Ordinary Happenings in Three Acts

A sudden chill has descended upon the city. The streets seem clogged with air so cold it has practically assumed a personality of its own: menacing, biting, with the exaggerated sneer of a cartoon villain. Thick, white snow covers the city like down, blanketing trees, houses, stores, the tiny arterial streets that pass by school parks, the tops of parked cars. They are all cloaked in an impossibly dense mantle of cold.

The people struggle in vain to fight the snow, but it makes its way into everything, slithering over the city like creeping vine. One particular day, winter pays the people of this city an especially savage visit, sparing nothing. Their eyes attempt to lubricate themselves against the stinging cold, but it is of no use - tears freeze into icy shards on their eyelashes. When they open their doors this morning, the wind slaps them with bitter air as a greeting, and the snow pummels them in salutation. Their only reply is to dig their mitten clad hands deeper into their pockets, wrap their scarves over their mouths, and bend their heads downwards, attempting to avert the chilly onslaught.

Act One: Charity
“Smiling in the face of your brother is charity … and pouring out from your bucket into your brother’s bucket is charity.”

A woman sits in a new silver Lexus. She can barely see four or five feet outside of it. An ominous mixture of snow and hail rockets past her, peppering the car from all sides like bullets from a machine gun. She has been sitting at this overpass for the past two hours and the possibility of any significant mobility seems faint. Ahead of her, there is a truncated conga line of four or five cars in the same situation, ridiculously poised in a jerky, inertial dance.

At the head of this line, one or two cars have gotten stuck in a particularly unforgiving embankment of thick snow, condemning them all to a morning of stationary hell. The longer the rest of the cars stand still, the more snow accumulates around them, further ensuring their inability to move. A few people, from time to time, cautiously emerge from the sad shrouds of their vehicles, iron and steel made pathetic by the mere, residual secretions of a few clouds. Someone on a cell phone shouts loudly at the City Roads and Maintenance department for a tow truck, someone else pours out dull colored coffee sludge from a gray flask, and they eventually get into their cars again. A car radio splutters waves of static and nothing at high volume.

The woman, with nothing else to do at the moment, begins to negotiate. “Oh God, please please please please let the cars move, please oh please I had to be at work an hour and a half ago, oh please God, You can do anything, please forgive my sins I’m sorry, please make the cars move, I, please-” and so on.

Forty five more minutes pass into oblivion.

The wellsprings of a vague, ill defined sense of hysteria rise within her. On the dashboard, her Blackberry stares accusingly. There are patients waiting in the clinic, she is hours behind with her appointments, and she needs to use the bathroom. She grips the steering wheel and grinds her teeth together, screwing her eyes tightly shut, until her knuckles turn white and lights flash inside her eyelids. Oh, please God!

Her eyes open slowly.

She has frequently heard of people and things that ‘literally come from nowhere’, and like most people, has always taken the hyperbole of this statement for granted. It isn’t until this morning that she realizes the fact that, yes, people and things can literally come from nowhere. The proof lies in the three men who seem to have appeared by her car literally, out of…nowhere.

They move with an exuberance that seems at odds with the sullen desperation of the situation. All three wear wide smiles on bearded olive-toned faces, the color contrasting acutely with the pallor of their environment. Interestingly, the first thing she feels is a twinge of irritation at such inconsiderate happiness, such an unabashed display of sunniness in the face of catastrophic bad weather. Hilarious, she thinks, at least someone finds this mess funny.
But the three grinning men pass by her car, walking along the grotesque conga line of immobilized vehicles until they reach the head of the problem. They briefly consult with the drivers of the wretched vehicles, and then, in a fluid, concerted effort, begin to push the cars out of the snow, one by one. One by one, cars begin to leave the embittered overpass, chunks of muddy snow flying furiously in their wake. This happens so quickly, so efficiently, in such perfect unison, that it somehow seems normal, as if this was how things normally progressed in such dire traffic related predicaments.

The three smiling men have, in due course, come back to her car, which is by now quite thoroughly cocooned in snow. She rolls down her window to hear the youngest looking one of the smiling men say, “You drive, we push, you see sister? You drive, we push,” in a throaty foreign voice that rolls and tumbles the R`s.

