By Robert R. Schwarz
"God can do so much with so little" …Fr. Joseph
Carolin, former chaplain at South Mountain
Restoration Center, Pennsylvania
In a culture that teaches that freedom means
self-assertive and radical autonomy from any
external authority, this [lack of self-assertion]
may seen to be weakness, even wimpishness …
George Weigel, noted Catholic author
Though his wife had dressed her 38-year-old husband with an extra sweater and padded his cap with a woolen scarf, Aji shivered in the early January morning as he shoveled snow from the Burger King sidewalks. This is not Ahvaz, he thought repeatedly. Today the temperature in his Iranian city was in the 40's. Moments later, he heard the manager shout, "Aji, kitchen time!" Aji took a moment to raise his arms in prayer to the God of Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac—then briskly walked inside.
He had been at the same Burger King three years with work that never varied: cleaning tables, sweeping, and—least agreeable—changing the cooking oil. He had received only one minimum pay raise, and that was followed by a cutback from his 30 weekly work hours to l5. But Aji never expressed discontent. "I like to work," he would tell you. "No prejudice here. I stay if what God wants."
He had three intense wishes: that his wife Fadmi recover from her respiratory ailment so she could shed the oxygen tank she carted at her side and be employable again as a seamstress; that the Indiana summers would last months longer; and, his most ardent wish, that he could speak English so as to engage the American culture, which was still painfully alien to him. He had not been educated in Iran beyond the sixth grade.
He had wanted something else, which now seemed impossible: to make and sell jewelry, the trade of his father who died ten years ago. When Aji was 20 and living in Ahvaz, a friend helped him set up a jewelry stand in the market place, but it tanked after someone cheated him out of all his wares. The incident still upsets Fadmi. "It happens," she says in a Persian-thickened accent, "because my husband trusts everybody."
Monotonous as his kitchen work had become through the years, Aji never relaxed his grip on it, never was late nor ducked out even five minutes early. To bear this grind, his thoughts sometimes drifted off to his childhood in Ahvaz. It is a city of 1,338,000 people, about a 22-hour drive from Tehran. There, Aji lived in a simple four-room house with his parents, three brothers, and three sisters. His parents were Baptists and Aji was baptized in a local Baptist church, which he attended regularly despite anti-Christian sentiments throughout Iran. Neighbors disliked the family and would shout, Fadmi exclaims, "Go away Baptist man! You no good! You can't touch my food! You can't touch my door! "(Fadmi identifies the Iranian church of hers and her husband as "John the Baptist Church." According to the internet's Wikipedia, there are 600 Christian churches today in Iran. The Armenian Apostolic Church of Iran has between 110,000 and 250,000 members; 11,000 Iranians belong to the Assyrian Church of the East of Iran, and the Chaldean Catholic Church of Iran cites 7,000 adherents. Other denominations include Presbyterian , Anglican, Pentecostal, and Assembly of God. Many of the Christians are ethnic Armenians, according to a dated U.S. State Department report. )
Aji played soccer in school up to the sixth grade, then had to drop out because his family had only enough money for rent and food. "Aji have to work because in my country the woman can't work, only stay home take care of kids," Fadmi says.
***
After several visits with Aji and Fadmi, she asked me to give formal English lessons to Aji in their Gary, Indiana apartment. She telephoned me one morning. "I need you help me," she said. "Aji take citizenship test and no pass. His English not good. You teach him?"
Recalling how I had once pleaded with Aji never to quit those English-as-a-second-language classes at that junior college—since then he had run out of money and time—nor to stop studying those language primers I gave him—he ran out of persistence too—and to please speak English at home as often as possible—he preferred the inadequate method of listening to CDs—I agreed to be his teacher. (At this writing, Aji and I were still preparing for his re-testing on those 100 citizenship questions about American history and government. Failure this time would likely cost him a year's wait for the next test, along with another $700 registration fee.)
Both man and wife have black hair; she is fortyish, has brown eyes, is pleasantly plump, and wears glasses. She laughs easily. Aji, lean and muscular and an inch or two under six feet, has green eyes.
