BEYOND FACEBOOK: Reality Refugees--Lunar Terminator

The clear cold night of March stuns the sky with its moon. The waning crescent blinding in its beauty. Sometimes when it is particularly clear you can still see the outline of the shadowed part of the moon; as it was when I drove home from Hull. Stubbornly in the way of the full-on brightness of the sun, the earth itself was playing puppet shadow on the wall as we did with flashlights and fingers as children.

Between the bright dazzle of the crescent and the false shadow is a boundary line called the lunar terminator. It is the space of the moons hemispheres that separates the darkness from the illumination. It is in between the dark and the light. It could go either way. For some reason teaching my Syrian family English makes me philosophical in a foolish kind of way I suppose. The crescent symbol of Islam comes to mind. And that mostly round shape of the shadow of the earth echoed in the round belly of a woman whose child is taking his time to come into this world. His life is a promise. It could go either way.

Back months ago in the dark of winter I met a family and we could not talk to each other. And the slow sometimes painful weekly sessions stretched ahead of us. A mutual goal. A crucial goal far distant. And then one day you discover you are speaking to each other in English. You can’t touch that feeling when you realize it is happening. It is beyond words. I don’t think I ever saw a man work so hard at something. He’s devoted. And, it turns out, he’s bloody funny. 

Despite never having taught English as a second language in my life I think I can safely say that the people you are teaching teach you how to teach them. This family just wants to talk. They want to share their life. They want to explain what happened to them that week, a year ago, when they were born. They want to know about our lives. They want to communicate. They want normal. And nothing beyond the love they have of their family is normal. And that, for everything there is in this world, is their saving grace. That, and apparently a wicked sense of humour.

In our last session, I had to explain that the past tense of buy is bought and not buyed. I explained that most verbs can be made into the past tense by adding ed because they were regular but SOME verbs are irregular. This ended up as there are two types of verbs: Verbs and Crazy Verbs. The father took this glumly. For he felt very encouraged with regular verbs. This week I was explaining the Crazy Verb “To Have.” He looked at me wickedly smiling and said, “Past is Syria” “Future don’t know.” Now Canada. ONLY Present. He said he only would learn present tense then. “I did not walk to store. I am walking to store.” And so, he brilliantly articulated every single philosophical theory in a nutshell. He was going to live in the present moment. It was easier he decided. And we laughed like fools. Who was I to argue with that?

I did not write last week about my session with my Syrians because it was a dark subject. Suffice it to say, health care in Quebec is bordering on Third World. At 39 weeks pregnant, the wife has not seen the same doctor twice. They are all giving some conflicting information and mostly it is “okay, out you go, next patient please.” They can’t find a family doctor. It is not the fault of the doctors but a ridiculous unforgiveable provincial government that fails its people miserably in this department. Consistency of care is key for everyone but critically so for new immigrants who speak neither English nor French. Their world has already been traumatized and rendered bewildering. Negotiating Quebec’s healthcare system becomes a reminder both of disenfranchisement and oddly the better health care they had in Syria before this debacle, this horror, this proxy war began. Consistent meaningful care after trauma needs to be a priority for new immigrants. If we really mean what we say when we “open our arms” to these desperate people. Particularly for photo ops. Talk, as they say, is cheap. Put your money where your mouth is. These are some idioms I could teach. If I wanted to get all political, which I am not going to do. So far anyway.