THE DINNER

5:30 p.m.

Her home in Ajax

Spinach Chicken Quiche, Baked Chicken, Potatoe Salad, Colleen’s Salad, Pasta Salad, Apple Pie and Apple Crisp.

THE DISCUSSION

Saadia cannot remember where she read it, but she recalls the image of “wearing a burning yoke” and it is the only way to describe how she felt during the chemotherapy for her second battle with breast cancer. Saadia is not a dramatic woman. Though her looks are striking, she is soft spoken and gracious.  She seems incombustible.

An only child, Saadia was 9 when her father was killed in the war with India.  She spent a short time on a university scholarship to the United States, but had to return home to Pakistan when her mother became ill.  Saadia knew just one person in Ajax when she arrived with her husband and two year old son.  Despite the loneliness, she has not been able to go back to friends and family in Pakistan very often.  She says, “I found it really hard to be cut off from them. I almost feel like that life doesn’t exist because no one here knows anything about the me that lived there.”

Saadia met her husband in Saudia Arabia.  He “pretty much grew up in the United States and did not want to go back to Pakistan.”  Saadia speculates that “he doesn’t fit in. He’s very westernized in his body language. It took me years to figure out.” Of her marriage she explains that “in Pakistan, people make sure that you get to meet each other before you agree to the marriage.  You must make sure they are educated because if you don’t have a good education, you won’t have a good job.  Only certain jobs will ensure that you have enough money to live.”

Though she did not want to leave her family and friends in Pakistan, she has “really come to appreciate all the things Canada has to offer in terms of equality of people and the opportunities everyone has.  Here we take care of everyone.  I love that about this place.  The taxes are high but we take care of everyone.  You don’t have to feel guilty.  In Pakistan, 5 or 7 % of people have money.  There is always so much guilt because there is so much poverty.”

Saadia allows that “you could do more.  But a lot is being done too.”  She hopes to volunteer “now that [her] kids are older, just give back before it’s too late”.  She remembers fondly that during her first winter, she had flooded the car.  Her neighbour handed her the keys to his car so that she could go on with her grocery shopping.  She says “that is symbolic of my life in Canada. That is how it has been for me here.”

Asked if her children have had the same experience, Saadia explains that “they hadn’t seen anything else and when you haven’t seen anything else you don’t appreciate what you have.  They went back and saw the value of how we have created a fairly equitable society in Canada.  My youngest was just traumatized by Pakistan.  Here they were in this big house with servants and he didn’t like being waited on.”  He now wants to work in international development.  Saadia acknowledges that it is “nice to have had the opportunity to watch them grow.  There’s relief in it that they are okay now.”  Her fear is that young people in high schools are so segregated into groups. She wonders if different people finally start to interact in the workforce.

Saadia’s “kids have become good at compartmentalizing.” That is what she does, pointing out that on the days that she was not feeling well, the children still went to school and wrote all their tests. Not only is this reflective of an intense commitment to education, it reflects a well thought out response to terrible disease. “When you have lived with it for a while you have sort of lived through all of the possibilities. It’s not something new and shocking.  You get used to it and you just live on.”

Saadia has always sought her own answers.  Ten or fifteen years ago she was having “a lot of trouble with religion, but couldn’t give it up.”  She says, “I read about Sufism and Hinduism.  I was really drawn to Buddhism at one time.  You know I was educated in a convent.”   Her searching led her to a meditation practice that is “a part of Sufism, the esoteric or mystical part of Islam. It is similar to the mystical part of any religion.  They are all the same on that level.  There is meditation in Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism.”  The appeal for her is that “with Sufism there is something sacred in everyone. That’s the thing. You don’t go to the authorities for the answer.  The answers come to you.  You find peace in a different way.”

Though her illness has left her unable to sit in meditation every morning, she does what she can.  And she walks every day.  For now the burning yoke has returned to the sky, a reference to another literary work that Saadia has probably also read.

STILL DIGESTING

Saadia was another person who was not sure that her life fit the scope of this project.  Ever accommodating and a fantastic cook, she had prepared an enormous Western meal to ensure that I was comfortable.  We were able to match each other’s giggles when we realized that neither of us had wanted to impose on the other by discussing the meal in advance.  Knowing how humble she was, I was afraid she would decide not to allow me to interview her.  And thinking I was terribly busy, she had not wanted to trouble me with the details of the menu.   I think we both agreed that I will be back for an Indian meal as soon as one of us works up the nerve to ask the other for a visit.  Ever sensitive to how many people would like some of my time, she does not realize that hers is every bit as valuable.

Extremely well educated and well read, Saadia will laugh in delight at the metaphor a dinner table provides. The struggles we have with what to bring to the table have characterized every conversation I have had.  People can be so thoughtful in contemplating their guests and so timid about the value of their own offerings.

My discomfort with the role of greedy listener is instructive. I am consciously working at offering some of myself to both those who share their stories at dinner and to those who share their time as readers. If the dreams I am blogging about are to flourish, it is critical that we value what everyone has to offer, including ourselves and especially if we have to look so hard it is uncomfortable. I am so appreciative that the brave people who are profiled here are engaging with that learning as well.

Given this generosity, I wonder if we should also be worrying more about how to receive all that is offered to us.  I wonder if we could teach ourselves to be amazed by the people we meet and to listen with equal interest for both the commonalities and the differences in the stories we have to tell.  Saadia is every bit a kindred spirit and an exotic other. She can speak about that duality from the perspective of her lives in two countries and she is candid about how difficult it is for the two to exist together.  In the context of our conversation, one informs the other and it becomes clear that what we bring to the dinner table is too complex to fit into either category. When we eat, we are just two people or three or five.  It is a metaphor worth extending into the world.