At our first lesson, Fadmi said we must first eat her lunch of turkey, herb-flavored pasta, and lots of pita bread. It is a clean, two-room apartment with a kitchenette and well-worn, unmatched furniture in various shades of brown and red. A vintage television set with an ethnic channel menu is blaring out a soap opera in either Farsi or Arabic (Fadmi and Aji speak both languages, using Arabic when shopping). Fadmi’s oxygen tank has been set in a corner.
Fadmi does most of the talking, translating for her husband who, after three years in this country, still can't grasp more than a few English phrases. I am trying to break him of the habit of prefacing nearly every sentence he speaks with "This is—". It is a senseless utterance which only confuses the listener.
We pray, we eat, and then talk about Public Aid—she is on her third round of unemployment and willing to take on any kind of work. Their only friends seem to be an uncle and cousin of Fadmi who live nearby. Fadmi's hospital bills for the last two years—she now can do nothing but, regretfully, ignore the dunning letters —have accumulated to thousands of dollars.
The topic turns to religion, and, smiling, I mention to Fadmi that her husband really prays a lot. (I show her a photograph of I took of Aji standing on a boulder on the shore of Lake Michigan, his arms outstretched to the sky in supplication to God. He had just accompanied me on a visit to my brother, a hospitalized disabled veteran.) "He like to pray a lot," Fadmi agreed, smiling at her inability to understand her husband's behavior. "Sometime you see him pray at midnight one hour. Sometime I think my husband crazy."
The couple used to attend church services at a distant Christian Arabic church on Saturday afternoons, but their regular attendance became unmanageable because of Aji’s work schedule and Fadmi’s illness.
After the English lesson, we sat and talked about how Aji and Fadmi met. A few years after Fadmi had immigrated to America, a friend wrote her to say she knew of single man in her church who is "a good guy and ready to go to America." Fadmi, obviously leaving out some details, recalled how she went to Tehran to meet this man Aji who, upon seeing her, exclaimed: "Oh, my God, you're beautiful ! " That seemed to tie the knot, Fadmi modestly indicated.
Fadmi rose to pour some more tea. She was obviously enjoying her raconteur role. "I told him I'm older that you. I told him maybe living in the United States be hard for you. Then his brother says you break his heart if you no marry him. He thinks about you a lot of time. I don't want to break his heart. I say okay, I help you come United States and if you good man we live together.
"I live with him three months Iran and then I marry him in his church. Big wedding, 300 people. I see his family and they are poor. So, you see I do good job for God and for him, " she proudly added.
Hearing that it would be easier to apply for emigration papers in Austria rather than in Iran, where the government was becoming more oppressive, the couple honeymooned in Vienna, where a Catholic friend of Fadmi gave Aji money and a rent-free room for five months. Meanwhile, his bride returned to Indiana and waited for Aji to join her when he had his visa. When they were reunited, a year passed before he had a job—largely because of his language problem.
Fadmi paused and then suddenly appeared sad. "Now he's good man but I'm no good because all the time I be sick."
We talked about why both of them chose America for a new home, knowing there would be hurdles to clear for gainful employment and also the prolonged discomfort of being assimilated into the American culture. Aji retorted that there was the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 in which neither side could claim victory after an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 people were killed and more that 80,000 prisoners taken. Ahvaz was close to the front lines and, reportedly, suffered badly. "I hear bombs drop every day in my town," he said. He related how one of them hit a shopping center in which his 28-year-old brother was shopping and, though his brother was not seriously wounded, everyone around him was killed. His brother, now 50, went insane and today is sheltered by his mother. Government pressure to join the army— young as he was at the time— also motivated Aji to emigrate. "In army, I no make money for family," Aji managed to explain.
"Government do not care about needs of family," Fadmi added. A moment later she became emotional while mentioning freedom of speech and religious persecution. "Everybody have to say good things about government. Afraid to say anything bad."
