After our tutoring session Mubarak and I walked from his apartment at Grand Marc over to Mr. Robotos restaurant. There we met with his friends Yusef, Jasem, and one other who’s name I don’t quite remember. We all got food and ate at a table outside, overlooking part of campus and the bustling traffic of Tennessee Street. I thought outside myself for a moment and thought how funny it’d be if I was driving by and saw a Jew eating Chinese food with four Middle Eastern guys in the deep south city of Tallahassee. These are truly marvelous times we live in.
We shot the shit as per usual, talked about boredom video games, music, etc. Jasem mentioned that him Mubarak and one of their other friends will be traveling to Miami on Sunday for the following week, including Christmas. They admitted, which I had assumed, that they were going to treat December twenty-fifth just like any other day and probably go to the beach or a movie. We all agreed Django Unchained is probably going to the best movie in theatres.
As we were about to go a homeless man rode up and asked if we could watch his bicycle and back pack for a moment. We agreed. Ten minutes went by and we were all done with our meals. Fifteen more went by and it was getting dark and the temperature was dropping. I went inside and told the cashier of the situation and she agreed to take over watch. When I told them it was all good and we could leave, Jasem and Yusef wanted to wait longer, despite being cold and bored, but because “if he loses that then he’s at zero”. Hearing this made my day. Probably my week. It was Christmas spirit if I’d ever seen it. Forget cultural gaps, economic gaps, geographic gaps; these were two young guys willing to sit out in the cold so that a random stranger could return safely to his only belongings was a spectacle of human kindness. You don’t need a tree to be in the spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment