From Concordia to Palestine

by Jill

So, I’ve wanted to write something for Ballz for a while now… but you know, school, work, Mexico!, and well, , life, have taken over. But Roxane ‘Slave-Driver-Boss-Lady’ Hudon has been pressuring me and I figure I have 20 minutes. So here goes…

Today, I took the Concordia shuttle bus. Now normally, I hate the shuttle. It’s hot and stuffy and there’s usually a crew of first-year residence kids talking about partying on Crescent or at “The Hive” or something ridiculous like that, and it makes me want to hurt someone. All that to say: I normally bust out my iPod and headphones immediately as I get on, if not before, to avoid having my ears bleed all the way to Loyola.

But this afternoon, with my tripod and over-sized grey Journalism-school camera box in tow, I didn’t get a chance to put on my regular Shuttle-bus protectors. Plus, because I had so many things with me (and there were no free seats in sight), I had to awkwardly stand near the front with the driver. After a few seconds, a guy sitting in the first row stood up to give me his seat. Yada-yada-yada… I didn’t take the seat (some girl snatched it up instead) and we ended up standing at the front together.

His Keffiyeh caught my attention and I asked him if he spoke Arabic. He did, and after I mumbled a few sentences in my very, very, very broken Fus’ha (formal Arabic), we started talking. Talking about Palestine, Jordan (where he was from), Egypt, Montreal, Concordia, etc.

He told me about his grandmother who lived in Jenin and how he had left Amman a year-and-a-half ago to do a Master’s degree at Concordia. I told him that I wanted to go to Palestine soon. He told me about how his family couldn’t harvest its land in Jordan anymore because unexploded mines in the area made it too dangerous. I asked him about Palestinian refugees living in Jordan and for advice of where I should go in the region. He said I could stay with his family if I ever make it to Jordan.

Anyway, this long, rambling, and probably uninteresting story is all to say: we need to stop cutting ourselves off from the world. We need to stop putting on headphones and shutting everyone out. If I had put my headphones on before getting onto the bus, I never would have never had this great conversation or met this generous person.

Most people bitch about being isolated or lonely or unable to make a connection, but most of that is often our own fault. We don’t let ourselves make those connections with people. It’s so much easier to not even bother.

I realize how clichéd this sounds, but today on the Shuttle, my belief in the kindness and openness and generosity of strangers was reinforced. I realized that I shouldn’t always be blasting music into my ears, or staring aimlessly out the bus window, ignoring everyone around me. And I realized that when I do that, I’m missing out on much more than just stories of the drunken escapades of 18-year-old Ontarians living on their own for the first time.

So, thank you for that, Khalid. See you soon in Amman. Or, hopefully, another day soon on the Shuttle.