I am sitting on the floor in my house, teaching meditation, all calm and grateful, when I hear a shuffling sound coming from inside the pull-out couch.
I try to ignore it, but the sound gets louder. Django comes over to investigate, sniffing suspiciously on the floor beneath the couch. I finish the class, enjoy a few more moments of ignorance, take a deep breath, open the top of the couch, and see two black eyes staring at me.
I slam the couch shut before I can see exactly what the eyes are attached to. I get my upstairs neighbour, who only speaks Turkish, and hold out my phone with google translate open.
“There is a mouse in my house.”
“Ho!” he exclaims, mischievously, and asks if he can come inside.
Peering around my back room, he explains through miming that the mouse must have come up through the drain in the bathroom, where I’d removed the grate a few days earlier. He puts the grate back on, puts a bowl on top, and indicates that this should do the trick.
The next morning, both the bowl and the grate have been moved to the side and the drain is open again.
Jasmine wants take me out for breakfast as a belated birthday gift. I know she’s struggling for money, and try to tell her I wanted to pay, but she yells at me so loudly over video call that I give up. Children of Arabs parents know not to cross the Arab yell.
She and her mum come to pick me up. As I get into the car, I explain the current situation with my new housemate, the bowl, and the drain grate. Jasmine translates it to her mum and they laugh and laugh.
“That is not a mouse,” she says.
I know this already. I just don’t want to admit it to myself.
“We found three in my bathroom,” she explains as we drive off. “My husband was too afraid of them so my mom got them to leave out of the window.”
Later, she sends her husband over to my place to set up a humane trap.
“If he comes back,” she says, “my mom will take care of it.”
Jasmine also wanted to go for breakfast to celebrate some big news—so big, she refused to tell me until we sat down. I knew that Amina, Jasmine’s Syrian refugee friend, just got her official address. Which means that Amina’s 4 kids and grandchild, who many of you have supported to learn Arabic, Turkish, English and math at our clandestine school, will be allowed to attend real school, after years of waiting. Obviously, this is fantastic.
But there’s more.
Jasmine’s landlord recently asked her family of 7 to move out of their home, due to a neighbour’s displeasure about “Arabs living next door.” They’d started looking for a new home, but with housing prices and anti-Arab racism skyrocketing, they were struggling to find anything they could afford. Landlords repeatedly agreed to rent them a home, then called Jasmine the next day, telling her they’d changed their minds and didn’t want Arabs living there. Jasmine’s husband has had to have major dental surgery. (Her parents, who haven’t and likely never will get residency status, aren’t even allowed to leave the province, never mind legally work.)
I knew all this already. What I didn’t know, and Jasmine explains, is that she’d shared all this with a mutual friend of ours, who has been a huge supporter of the Syrian community here.
“She said ‘Jasmine, the longer you wait, the more expensive the houses will become.’ So, my sister, she has some money. And [our friend] gave us the rest of the money. And we bought a house. A house! Our own house! No one can ever make us leave again.”
Needless to say, we are both in tears.
It’s the best birthday gift ever.
After she drops me off at home, I think about her news, and Amina’s. What would the world would be like if stuff like that made the headlines? How many other things happen every day that are kind, loving, and affirming of the goodness of people, that we will never know about?
So this week, I’ve waking up in the morning, listening to the news as usual, and then coming up with my own headlines throughout the day.
Lifelong Friends Meet for First Time
Women Finds Out She Does Not Have Breast Cancer
Lost Dog Avoids Being Hit by Car, Gets Adopted
Depressed Person Makes It Out of Bed; Smiles at Reflection in Mirror
Humans Around the World Pray for Peace for People They Will Never Meet
Rodent of Unusual Size Vacates Premises After Being Asked Politely to Leave
I’d love to hear any of yours. Please share share them in the comments.
Thank you for being part of this.
Woman drives to work one Friday morning; discovers she had the option of working remotely on that particular day and promptly returns home.
Her Daughter announces she’s pregnant again, after a miscarriage, so Mother is overjoyed to become first time Grandmother in Waiting!! 💗