I ran out and introduced myself to the new family who had moved in across the street, in Dari! (I’ve learned just a few words and greetings in the past month.) I had seen the man smoking while squatting on a chair on his front step. I had seen several children in their traditional clothes running about the front yard. But the woman and her older daughter had been more elusive.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what they must think about the US, our neighborhood, the rainstorms. Do they know what to do in a tornado? When do I explain that the trash cans need taken down each week? They’ve been in this house for less than two weeks and have almost nothing as far as furniture goes. One of my students got rid of her family’s dining table because they eat on the floor and it was only used to pile things on, so maybe that’s fine.
I ran out in jeans and a t-shirt across the wet grass — in my flip-flops, no less! They probably think they were bathroom shoes; my Kurdish friends would have. I didn’t think too much about it before I went. I was too nervously practicing my Dari greeting phrases and excited to see the women going for a walk in the light rain.
And that was the beginning of our own comedy of miscommunication!
One week as I was taking them home after English class, they let me know that the shopping was far away (they have no car yet, so I imagine it’s a challenge) and wanted to do a big shopping. I agreed and we set a time for 3pm when I could come back from the office and I could take them. I wasn’t entirely sure what they needed, but I figured a Kroger (grocery store) or Walmart would probably serve their needs best. But in case they needed something else, I had my Dari speaking teammate call them to get the details that their near zero English and my near zero Dari couldn’t manage.
When my teammate came back to me she said that I had misunderstood. They didn’t need anything specific. What they wanted was to go to downtown Nashville and see what was there. Maybe I should take them to the park and show them the Parthenon?
I admit that at this point, I hesitated. This was not what I was signing up for. I hate going to downtown Nashville. It’s crazy, busy, loud, and full of bachelorette parties. But at 3pm on a Monday afternoon it shouldn’t be too bad, right? So, I decided to go anyway and while I didn’t think a sight-seeing tour was particularly practical at this point, what else have they got to do? They’re in a new city, a new country, and it’s completely understandable that they’d want to see the place they live. So, I picked up 4 of them and we went for a drive.
As we neared downtown they began telling me how beautiful the city was and how the big buildings were like their city in Afghanistan. We pointed at buildings and talked about them. Is that building a mosque? No, it’s the power company. Is that building a church? No, it’s a government building. But that one there is a church!
When we finally made it down to Broadway it was thankfully pretty mellow. There were some people and I could hear music, but it wasn’t hard to drive down the main street. They asked how much apartments down here cost. “They are very very expensive. I don’t even know!” I told them.
Then they asked me the question that made everything make sense.
“Where is the bazaar?”
Oh. “There is no bazaar.”
“What is here?” they asked.
“Just food and music,” I said.
“Oh.”
I wish I could accurately communicate the look of confusion and disbelief on their faces. You see, in the Middle East in the center of every town or city there is a large bazaar. It is the place you can go to get ANYTHING. It’s like Amazon in person — in a bit of a jumble, sure, but you really can get anything you need there.
They held out a little hope, because next they asked me about the park. Obviously they thought that when my teammate had mentioned that, that maybe that was where the bazaar was. When we drove by the open expanse of grass leading up to the giant recreation of the Parthenon, I think it really hit them. There are no bazaars in America.
I asked them what they wanted to do next and they said they wanted to go home.
I started in that direction but continued to ask what they needed. They asked about shoes for the mom. So I tried to explain about different kinds of stores. Some have used items that are cheap, other have new items that are a little more expensive, then some stores have very new items that are even more expensive. They decided they’d like to try out a thrift store and so we wandered around there for a bit, looking at shoes. Then I took them to Ross, no good shoes there either. At that point, they were tired. I was tired. I took them home.
I felt defeated, and I’m sure they felt it even more.
How do we buy anything? We know what we want and we go to a store that specializes in that thing. We go to the shoe store or the jewelry store or the hardware store. We have different stores for different things. But that’s really hard to explain without language. And it’s hard to see what’s available when so much is available but it’s all really spread out.
And I, who understand that bazaar’s exist, feel like I should have caught on to what they really wanted before we ended up downtown. But maybe they had to see it to really believe that we don’t have bazaars here.
