Different Slants

So, all the volunteers gathered, and started putting all the pieces together.

I schlepped all the food from home. Rana and Bruce, Dana Kruger, a grown-up childhood friend of Sarah’s older sister Rachel, was there, too.  Donna was commandeering the kitchen, doing six things at once.  Joy was setting tables and others were blowing up balloons with helium and making little table decorations in Sarah’s colors.

I did whatever I was told to do.  Bruce brought in the cake.  A man’s job.  All the place settings were distributed, carefully, making sure that family members who couldn’t stand each other weren’t sitting at the same table.  Then there was the Republican table and the Democrat table, and so on.  Complicated.

As we left the party room, Donna pulled me aside in the kitchen.  I didn’t resist.

She informed me that she wasn’t accepting any payment for her work at the party.  I was stunned at this news, and immediately protested that she was wonderful to make the offer, but she had worked so hard and deserved to be paid.  Besides, I told her, I already had the money ready for her.

But she brushed all that aside with a gesture of her hand and this “Don’t you get it?” look on her lovely face, saying,

“I believe in karma—what comes around, goes around.  Besides”, she continued, “you’re out of work now and I’m not.  Ya know you’re gonna need it.”  

 

Not willing to let her do this to herself, I persisted and told her I really wanted to pay her for making the party possible because there was no one else who could have done what she did for us.

Donna is Italian and Catholic, or is it the other way around?  She fixed me with this This-Discussion-Is-Over look in her dark eyes and said in that unmistakable Italian way,

“Don’t worry about it.  Enjoy your party.”

I did as I was told.  One thing I’ve learned is not to argue with a determined woman, Italian or not.

Catching up to Joyce who was going into the temple’s sanctuary for Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah ceremony, I said nothing about it, but, feeling a little disoriented by my unexpected moment with Donna, I thought to myself,

Where do people like that come from?

But, her tribe increased.

A week earlier, Sarah’s older brother David had filmed her riding a horse she liked very much at a place where she worked, periodically, taking care of other people’s horses.  This came about in a spontaneous way, when the person (whom I am electing not to identify) who gave the riding lessons, was somehow able to figure out that Sarah was not just another rich kid from Barrington or Lake Forest.  I found out about this person, and this situation, after the fact.

In a subtle way, when Sarah was kind of hanging around the stable, not riding, just looking, and longing, the perceptive riding instructor came over to her and asked if she wanted to help out around the stable in exchange for free riding lessons.  Sarah, not quite believing this offer was possible, immediately agreed.  This meant, pulling the saddles and blankets off the sweaty, snorting horse’s backs, brushing them down or as Sarah later confidently explained to me, “Tacking up the horses”.

She cleaned their hooves with a pick and removed all the mud from them.  She learned some of the lingo and became very comfortable around the large creatures and eventually, began learning how to ride, and then to make low jumps.  When I watched her, her posture was perfect.  Like she was born to it.

When my Aunt Adele, my deceased mother’s younger sister (and who also helped raise me) heard about this unusual situation, she bought Sarah some very snazzy-looking riding boots, so Sarah would feel like she “fit in” better with the other riders in the school.  Sarah and her Great-Aunt Adele were already close, so this thoughtful gesture only made it more so.

There was virtually no money involved and I remain very respectful of the compassionate riding instructor.

She wasn’t Italian, either.  Nice people come in at least thirty-one flavors.  No one has a lock on decency.

Meanwhile, David quickly edited and scored the five minute film, and brought it with him to the party along with his two break dancing friends, who, by the way, really appreciated the smooth parquet dance floor.

Using the temple’s existing projector, sound system and screen, David displayed his gift to Sarah.  It was flawless, funny, and made Sarah look like a queen on horseback, riding and jumping.  And to the delight of everyone there, especially adults of a certain age, he had her doing all of these things to the stirring music of The William Tell Overture, better known to millions of Baby Boomers as the theme of the fifties TV classic, The Lone Ranger!!!

People saw it, heard it and roared!

Cost?  Zero!

The retired rabbi, Neil Brief, who delivered the eulogy at my father’s funeral, which occurred just fifteen days after four-year-old Sarah was adopted, and who gave her her Hebrew name on the spot, as Israela, after my father’s original name, Israel, was also there nine years later, to give the important blessing over the challah, or traditional Jewish bread.  My parents weren’t there, but people who represented them were.

The prior week, when my wife picked David up at his apartment, since he doesn’t drive, and was bringing him to film Sarah, she called me to tell me that her car was overheating, that they barely made it there and would I please meet her at the stable and help her with our 1996 Dodge mini-van.   I immediately zoomed out there in my 1993 Chevy van, the antique cavalry coming to the rescue.

