God In Transit
I took travel for granted. My focus was always on the end of the trip. What I would do when I met a friend, what sights I would see when I arrived, what meetings did I have to make. Being in transit was literally a means to an end. And for work I had to travel quite a lot, back and forth between New York and different countries in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.
Fitted with snazzy business cards that never failed to impress, and the privileges of a company American Express card. My eyes constantly glued to my BlackBerry, failing to notice much around me, I would hop up when premium boarding was announced. Settling in my seat slightly anxious, not at the usual momentous professional task ahead of me, but rather one associated with an indefinable life uncertainty.
Strapped into my seat, I would hold my phone in my lap. As the crew prepared for takeoff, my ritual would begin. Texts to family and close friends. Thank you for your continued love and support. Pray for me. I love you. (Though, I’m sure my loved ones remained amused by my unexpected show of profuse emotion.) Eyes closed. Hands in the air, the whispered cantillations, ending with requests for myself and others, as the plane taxied down the runway. Then, nothing but air. And when I landed, settled in my hotel room, my head would rest on a myriad of geometrical patterns, the mat pressing into the plush hotel carpet. My pause is a bit longer in each prostration as I lean into a feeling of temporary comfort, expressing gratitude. My anxiousness remains hovering around me as I handle business. It subsides only when I’m tucked in my cosy Brooklyn apartment, with its hardwood floors, and the distant view of the empire state building letting me know I am indeed home.
Yet, one day at the airport I finally did take notice of what was going on around me. No longer tied to a BlackBerry, I looked up much more often. It wasn’t only the absence of work obligations, but because I had given up the ‘good life’ to pursue a PhD. I doubt my sanity at times, as do my family and friends. My mother looks at me in pity each time I come home for a visit. Papers and open books strewn around and my laptop open in front of me. “When are you going to be finished?”, she assiduously asks. I don’t know how to answer her. “Never”, I say. She sadly smiles and walks away.
My intent observation is now my academic persona. Seeking to understand the experiences of students in different learning environments and their negotiation of knowledge with their teachers, I watch, question, observe, and sometimes interfere. I’m constantly humbled by their openness, honesty, and willingness to bear with my gaze and engagement. Now nine months into my gig, my duffel bag with clothing necessities and electronics, are my only loyal companions.
The weight of my laptop on my back is a comfort as each visit places me with people I don’t know, and forces me to get to know them. It’s kept me on… where my research senses constantly tingle.
Many of us may call it people watching. Something we do in cafes, parks, or the train, when we’re not occupied with third screens. It is indeed that, with a bit of something extra.
Away from the classroom environment, amidst the hustle and bustle of the Newark International Airport, I was engulfed in a soufflé of the senses. Passing through security, I proceeded to my designated gate. I checked the time, realizing it was time for one of the daily prayers. I searched for signs with any sort of religious symbol, but found none. I stopped an airport cleaner to ask for the quiet room or chapel. His weary face took in my headscarf and the corners of his mouth went up slightly. He directed me back towards the way I had come to a nondescript door. I walked into a small dimly lit room and the door swung shut behind me, blocking out the cacophonous noises of announcements, wheels dragging across the floor, and the shuffling of shoes that are unique to the airport. A navy industrial carpet lined the floor. A few steps into the room on the left stood a metal sign that read “Please remove shoes.” The small enclave in the back left of the room had a rectangular prayer mat on the floor. The geometrical patterns beckoned me.
Two sets of chairs, three rows of chairs face the front of the room, against the sides an aisle down the middle. A cross sits at the end of the aisle affixed to the top of the room facing the chairs. The edifice of Jesus rests atop it, the light beaming across the face.
Dropping my bag, I pulled off my shoes and placed them against the side of the wall. Stepping to the bottom of the mat, back to the wall, I raised my hand, my thumbs reaching slightly below my covered ears, fingers outstretched. The intimate conversation began. Unfortunately, like other conversations I sometimes ADD out of it and return back to reflect on the words I whispered in the quiet room. Four prostrations later, I turned my head right then left and swung my legs to rest crossed in front of me. Reaching over, I pulled a string of wooden beads out of my bag and lowered my head. Silently I rocked back and forth, each single bead making its way through my fingers, a word of passage on each one as I reach 99. Resting my head back against the wall, I closed my eyes, reveling in the silence. The noise of travelers and intercom remain muffled.
