The Ordinary Ones

The air is fresh and clean up here.  Can you hear that? The sound of silence. The breeze moving through the trees. No traffic, no big trucks or motorcycles. Peace and stillness. Sitting outside under the shade of an almond tree. She has AIDS, we are told. She is frail, we can see. A man disappears to get us food from the garden. Bananas, sugar cane. A gift for our visit. A gift for the priest. We sit on chairs. She sits on the floor, in the doorway. The air is fresh and clean up here.  The silent mountain where death is coming but has not yet taken the one we came to see. So we sing and we pray and we talk under the shade of the almond tree, up in the clear, cool mountain air. The place that feels like Heaven, though Heaven is not yet here. Months later, we hear news of her death.

I hear rumors of death. I see scorch marks on the road from burning tires, in a neighborhood I knew to be peaceful five years ago. A woman tells me that her husband’s brother was killed in a roadblock. A man tells me that a young girl was caught in a roadblock in a town I have driven through many times – raped, he said. A sugar shortage.  I hear that when people can’t find food, they eat bread and drink sugar water.  Until now, when the sugar is running out. She stands outside of the big white cathedral. A child, maybe eight years old. She is barefoot and eating something. What is it she is eating? There is no packaging. It is the color of earth, flat like a thick tortilla chip. What are you eating? I ask her. She breaks a piece off with her teeth. Dirt. She says. Dirt? I repeat. Does it taste good? Yes, it is salty, she says. Do you want some? I thought about it. Eat dirt to be in solidarity with this small child, to taste it, to know her suffering. Maybe. But what would it do to my s

We sat on the short cement stoop together. She talked. I listened. I had met her before and it was always the same. I couldn’t understand most of what she said. She was speaking so fast, rambling on. No pause for me to respond. Even if she did pause though, how would I respond when I understood very little of her words? Good thing she didn’t pause. I nodded, smiling at her. I can be present to her. Sit with her. Show her that she is worth my time. I can stop my day for her. Sometimes she looks away while she is speaking. Sometimes she looks directly at me, into my eyes. Sometimes touching my arm or my face. I’m not sure if she is all there. But she is here, and that’s what matters. Be present. I know she came from far away, walked here on foot, down the mountain. Someone took her home in a car to spare her feet and what was left of her shoes. She came back a few months later, on foot, down the mountain. Lather, rinse, repeat. Listen. Be present. And again, she came back, on foot, down