Having a spot of tea with my friend Mohammad
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- July 30, 2023
- 1417
Today I’m looking back on a column from five years ago. It seems that each election cycle — no matter if it’s a special election or otherwise — requires our close attention so as not to doze off. Today I look back on my conversation with Mohammad, who was eventually reunited with his family after years apart:
The hard bench felt warm beneath me as I held a cup of hot tea in my hand. I looked down at it and stirred until the sugar cube dissolved into a lacy swirl, then held the rim to my lips and took a sip. I looked around and told myself to remember this spot, this place, and the people I was sharing dilemmas and ideas with. The air in the refugee camp, situated deep inside Athens, Greece, was chilly, and I pulled my sweater tighter around my shoulders.
His name was Mohammad, and he was a college professor from Syria, and as we sat and chatted with him outside his metal container home in the camp, warm cups of tea proffered from his tiny kitchen. Every preconceived notion I’ve ever held fell far away. History that touches us weaves in and out of not just our own country, but also from that of others. It’s a common tangled history that is sometimes hard to see from other’s perspectives, their spot of land on the common earth we share, policies from distant nations as intertwined as a spider’s web.
We chatted on the issues of the day from his country and mine, me sharing my frustrations and joys and him sharing his wealth of knowledge on the background of shared politics that touched us both.
My tea shook a bit in my hands as I peered into its depths, accepting the stark wisdom of his words and absorbing them, letting them settle into my bones. His words were steady as we gingerly picked our way through why the world works the way it does, why leaders here and there do what they do, or why we use violence for gain and whether it works — or simply leaves those left behind to pick through the remnants, nothing gained.
I’ve had the chance to talk to those outside the bubble of American politics, and for that I am grateful. Fear dissipates when you get to look into another’s eyes, sharing a spot of tea, feeling awkward until false notions fall away and their humanity sits before you unashamed. We are nothing if we don’t sift through each other’s words, hearing and listening and learning.
He spoke of places in his homeland devastated by bombings and when he could reunite with his wife and daughters while he seeks a better place for them while my biggest unspoken worry of the day was our upcoming mid-term election would be infiltrated by those who seek their own gain, that our very important votes count.
Elections are being held next week. They are important and have immense bearing on how the direction of our government will turn. We can walk into the places we vote with a flick of a car door, the flash of an I.D. and the click of a voting switch. I always believed my vote would be counted precisely and that it would matter.
I have concerns for my own country because instead of having bombs dropped on us by other countries — like my Syrian friend — we are dropping bombs on our own people. Since I’ve come home from my European trip, homegrown Americans have sent bombs through the mail meant to kill important people in government, shot and killed people in grocery stores because of their skin color, and mass murdered people in their synagogues because of their ethnicity.
We are being fed a gruel of words made up of fear that insists we are being invaded by those seeking asylum at our borders and that they are bringing disease and bad people with them.
None of these words and actions can be swept aside.
The words we speak — no matter who we are — hold the utmost of importance. From the tip top of the government rung of the ladder to the very least of the status quo (like me), the words we say matter. When you have an audience, your words can cause the ripping open of carefully healed wounds. They can pervert and sway people into thinking a certain way, incite action and instill fear where fear shouldn’t exist. I believe this is the tenuous space in time we are currently in, and that’s why I think about every single word I type before I send it out into the world.
Aren’t we all responsible for our words and what they mean?
Melissa Herrera is a columnist, published author and drinker of too many coffees based in Holmes County. You can find her book, “TOÑO LIVES,” at www.tinyurl.com/Tonolives or buy one from her in person (because all authors have boxes of their own novel). For inquiries or to purchase, email her at junkbabe68@gmail.com.