While David, Joy and Sarah were going through their paces in the enormous stable (I had a small part, later), I checked all the fluids, saw that the antifreeze was low, filled it and figured that everything was ok.  Nothing was leaking from the bottom of the radiator or anywhere else, either.  But, to be safe, I exchanged cars with them so that if something happened, only one of us would be marooned in horse country, instead of three.

After they left, I attempted to follow them, but within a mile the dashboard’s temperature gauge needle shot up to the red dangerous zone and I pulled the old car over and parked.  I was fifteen miles from home.  I called AAA Motor Club and assumed that in the nice weather they would come immediately.

Three hours later, standing in the dark and shivering after the night chill set in, a long flatbed-type tow truck pulled ahead of me and pulled my dead car up upon it, locking it in place with big heavy chains.  The driver and I—about the same age—exchanged stories about our lives as we lumbered back to my mechanic’s lot, and how time was treating us.

His story was pretty bad, I thought to myself.

When he finished unloading my car, I tried to tip him $5.00, but to my surprise he refused it, saying,

“Hell man, you keep it.  Your life is way worse than mine!”

And he drove off.  I stared at his bouncing red rear taillights as they became smaller, thinking: that was one damn competition I didn’t want to win.  It was a sobering moment, as I stood there in the dark on the gravel lot, while waiting for Joyce to come get me.  Fifty-nine years old, and the tow-truck driver is sorry for me.

A short time later, I was telling this story to a friend in my synagogue, trying to figure out how I would pay for what eventually turned out to be a busted water pump.  Buried behind the motor, it’s all labor and expensive to repair it. All this happening just days before the Bat Mitzvah.  I was living in a bad movie.  My friend listened, commiserating with me.  I was not asking him for money, because he didn’t have any, either.  I was just venting.  Miserably.

A couple of days later, an envelope appeared at my house, anonymously, with cash in it to help me pay the mechanic for my dead car’s repair.  Not a loan.  A gift.  I didn’t try to track down my benefactor, because if he wanted me to know who he was, there would have been a note in the envelope.  My job, as I understood it, was to fix the car and continue to look after my family.  A mystery.  A good, kind mystery.

One of my ambitions, if life ever gives me the opportunity, is to be that guy.  The guy in a solid enough position to be able to put cash in an envelope when he learns about someone who really needs it and has no place else to go. I want to be that guy, and see how it feels to be able to do something meaningful like that.

But, wait.  What about this…my mechanic stuff…like I had a fleet of race cars or something?

I just met him, briefly, recommended to go there for some minor repair a couple of months earlier by an older member of my congregation.  I barely knew him.  We were strangers and nothing more than that.

My wife drove me there early in the morning and waited for me while I talked to him.  I explained what happened and Ray–that’s his name, Ray–told me to call him or come by later that day and he’d tell me what the situation was.  I did that.

He was sitting in his tiny office filled with bits and pieces of spare parts covering virtually every level surface, including the floor.  From the outside, his shop looks like a gingerbread house in a fairy tale instead of a place that fixes broken cars.  It’s on an obscure gravel street, almost invisible under the shadow of the interstate and you’d never find it unless someone told you how to get there.  There’s not even a sign on it telling you what the hell it is.  But the large bumpy gravel lot surrounding his shop is filled with all kinds of cars, foreign cars, so someone is evidently telling someone else about Ray and his tiny two-bay garage.

Well, I still owed Ray from that other repair, and then he gave me the bad news about the water pump.  I must have sagged visibly, because the cash in the envelope paid for part of it, but not enough and I felt like a total loser standing there in front of him.  He didn’t say anything, just sat there watching me, studying me. Deciding.

Me?

I had nothing to say.

Then he looks at me and says,

“So, if I fix your car, will you pay me when you get the money?”

I snapped out of my trance and tried to understand what he said.  I’m nobody to him.  Just a sad face with an old car that keeps breaking.   Suddenly I felt more like a person and less like a schmuck.  He was trusting me.  Why?

But what I said was,

“Why…yes, of course I will.  But, uh, how do you know I’ll pay you?”

Ray replied,

“Listen, you said you’d pay and I believe you.  So, let’s shake hands and now we’re friends.”

I’m speechless.  But not Ray:

“I’ll call you when it’s ready in a couple of days.  I got some other guys ahead of you I’ve gotta get out of here first.  Go home; your wife’s waiting for you.  Women don’t like to be kept waiting.”

I nodded, dumbly, and left.  We’re friends?  Don’t I have to do something nice for him first to earn that?

Well, I’ll go out on a shaky limb here and tell you what I really think.

I think God sprinkles the earth with people who want to help.  Help anyone.  How do they find each other?

Maybe we live in a sort of ‘universe of mercy’, where one person’s misery triggers another person’s compassion.  Some kind of Physics of Balance that makes life possible to live, even during the worst of times.