***
Nowadays, Aji telephones his mother nearly every week; it costs $5. His mother, ignorant of her son's financial straits, wants to know why he can't help her obtain a visa so she can come live with her son and daughter-in-law. "You forgot me, "the mother complains. "I have many problems here. "(Recently, Aji was able to save $200, which he gave to an Iran-bound friend to give to his mother). When he becomes a citizen and no longer fears any reprisal from the Iranian government for his religion or change of citizenship, Aji wants to travel to Iran and bring his mother into his home. And Fadmi wants to adopt the new-born child of her now divorced sister, but must wait for certain Iranian restrictions to lift.
After our first English lesson that day, Aji walked me out to the parking lot. It was raining hard. We hugged and he said he would pray for my brother with last stage emphysema. I dashed to my car and, driving away, waved back at Aji. Sure enough, he arms were high in the air. I wanted to believe—and did—that even if none of Aji's desires were realized, God would see to it that something much better came about for him and Fadmi.
Philip
If Philip ever talked to you on the internet’s Skype phone and you saw him only from the shoulders up, you could easily imagine him as a high-paid announcer or a CEO of public relations. His voice has a mellow timbre that resonates self-control and articulates perfect diction without strain; his face would not be necessarily memorable but you would risk an opinion that the man behind it was kind and trustworthy.
But Philip, a very private and meek man, would rather face the occasional hoard of grasping customers at his department store station than the demands of an intimate relationship. Other than a casual desire to be a few inches taller than his five-feet-five inches, his ambitions, if any, are small. He prefers to live honorably in a world he has purposely made small.
He is today 76, still a bachelor, and except for the 20 years of daily companionship he gave his widowed mother (now deceased), he has lived alone in a studio apartment in Arlington Heights, Illinois. He has, according to his sister (whom I knew before her death); never dated except for a girl he took to his high school prom. As best I know, Philip had no psychological hang-ups, nor does he seem to have any passions, disordered or otherwise. He has, without much fuss, chosen a simple life—threatened only when a change in his job description stresses his capabilities. Though he has a low discomfort threshold for crowds, he enjoys nothing more than facing a customer behind his store counter; it brings out his innate salesmanship skills and emboldens him to openly please a fellow human being.
His shyness—if this is the fairest word—was evident the day he and I were to register as high school freshmen. Philip had just moved up from Joplin, Missouri with his widowed mother to consider returning to the Chicago area where Philip had been raised. "I took one look at all those kids rushing up and down the school corridors, making all that noise and I said "No, sir, not here," he told me decades later. Mother and son returned to Joplin for another four years.
It was the same with religion: Though he was, by my observation, a moral man in all respects and would take his turn at prayer whenever we were nowadays meeting for coffee, Philip could not emotionally tolerate being in any church. "I just can't pray with other people," he admitted with regret in a moment of rare transparency.
Philip and I had been boyhood friends, by virtue of our families doing things together on holidays. When a teenager, Philip's father died of a rare blood ailment while the family was vacationing out East. For years the tragedy traumatized Philip and, I suppose, caused him for all time to be exceptionally prudent about anything or anyone that could possibly diminish his health or bank account. He could be excessively frugal. Another incident, I'm sure, forever caused Philip to question—as many of us do—God's reason for allowing "bad things to happen to good people." He was on an Army basic training maneuver at Fort Ord, California when three men marching behind him at a short distance were suddenly electrocuted by a lightning bolt. Philip never forgot that.
I didn't see Philip between l958 and until sometime in the 90's. I had held him in mind as a somewhat wimpish man, a rash judgment. During our ensuing, often weekly coffee meetings, I made many mental notes: His 45years as a furniture salesman at a large department store had earned him a reputation of unquestionable honesty and company loyalty. Yet, sadly, the company, with its petty, often draconian rules did its best to discourage these values for its more than 500 employees. Their turnover was dizzying and, in Philip's eyes, shameful. Nevertheless, Philip remained steadfast to his code of conduct. During the course of Philip's spotless career with the company, his boss—he's had several—and his 14 coworkers in the furniture department have virtually become his flesh and blood family—for better or worse.
***
I well knew his typical day: When on the early shift, Philip is up at 5 a.m. He puts on one of his two suits, a white shirt and one of his four neckties, each past Christmas presents from a niece and his sister in Minnesota. His breakfast seldom varies from a muffin—usually blueberry—and a cup of decaffeinated instant coffee.
