Four hours at the DMV yesterday. Sigh. Got some good people-watching in, though.
One couple came in with three kids, one a babe in arms and two young boys. Black hair, dark eyes, olive skin… this station serves a relatively heavily Hispanic neighborhood but the vibe wasn’t quite right.
I glanced at the woman’s shoes and there it was—an Arabic family. I eavesdropped shamelessly. I wasn’t sure about the accent at first, a couple of hundred words in Iraqi Arabic hardly qualifies me as a linguist, but I caught part of a slang term, “shaku maku” and I was pretty sure.
The man was dressed in beige 5.11 pants, the unofficial uniform of the contractors working over there. I was wearing a pair myself…
Translating is a difficult, dangerous job in that part of the world. There are many factions (it isn’t just two sides, not by a long shot) who would delight in identifying and killing a high-value target. Like a translator or a translator’s child. Or threatening the children to force the translator to bomb his employers.
It’s a hard job and dangerous and done by brave men and women. Thing is, it becomes even more dangerous when the employers leave. Memories are long, sometimes, and people become more violent as it becomes safer to be violent. There is a special visa available for some of these men and women. The bureaucracy is huge and tedious and frustrating, but some make it through…
This was one of those families, come to a safer place where they had more possibilities beyond what was decreed by gender or sect or tribe or family connections. They looked happy- a few hours in the DMV must seem swift and simple compared to trying to push even simple things through certain middle-eastern bureaucracies…
I wanted to say thanks. Though I didn’t know him, men like him had been instrumental to the good that we did over there. I owe a lot to many maturjim… but a stranger guessing so much of a dangerous history would have scared him, and rightly so. So he and his family get my best wishes from a distance.
3 comments:
Dear Rory,
This is a wonderful tribute to the translator's service but also to your greater understanding.
Reminds me of a poem . . . so I put it in my blog . . .
Thanks for bringing all three to mind.
Ann T.
A part of me worries that those tactical 5.11 pants say, Ask me about my concealed pistol!
5.11s, Blackhawk's Warriorwear, and similar pants are easily identified -- but at the same time, widely enough worn by cops, security, military, and others that it's not a bull's eye item. Not something to wear working undercover, but not so much of a giveaway that you can't be anything but a whatever.
(I just wish I could get some of the features of each put into a single pair of pants...)
It's sad that there are so many unsung people who deserve recognition, but can't be given it publicly. There are confidential informants working for cops here in the US who can't be publicly identified, but are working solely to make the community better -- not working off charges or the like.
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