Not on My Bucket List

Chapter 1: New Beginnings-2

The following Sunday, at precisely one o’clock, he called me again on Skype. This time he was wearing a soccer jersey. It looked good on him, shaving a few years off his appearance. I could almost imagine him as a younger man, an aspiring soccer star, on the field playing his heart out.

“So what soccer team does that shirt represent?” I asked.

“Football! Over here it’s football, not soccer. We do not play your traditional American football. Your soccer is football to us.

“This shirt is for the team of Madrid, my favorite team. When I was very young their most famous player came here to Algeria and I met him. It inspired me to want to be a professional football player. That didn’t quite work out, though I did become quite good. That same man now coaches the Madrid team. I got to see a game there when I was working in Spain.”

“Yes, you are fluent in Spanish. Is that when you learned Spanish, when you were working in Spain?”

“Yes. I found that by merely picking up a discarded newspaper left on a park bench I could pick up the language. The same happened learning Catalan when I was in Barcelona.”

He must be some kind of language whiz. A friend of mine had visited Barcelona recently with his partner who was from Argentina, and the Argentinian said he could not understand a word of Catalan.

“So you really picked it up that quickly. That’s amazing,” I said. “I have always wanted to visit Spain. Perhaps someday you would go with me.”

He became quiet and didn’t say anything for a time. Finally, speaking slowly and with difficulty, he said, “My time in Spain is not a happy memory. I went there to work with a group of migrant laborers. Many countries in Europe have rules allowing migrant labor in from less fortunate countries in Africa or Eastern Europe. They work at less pay than the citizens of that country would earn and are required to return home in two years or less, depending on the country. It is a rip-off, of course, allowing employers to have work done and pay less money in wages.”

Ah, yes, the migrant labor thing. We in America are well acquainted with it, of course. Who harvests our produce in California? And in my part of the country, migrant labor was often used in apple orchards. The migrants were housed in substandard shacks with little heat. They were often not treated well by the farmers who employed them, not to mention the local population.

“In my case, the group I worked with for six months was not paid a thing for our labor. When we were released by our employer, the other members of the group turned to me and begged me to be their leader and somehow find a way to sue to get the wages we were due. But I could do nothing. We did not have the money to hire a lawyer.

“My last days in Spain were spent homeless and on the street. I spent many nights sleeping on a park bench until my family could send the money to get me home. After that I went through months of severe depression, and hardly left the house. My time in Spain is a painful memory that I try not to think about anymore.”

“Oh, Amir, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up unpleasant memories. But did anything positive come of that experience? Is that perhaps when you realized you had a talent for languages? And would you ever go back to Spain if it was to meet me there for a vacation?”

He smiled and began to come out of his funk. “Yes,” he said, “I would go back to Spain if it was to be there with you. I would take you to a football game in Madrid. Remember, I sent you a picture of me in front of the stadium there.

“As for the languages, while Spain is where I learned Spanish and Catalan, I already knew I was good at languages. I was in college as a French major when I was in my twenties. But a large group of us protested some government policies we felt were unfair, even corrupt. The police broke up the demonstration, then went house to house looking for those who had participated. I was scared. I hid at home and never went back to school. It was only when I returned from Spain and finally shook off my depression that I decided to go back.”

I thought of pointing out that might be considered a good thing that had come of the Spain experience but, not wanting him to become unhappy about it once more, I changed the subject.

“Have you ever travelled to other countries?” I asked.

His answer surprised me. “Yes, I have been to Jordan to visit my grandmother. And I have been to France, but I didn’t like the way I was treated there.”

A shame. With his fluent French, he should have fit right in. But anti-Muslim sentiment was prevalent in many areas of Europe. I had seen it mentioned a number of times on the news.

“And I would like to go to Italy one day,” he added.

“Yes, Italy is remarkable. I have been to Rome, Florence, and Venice. There is no place on earth quite like them. I learned Italian for the trip, and was pretty good at it for a while, though it was ten years ago and I have forgotten most of it.”

“I’m sure I could pick up Italian quickly,” Amir remarked.

“Yes, I’m sure you could, if you learned Spanish easily. My six years of Spanish definitely made the Italian easier to learn. When I went to Germany I couldn’t make a bit of sense of that language.”

“So you are fluent in Spanish?” Amir asked, smiling broadly.

“I’m afraid not, Amir. I studied it fifty years ago, and I haven’t used it much since.”

“I will help you bring it back for our trip to Spain together, Habibi.”

I should have been taken aback that he was already thinking that we would travel to Spain together. But instead, I was wondering what that word he had just used meant.

“What was that word you used?” I asked.

“What word? Oh, you mean Habibi? I guess the most accurate translation would be ‘love.’ But again, the word would mean different things in different contexts. It could be love for your parents, your brother, your friend, your colleague, your teacher, your husband. Obviously, the kind of love in each of those situations is different. Many Arab men use the term when speaking to each other. One hears the word often in conversations.”

“And would it be appropriate for me to use the word when I am speaking to you?”

“Of course! You do not feel that we have become close enough to address each other with this word?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. Yes, surely we were friends. And getting to be better friends each time we spoke. But I really didn’t know where this was going. And the English term “love” wasn’t a word I would say to him. If he was hoping for a relationship with me, for me to be the one to get him out of Algeria and over to the US—well, I simply could not imagine that happening.

But I did know one thing: if he were suddenly to disappear, to stop communicating with me on the internet, as often seemed to happen with these internet chat buddies, I would be deeply disappointed. I would miss him.

“Yes, yes, we are good friends, aren’t we?” I answered, choosing my words carefully. “And we will always remain good friends, won’t we?”

“Of course!” he laughed. “Why would we not? We are both free thinkers and have demonstrated that we do not think like many of the other citizens of our two countries. Early in our communications I could tell that you were not a racist. Remember I told you that I did not care what country you lived in?”

That was true. But I knew that I must be wary. In the back of my mind, I knew there was the remote possibility that I was being used. Friends had warned me about it when I had told them who I was talking to on the internet. But he had never asked me for a thing. He had never asked me for money. Somehow, I was sure that he was sincere. We were just two friends chatting on the internet.

Right?

“I remember that,” I said, answering his question. But I resolved to be careful of how I addressed him, and to watch carefully how he addressed me. I did not want to encourage something between us that would not, could not, take place.