She shakes her head because she doesn’t think she is able to drive the car out of the snow, even with assisted pushing. She motions to the wheel and says “Would you mind terribly, I mean, I don’t think I can get it out, could you drive it for me?” Within seconds, one man is at the wheel of her car, while the other two are zealously pushing the back end, the engine fantastically roars to life, snow leaps out from the sides of her tires, which give way for crucial movement. In a matter of minutes, the car is freed.

It always seems, after the fact, that in situations like these it should be expected that the unexpected must happen. However, the otherworldly ease with which this has come about contrasts sharply with the reality of the bitter cold, and sends chills down her spine. She fumbles in her purse for her wallet and takes out a fifty dollar bill. “Thank you very much, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help, thanks, thanks a lot,” she says awkwardly, as she holds out the money. “Can I do something for you, anything at all?”

The men laugh heartily, as if this is the funniest thing they have ever heard in their entire lives. The youngest one says, his voice full of laughter, “No, no, you make prayer for us! Just make prayer for us!” They move laughingly towards the car behind her.

Later that day, she is reaching in her pocket for the keys to lock up her office, when she finds the fifty dollar bill. She looks at it for a moment, and then to the windows, where outside the snow has finally stopped falling. She puts it back into her wallet.

On her way back from work, the city streets have been considerably cleared, and the thick, clinging snow has been replaced by a malleable, soggy slush that gives way easily. She parks her car and walks around until she finds the thing she was in search of.

Without looking at her hands, she reaches into her wallet and pulls out the entirety of a sizeable wad of notes. Then, dropping them into the sodden, tattered hat, she turns around and walks away smiling, into the wet, melting streets.

Act Two: Mercy
“Help your brother, whether he is an oppressor or he is an oppressed one.”

That same day in the same city, at about ten minutes after nine in the morning, another woman is late for an interview. Her eyes are tearing from the cold wind, and she needs to wipe her nose every few seconds. She is annoyed and irritated, cold weather is an old nemesis, a beast that tortures her sinuses and rends her skin into a flaky desert.

This morning, just as she had finished waking, bathing, dressing, feeding, and generally getting ready to drop her eight year old son to school, the unthinkable happens. In one swift peristaltic motion, his stomach manages to regurgitate its contents at a speed astonishingly faster than it had received them. The sordid remnants of a partially digested balanced breakfast lie grotesquely on the linoleum floor.

By the time she has cleaned up the child and the floor, she is precariously close to blowing the interview. The normal five minute stop at her son’s school has now been transformed into a fifteen minute detour to a babysitter’s house. She finds herself counting the minutes like a miser, grimacing painfully at each weighty bundle of seconds lost.

It is ten minutes after nine when she reaches the parking lot, with a fistful of change ready to curb the hunger of the parking meter. She is determined to be no more than fifteen minutes late, but the tyrannical parking meter has other plans: ACCEPTING A MINIMUM OF FIVE DOLLAR BILLS ONLY.

Bills only, it taunts, making short work of her fistful of change.

There is a lump in her throat, a growing ball of anxiety and panic. Parking her car at the side of the road, she half runs half walks to the nearest store she can find. She is aware at her dishevelment at this point, aware of her flustered appearance, and this awareness only serves to further discomfit her. She tries desperately to not look at her own reflection as she pulls open the door of the coffee shop.

The line for the counter stretches almost all the way to the door she is holding open. People glare at her in annoyance, as a cold, rude wind blows through the room, along with several bursts of freezing sleet. She is trying to catch someone’s eye, anyone’s eye, so she can ask for a five dollar bill in return for her change, but the shop is full of hurried, busy looking people who only have just enough time for their own worries.

She is scanning the line, trying to find an opening at the front so she can quickly, in a flash of onetwothree seconds, make this imperative exchange. There are two tall, intimidating businessmen in stiff gray suits at the front of the line, imperiously deep in conversation - she dare not interrupt them. Directly behind them, however, is a very non-intimidating, petite girl swathed in a manner of interesting clothing.

Clearly an immigrant. Probably doesn’t even speak English, by the looks of it. She won’t even notice that I’ve come in front of her, and I only need one bill, for God’s sake.

These thoughts do not directly announce their presence at all, but are influential enough to see her maneuvering her way ahead of the girl, to the front of the line. At that instant, a grey suited businessman suddenly turns around, his elbow colliding disastrously with the woman’s. As pain shoots up her arm, she drops the change in a myriad of directions, watching in horror as it rolls away into the warm, aromatic void of the coffee shop.