Before leaving for work, he might give a brief thought to his chief concerns: the health of his octogenarian sister, the cost of a brake job his l4-year-old Chevy and, most troublesome, the kind of person his new boss will be when she or she arrives in a month. It perturbs Philip not to know if he'll be up to the challenge of once more having to adjust to a possible quirk in his new boss’ management style; it might require more than a 76-year-old man possesses.
Philip descends two flights of stairs, purposely slower than two years ago when he had his heart attack. He drives his car out of the parking lot across the street and, in ten minutes, arrives at work. Because his car once didn't start and he had to take a taxi to work, he always arrives at the shopping center 90 minutes early.
It is a busy store, closing only on Christmas Day. Top management has been continually cutting back hours for full-time employees or firing them upon the slightest infraction of company rules; the full-timers are replaced with part-time employees who, of course, work without medical benefits and whose hours change mercurially from week to week. Even veterans like Philip have had their hours cut in half. Ever since he wisely opted for a small pension pay-out before all company pensions were eliminated, Philip's salary has been barely adequate for rent and food. He talks about moving to a low- rent apartment in another suburb but procrastinates because of his short drive to work and because he has, for various reasons known only to himself, staked his life territory in Arlington Heights.
At work now, Philip will spend most of the day stocking shelves and only a hour or two waiting on customers and ringing up a cash register. A year ago, a new manager lost patience with Philip for not meeting a daily quota of company credit card applications—and Philip was downgraded. "I just couldn't pressure people to sign up for a credit car when I sensed they really didn't want it," Philip told me. The downgrade stung Philip, but he did not protest and gave as much zeal to unwrapping and carting sofas and armchairs as he did to waiting on customers. The physical work was taking its toll on Philip, whom I lately observed was walking slower as we entered our coffee places.
After work, Philip heads to his favorite shopping center café for dinner; he has an aversion to cooking his own meals—something to do with a memory of army chow and KP duty, I surmise. He wants to order pasta, his favorite, but heeds his doctor's advice. Then its home to his apartment—which I think no one has ever seen, except his sister when she helped him move in and showed him how the hideaway bed worked. He will sometimes enter by the building’s backdoor to avoid encountering a tenant who, for no apparent reason, hurls insults whenever their paths cross: "Come on, Shorty, look alive!"
Once home, Philip does not leave his apartment until morning. Before going to bed, he'll watch a Public Television documentary or a public library-borrowed movie from the 40’s. On any of his two day's off, Phillip might spend a few hours reading the Wall Street Journal at the library or taking the train (once a month) to the Loop and there have a corn beef-on-rye sandwich at a German restaurant, one of the few luxuries he allows himself. Twice, maybe three times a year he will have lunch to keep a casual friendship going with an aging tailor. Philip's wardrobe for these off days consists of no more than two plaid shirts (never ironed) and one pair of aged, slightly baggy pants with cuffs rolled up perhaps three inches.
***
Philip's sister died one April day (a year and a half ago at this writing), and Philip made a two-day trip to Minnesota for the services. I telephoned him the day of his return: "Let's meet at Caribou for a change," I offered, knowing that this coffee place, with its fireplace and knotty pine walls, had sentimental value for Philip; it reminded him of the North Woods resort where Philip and family would often vacation and to fish one of the pristine lakes there. Central in this memory which remained dear to Philip was that of the outgoing, nature-wise resort owner whose blood was half Chippewa.
We took a back table; as usual, Philip had insisted that I choose where we sit. It was his turn to pray at coffee, and he did. His prayer was brief, sincerely expressing gratitude for life itself and asking blessings for my wife. He ended with: "We pray in His name." But I wondered why he had made no reference to his sister, whose death I knew had deeply wounded him. ("I wasn't even warned, !" he had told me tearfully on the telephone upon returning from the hospital.)
