went on to talk about how he was telling this to his wife. Learning english was his purpose for life that kept death from being a better option. This man who has grown up in an extremely religious culture, honestly, full of virtue, honor, and seemingly life-valuing morals, with a wife and presumably kids, with a job, with time on the weekends to go to a coffeeshop, claimed that only learning another man's language kept death's appeal at bay. A mildly stimulating distraction served as this man's reason for existence.
Have we no greater purpose than to find a way to distract ourselves from real, boring life?
With the pace this man is on he will soon learn english and then quickly find that he has discovered the same bland, tasteless life in english. What hope comes from that?
True hope and purpose must transcend the decay of this moth-ridden world. May we all know it
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