All five living presidents with first ladies were in attendance at George H.W. Bush’s funeral this past week to honor the passing of “one of their own.” Theirs is an exclusive fraternity like few others. It was heartening to see them come together with single purpose. While appearances may be deceiving, they all appeared to genuinely identify with the deceased and grieve his passing and, in doing so, identify with each other. The respite from political turmoil was refreshing. Despite their political differences, the five presidents were all Americans, all men, all husbands, all fathers, and all had suffered loss to some degree on another. They had all served this great nation. They are much more alike than different. But aren’t we all?
In the summer of 2005 I was deployed to Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar as the chief physician for the U.S. military hospital. I had been asked to escort four female Airmen on a “morale” trip to downtown Doha, the capital city, and soon found myself in a huge five-story shopping mall. My wife, Diana, will certainly attest to the irony of my predicament. I am not a mall sort of guy. The mall was not unlike what we have here. There were fast food restaurants. Some very familiar. Some exotic and unfamiliar. All were halal. Most of the shops were ones you would find in any mall in America. There was one striking difference–the fifth floor.
The fifth floor was a women’s-only floor. Guards at the base of the escalators on the fourth floor were armed with semiautomatic carbines to deter the unauthorized gender. I was told women, many donned in hijabs, veils and burqas, would go up the escalator, pass through the doors, shed hijabs, veils and burqas often revealing the latest Paris fashions, and shop unencumbered. And that left us at the bottom of the escalator—the beleaguered male class.
My four female charges left me, unchaperoned, and went shopping on the forbidden floor. I, along with a few dozen other men, found a seat in the “men’s waiting area” at the base of the escalator. I sat down on a bench next to a man about 20 years my senior.
The older gentleman wore a white turban and robe. Through broken English (on his part), very broken Farsi (on my part), and some very inventive charades and pantomime, we struck up a conversation. He was from a small district in the suburbs of Tehran, Iran. His wife and 3 teenage and 20-something daughters were there on a shopping trip. He, as he saw it, was there to finance the whole operation. As my four charges and his family shopped, we sat and waited . . . and waited. We spoke lovingly and proudly of our respective families, aspirations for our children and grandchildren, and, of course, whined about the interminable wait. We shared pictures from our wallets. We laughed. And we complained about the wait some more and laughed some more. It was male bonding to the core. Geopolitics never entered the conversation. Not once. Just a man talking to a man about the things that matter most. The time passed relatively quickly and soon I was back on chaperone duty. We shook hands, briefly embraced, and went our separate ways.
Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about that brief visit on the bench at the base of the escalator. Behind and beyond the macrocosm of national and world events, there are people. Just people. Different languages, cultures, religions, and races. But just people in the end. When the thin veneer of those things that divide us is stripped away, we are really not all that different. Take it from an old guy in a turban on a bench in a mall in Doha.
Dash Stories 