Many years ago, I was walking around San Francisco and happened upon a small Middle Eastern store, the shopkeepers newly arrived from someplace I can't recall, maybe Syria. I felt that I had entered another time and place as the woman in hijab, long dress and gloves looked at me in shock as I walked inside. Her young boy came running out from behind the counter gleefully staring at my bare arms and uncovered hair and his father put his hand over the boys eyes and steered him to the back of the store. The woman, her beautiful heart showing plainly in her open face, walked up to me and gently took me by the arm and led me through their small shop. "This is good, try this" handing me some pressed apricot to sample. "Here, you will like these" as she displayed some little blue and white beads. We, two very different people, became like friends, and I frequented the store often. The day before I left, she handed me a little gift of perfume oil in a tiny gold leafed bottle.
About a year later, after 9/11, there were stories from Brooklyn of several incidents of hatred towards fellow New Yorkers who had come here in refuge, only asking to be a part of our city. In cross country news I heard of an disturbance down the hill from the store, I was afraid for my friend, surely my beautiful San Francisco would not turn ugly! I called her long distance: "Just to be safe, maybe you should close your shop today". "What am I going to do" she said sadly "There is no place for us to go".
My heart hurt for them.
Gladly, nothing unpleasant happened, and over time I lost contact with the family. I didn't go back to SF for another ten years, and when I did the little shop was gone. I used my perfume very sparingly, and eventually it was gone like the store, never to return.
One day walking along Broadway, I entered Arabian Oud on a whim, and was curious to smell the different scents. Turkish rose, black rose, yellow rose, many ouds...The store is of course modern, clerks hailing from various Middle Eastern and North African places dressed in business attire, showcasing exotic glass bottles of the latest creations from SA and beyond...the clerk carefully removed the stoppers of delicate painted bottles of perfume oil and proffered each towards me to inhale, in between sniffs of coffee beans.
Exquisite perfume after perfume, each more heady than than the last, I finally became overwhelmed and had to stop sampling. "One more, this is like the oil they rub on the walls around [the holy cube]" the clerk presented a bottle of Black Stone and gently waved it in front of my nose. I immediately recalled this exact scent. Twenty years later I still recognized the oil my friend gave to me! I was so delighted! I would never have imagined that I could find this perfume again!
The heavenly perfume oil reminded of my friend that I had forgotten. It reminded me that although religions and cultures and governments differ, and can be at odds with each other (sometimes extremely and dehumanizingly so), the people are what are most important, always. Governments and their news outlets will try to inflame opinions, to scare, to threaten, to create conflict where there is none. But people are the same everywhere, our nature is to link hands across divides, we want to understand, to be friends. We want to share our cultures and the things we find special.
Our rich multiculturalism is one of the things that I love about New York City, and I try to remember this whenever I start to tire of the city life. read more