The woman gasps loudly. The grey suited businessman, having not even noticed the collision, has already made his way outside. Several people cluck their tongues pityingly, and then resume the business of drinking their morning beverages. The cashier at the front counter, trying to conceal his irritation at the disturbance in the line, asks loudly, “Everything okay ma’am?”

“I needed a five dollar bill for that new parking meter, but I’ve dropped all the change on the floor,” she is saying this almost to herself, fighting off tears.
“I’m sorry,” says the cashier smoothly, “if you could just pick that up and wait on the side, I’ll see what I can do.”

Someone is tapping her from behind. It is the petite girl in the layers of clothing and head scarf. Up close, her scarf is a beautiful buttery yellow color that illuminates her face.

She is holding out a five dollar bill.

“You seem to be in a rush, why don’t you take this, and I’ll worry about picking up the change.” The girl presses the bill into the woman’s hand. The English is perfect, unaccented.

As the woman is leaving the coffee shop, she looks back to see the girl bending down on the floor, picking up the scattered change.

It is now exactly nine twenty in the morning. She is twenty minutes late for the interview. As she makes her way from the coffee shop back to her car parked haphazardly on the side of the road, she is slower, a little more surefooted, but the high color of her cheeks refuses to fade.

She feeds the five dollar bill into the miserable machine and parks her car. An elevator delivers her to the ninth floor of the building, where she presents herself to the receptionist, apologizing profusely for her lateness.

“Oh, it’s perfectly all right. Disgusting weather we’ve been having. Actually, the Director’s car is stuck in the snow at some overpass off Highway 60. It doesn’t look like he’ll be in for another hour or so. I hope you don’t mind waiting a little while?” The receptionist says nonchalantly, stacking some files on top of one another.

It turns out to be a lot longer than one hour, a total of three hours in the end, but the woman doesn’t mind. For the first time in a long while, she isn’t rushing around, stressed and worried about the time. She lets her thoughts run free, at liberty to stretch their legs, to roam and wander at their leisure. They turn back to the coffee shop and the clear voiced young girl with the five dollar bill, and she realizes that while the panic and anxiety has left her, the lump in her throat is still there.

After some time, she takes out her cell phone and begins to dial a number. “Hello…dad?” she says tentatively. “How are you feeling? Listen, I’m sorry I haven’t called you in a while, things have just been so busy, but I’ve been thinking of you. Is it okay if I come by to see you today?”

Outside, the first signs of the thaw begin to emerge, and she catches sight of a trickle of water flowing steadily down the picture windows.

Act Three: Love
“Islam began as something strange, and it shall return as something strange, so give glad tidings of Paradise to the strangers.”

It was inevitable that the wintry offensive would clip their wings and leave them grounded indefinitely. The airplanes are immobile, and so the comings and goings and to-ings and fro-ings of the airport have ceased. Little children stand next to the airport windows and stare at the scene before them. Up close, they watch the delicate, poetic movement of snowflakes as they float to the ground, each snowflake gloriously unaware of its supporting role in the current crisis.

A girl walks around the airport terminal. She has not much to do but wait for the snow to stop falling so that she can continue on her journey. Wandering in and out of shops and lounges, she is careful to appear purposeful. Aimlessly meandering around a strange airport, in a strange city, looking out of place and directionless, would only serve to attract the wrong kinds of attention. There is something about traveling that heightens her sense of her sex, making her feel as if she is emanating vulnerability.

This is a particularly large airport. Thousands of people have been marooned, their airplanes little more than beached whales until the weather improves. In the midst of so much activity and noise she feels her solitariness more acutely, and is somewhat startled by this clichéd realization. How cheesy of me, she thinks.

She purposefully examines the shelves at the duty free store with the studied, pensive air of someone who is used to profound contemplation and deep thoughts. The salesladies are somewhat thrown off by this and decide to take her for someone important. They are solicitous and engaging, but are poorly rewarded for their ministrations when she purchases a lone bar of chocolate.

After a while she becomes restless and bored of the stores and food vendors, and tired of lugging around her overstuffed carry-on duffel bag. As she walks around she scans the lounges for a quiet, relatively private place where she can wait out the rest of her stay. Her eye falls on a large digital screen prominently displaying the time, and she is suddenly reminded of where to go.