Suddenly the quiet is shattered and then quickly returns. A member of airport staff walks in. His neon vest gives him away as do his Timberland boots, as he makes his way to the front of the room. My senses begin to tingle, so I watch. He sits down in the first row of the chairs in front of me and bows his head. He remains still for a few minutes and then gets up to leave. He sees me sitting in the corner and then continues out. With no means to verify I assume that he is of Latin descent and perhaps 15 years from retirement. The noise enters and seeps in and out as he makes his exit. A quarter of an hour later I have company again. An airline stewardess comes in. Her stacked luggage travel behind her as her heels silently press into the carpet. She stands in front of the statue. Her eyes slightly turned up at the corners, eyeliner making them more defined leads me to believe she’s from somewhere in the pacific islands. She has her own private conversation. I hear her knees hitting the fabric of her pencil skirt as she makes her way out. Moments later three south Asian women are removing their shoes. I shuffle away from the mat towards my bag. They pull bright scarves from their purses and place them on their heads. They pick up the prayer mat and lay it horizontal so they can both fit. The third woman, not joining them, moves away. They raise their hands to begin. She looks at me, and smiles. They finish and collect their things and in unison all give me greetings as they make their way out.
An elderly Latino man moves quietly towards the right side of the room to seek his blessings. His hand moves to remove his hat from atop his head. His thinning hair makes way for the ceiling lights to spot on his bent head. His khakis rustle as he readjusts his legs in his seat. Finished, he lowers hands to his thighs, leaning on them as he pushes himself up. Hat in hand, he moves to put it back on. As he walks down the short aisle between the chairs he looks down towards me, smiling. His eyes crinkle at the corners showing his age and perhaps his predilection to smiling. It was warm. In that smile, was a secret shared between two strangers in a shadowed room. He understood. I understood. Like the others, our hands were familiar with beginning conversation. With a blink and a turn of the head he was gone. Our paths would never cross again. Close at the turn of his heels a white man and woman walk in. They hesitantly walk to the back of row of chairs and look around. I’m unable to make out what they whisper to each other, as they walk out not more than a minute later. Moments later, three south Asian men walked in, shucking their shoes at the edge of the corner wall. I stand to leave, collecting my things to make way for them. Unable to bend down, one of them pulls a chair from the front of the entryway of the room, choosing not to mess up the orderly rows of the chairs lined on each side of the room, so he can sit and make his prayer. They nod their head at me as I move past them towards the door into the bright, crowded walkway.
As I stroll to my gate I couldn’t help but think of all the journal articles I read over the previous year about the absence or resurgence of religious practice in the West and the global south. What does it mean to practice, to be religious? Who is unchurched or unmosqued in America? What does it mean in our everyday? What made those people come into that room for those few stolen moments in the middle of all the chaos? I won’t get any answers from them, but I found one of my own. I reflected over the role of travel in my life, both in theory and practice. How it’s been a foundational component of the history of my kin, blood and other. . It was as forced upon some, shaping their lives, families and generations immemorial. In others it was a journey to the unknown to find the known. And in my own immediate family, with parents leaving their home countries for years, at separate points in their lives. A sister determined to traverse as much of the world as her two years of savings would allow. And me, yet again, slightly reclined in a metal chair riddled with holes, waiting to travel more than a thousand miles away.
The journey, the steps, the people, and the uncertainty, was where the connection took place. My religious tradition says that one should be in the world as a traveler. I’ve heard this during various stages of my life. Preachers talk about the importance of not living for this world. Of avoiding being enamored with all that glitters because such gold has no meaning in the afterlife. They encourage abstinence from the material trappings of life. Ascetics are therefore revered for their ability to live a minimalist lifestyle. Yet, neither on the groundings of the everyday nor up in the air was where the revelation occurred. It was in transit.
All of us who passed through that room shared recognition of the fragility of life and acknowledged the one who kept it all together in an unknown way. This meaning of being in the world as a traveler resonated. It isn’t just eschewing the consumerism of life alone. Life can be exhilarating, happy, dangerous, complicated, just plain messy. Being home with loved ones, in familiar surroundings provides a sense of comfort and maybe a false sense of ultimate security. When we’re thousands of miles away the comfort is thrown off and return isn’t guaranteed. This instability, this lack of certainty forces one to reckon with a higher power. It is in the fragility where comfort resides. So as my life as a socially accepted stalker comes to an end, I embrace the lack of familiarity around me, with a plan to always be a traveler.
Originally published at https://almadinainstitute.org on October 26, 2014.