But how do these strangers know who is who?

Some sort of choreographed cosmic collision where those in great need irresistibly attract those who must help them?  Are we sending out distress signals?

These thoughts…this stupid illogical idea…has me spinning around, because it makes no sense.  No sense.

Where do these people come from?

So….

I thought about all this and decided to learn a little more…about Ray.

To lessen the mystery, perhaps.  He’s only one man.  But who is this guy?

Ray is an Assyrian.  His last name is Yacoub.

Assyrians are Christians, either Eastern Orthodox or Catholic, from the general present day areas of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.  They are an indigenous people from the mountains in that area and they are not Arabs. There are an estimated 3.3 million Assyrians worldwide, with about 150,000 in the Chicago metro area.  Their history goes back about 6,750 years, far longer than recorded Jewish history.

So, we are very different, and we are not—at the same time.  Abraham, the legendary biblical Father of the Jewish people, is believed to come from the city Ur, in what was Southern Mesopotamia, or what used to be the Assyrian Empire thousands of years earlier.  So, not really so different from me at all, the more I learn.

They speak a language descended from Neo-Aramaic, the language of Jesus, which was the common language of all peoples in that general area, the same way that English is the one unifying language today for most of the world.  A way to freely communicate.  It is also called Caldean or Syriac.

But whenever I heard it spoken over the decades of my life, it sounded much like Hebrew, but not quite.  Then I learned the Assyrians are a Semitic people…just like my family.  So, that means an “anti-Semite” doesn’t like Assyrians, either.  I wonder if the anti-Semites realize how wide they cast their web of hate?

The name of their ancient capitol in Mesopotamia, which means the land between the rivers (the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), was Ashur, and the Assyrians derived their name from that place.  They also invented the chariot, something they are very proud of.  I know this.  I asked many Assyrians about it, over the years.

And Ray?

His Assyrian name is Rah-yd, which he told me, means “Spaceman.”  He is 46 years old, and his family emigrated here from Kirkuk, which used to be Iraq but is now part of Kurdistan.  So the town may change national ownership, but Ray is not an Iraqi, nor is he a Kurd.

His father, Theodorus, came from Mosel, and his mother, Nazhat, came from Baghdad.  Besides Assyrian, he also speaks English, Arabic, Greek and Armenian.  Ray is no educated linguist and neither was my own grandmother, Celia, from Poland, who spoke five languages.  If you can’t communicate with as many people around you as possible, she told me, you could be dangerously misunderstood and killed.  You learn what you must to survive.

So, with all this detail, I now realize Ray is so much like me, a third-generation American Jew of Eastern European descent, he may actually be me.  I also realize that the chances of our being actually related from thousands of years ago, are probably very high.  That makes so much sense to me.  I kinda like it, too.

We are so different, but we are also likely to be cousins, a thousand times removed, from mighty ancient Empires that are now sand and dust.

So, knowing all this about him now…Who is Ray?

I suppose the bottom line is that he is a kind man who decided to extend credit to me, a stranger, because I was in big trouble and needed him.  None of all that complicated ethnic stuff makes a damn bit of difference, in the big picture.  He is only one man, but he has become important to me.

That is who Ray Yacoub is.

_____________________________________

Note from the Author:

Robert M. Katzman, owner of Fighting Words Publishing Company, with  four different titles currently in print and over 5,000 books sold to date, is seeking more retail outlets for his vivid and non-fiction inspirational books:

Independent bookstores, Jewish and other religious organizations, Chicago historical societies or groups, English teachers who want a  new voice in their class who was a witness to history, book clubs,  high schools or museum gift shops. I will support anyone who supports  me by giving readings in the Chicago Metro area. I have done this over 50 times.

Individuals who wish to order my books can view the four book covers  and see reviews of them at www.FightingWordsPubco.com

More poetry and many (always non-fiction) stories can be found at  www.DifferentSlants.com

There are links to YouTube and podcasts, as well. Or, anyone can  call me directly at (847) 274-1474. Googling my name will also  produce all kinds of unusual results.

Next year, I will publish my fifth book:  A Child’s Story of The Holocaust and sixth book, a collection of my best poetry and essays:  I Seek the Praise of Ordinary Men Individuals who know of independent bookstores that might be  interested in a rough-hewn guy like me, who ran a chain of newsstands  for 20 years in Chicago, please tell them about my books, will you? I  am partial to independent bookstores, having owned two, myself,  until my last one was killed by the giant chains, in 1994. I still miss it.

I’m also looking to find someone who would want to make a play out of  some of my stories in the Chicago area. I think there’s enough honest sex, drugs and rock n’ roll to hold anyone’s interest, as well as a lot of authentic dialogue from ordinary people in extraordinary situations.  I think the plays would work anywhere, frankly, in some intimate theater with talented actors.

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