The airport’s Interfaith Chapel is quite empty.

Rows of vacant chairs face a podium. Behind the podium, there is a large stained glass that is artificially lit up with a single light bulb. The additional light radiating from this arrangement gives the room an unnatural glow. On the right of the chairs, is a wide space next to the wall. A sign on the wall displays a large arrow pointing to the right corner of the room, and reads: DIRECTION THIS WAY. Next to the sign, there is a rack with neatly folded prayer mats and scarves. A bookshelf at the back of the room contains various Bibles, testaments, tracts, meditation pamphlets, and Qurans. There is a guestbook for patrons of the Interfaith Chapel which she flips through.

Thank you for providing travelers with this wonderful place! I feel so blessed to be able to connect with Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, while traveling!!! -Judy Hamilton
Very grateful for prayer space. Room is nice & comfortable. -M. Khan
God Bless this country. Thanks to this airport’s McDonalds and chapel, I have recharged my stomach and my soul. -Rob Fines

The girl sits down on one of the chairs at the back, placing her large duffel bag on the ground. She tries to keep an ear open for the airport announcements. No one comes into the room except a woman chatting stridently on a cell phone. The woman, embarrassed to have been caught trying to use the room for less than meditative purposes, turns red and leaves.

An hour passes before someone else enters. It is an older lady, wearing the dark navy attire of airport security. At first the girl does not look up, but when she does, the two smile warmly at each other. The ice was broken the moment each woman glanced at the other’s headgear.

The lady begins to adjust her clothing, making preparations for prayer. She is tired from a long, hectic day working in the airport. All day she has had to deal with the incessant questions and complaints of angry, frustrated travelers. Belligerent tourists and harried, self important businesspeople all seem to be under the impression that somehow she alone can part the clouds and make the planes fly. It is no wonder that she anxiously looks forward to the time where she can come to this room and pray.

The lady moves a chair out of its row, and angles it towards the right corner of the room. Then she reaches for a prayer mat off the rack. Smiling faintly at the girl, she pauses momentarily to hold her back, by way of explanation for the chair. She sits on the chair and painstakingly unfolds the prayer mat, moving slowly to spread it in front of her. She begins to pray.

The room is exquisitely silent. The girl watches the woman, who is deep in prayer. After some time, the lady sighs, and concludes the prayer by first gently turning her head to the right, and then to the left. She holds up her hands in front of her and closes her eyes, her lips silently moving in remembrance.
When she opens them, the girl is by her feet on the floor beside her, neatly folding the prayer mat and placing it on the rack. She puts one hand in the lady’s hand and the other hand around her back, helping her out of the chair. The girl moves the chair back into its row.
“May God bless you in this life and the next, child,” the lady says. She embraces the girl and kisses her on both cheeks. “God make your studies easy. Inshallah you have a safe journey, my child.”

“Thank you mother,” says the girl. “Inshallah, I hope your back gets better soon.”

“Inshallah,” says the lady, her eyes crinkling as she smiles, before leaving the Interfaith Chapel and disappearing into the clamorous din of the thronging airport crowds. If God wills.

The girl resumes her waiting. Eventually, the day grows older and the thickly falling snow loses its blind, delirious momentum, until the last twirling snowflake has finally fallen to the ground. The visibility increases along with the frequency of airport annoucements marking the end of the disabling weather. More and more of the stranded travellers are gradually beginning to catch their planes, ascending high above the snow covered city and its poor, overwhelmed airport. They watch keen rays of golden sunlight peek through the clouds, painting iridescent rainbows onto the panes of their airplane windows.

That night, the lady from airport security is praying the night prayer at home. The younger children have long since been put to bed, and she relishes these quiet moments of peace and tranquility before going sleep herself. Sitting on her chair, she folds and refolds her hands in the familiar movements. She bends her head down, and is seized by the sanctity and gravity of this movement. Truly, she is before God.

Suddenly, the image of the girl bending down next to her feet to fold the prayer mat floats before her mind’s eye. The woman begins to pray from her heart that God grants the girl, whose name she doesn’t know, the wonders of His Paradise: “I have prepared for My righteous slaves what no eye has ever seen, nor an ear has ever heard, and that which has never occurred in a human heart.”

She is so lost in prayer for the girl she met at the airport, she doesn’t notice the tears sliding down her face, dripping onto the ground below.

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