Our conversation eventually turned to old movies, then to how prices of new cars had soared since the 50's, and finally to the very rich and famous people and how they unwisely or wisely spend their money—and how they died. It prompted Philip to relate the time he found $l4, 000 at work. It was in a pouch on the floor, dropped accidentally only seconds ago by a cashier rushing to the security office. "It was anyone's who wanted it," Philip said, still irritated at the irresponsible cashier. "No one was in sight at the time and the cashier would never recall where she had dropped it. When I turned it to security, they grabbed it from me and gave me a queer look. I think they might have said 'thank you.' "Philip frowned.
Philip always has a story about the boldness of shoplifters .This time it was about a thin woman who, before she was caught, had walked out of a dressing room wearing two layers of stolen dresses concealed under her own dress; and there were "customers" who switched their own shoes with those in a shoe box. This too Philip found disgusting. When the topic of charity came up, it was a rare time I saw Philip get visibly angry. "I don't understand it," he said, laying aside a large chocolate cookie. "When we give change back to a customer and suggest they consider dropping just a LITTLE of it into this box here to help our veterans, they make the lamest excuses." Philip rattled off the excuses.
I kept waiting for him to talk about the loss of his sister or to share something about his new boss, due to arrive any day. Then, as the end of our usual hour of conversation neared, Philip grew pensive while telling me about an old "friendless" friend of his with whom Philip would occasionally have lunch. He looked away and, without any interruption, said: "He was short like me and weighed 250 pounds and had a 50-inch waist and he could never hold a job—like when he was a barber and got fired because he argued with the customers—and he finally got a stroke in his fifties and spent two and a half years in a nursing home—I used to visit him—and then died because he was too heavy for any therapy." Philip leaned back, now relaxed.
We drank our coffee in silence for awhile. I became impatient with his stoicism and wanted him to tell me what life was like inside Philip. So I probed: "Doesn't anything ever upset you, Philip? "I mean, do you ever think about heaven or hell?"
He sensed the edge to my voice and, sure enough, it annoyed him. In a self-confessing tone also accusatory of my invading his privacy without his permission, he shot back: "Look, I don't know much about where I'm going when I die. I'm just concerned about all the tragedy that's now in the world. "He said this with such a heavy heart that I immediately felt ashamed for being so insensitive to where my good friend was on his life's journey. What he struggled with spiritually and otherwise was indeed private property and every bit as legitimate as anyone else's life journey.
Again he bared himself: "I wonder why God allows good people to suffer."
He was now thinking about his sister. Several Biblical verses immediately came to mind such as "all things work to the good for those who love God." But for Philip in this moment, I settled for just being as plainly honest as I could. "I don't know. I do believe that His ways are not our ways and that we are to trust in His love for us, no matter how difficult that is."
I don't know if that comforted Philip. But a few days later, my wife and I had Philip over for dinner, and when he came in our door, he looked totally refreshed as only a night or two of deep, good sleep can do for a man. Our conversation remained refreshing and light all evening. When my wife asked him how his new boss was treating him, I nudged her knee under the table for her to stay off that topic.
Flashing a smile that lingered at least ten minutes, he quickly replied: "Well, her name is Doris and she's about maybe 28. A little assertive and doesn’t know how to say to her employees 'Would you mind doing this?' or 'Why don't you… ?' But then she's under a lot of pressure to turn things around in our department."
I badly wanted to hear something far more positive from Philip. Over dessert he said it, reliving what had obviously been a joyful moment of relief at work.
"Listen to this now, you two. I come to work early one morning, set things up in the stock room before I clock in. I didn't know there had been a mistake in the shift schedule and that I wasn't supposed to work at all that day. My new boss comes in, sees me, says she's really sorry for the mix-up and gives me a big hug. Can you imagine? Then she says, 'We're going make it up to you with five extra hours of work for you next week. ' "
I clapped. My wife, happy, bit her lip.
"I'm not finished, " Philip said. "You know that brake job I've been putting off? Two hundred bucks less than I thought!"
We escorted Philip to the front porch. I watched him walk into the night towards his parked car. "He's wearing that same shirt," I murmured to my wife. "Be quiet, "she replied.
Philip's walk was slower than ever and his back now slightly hunched and his arms sort of dangling rather than swinging at his side. Not a man of passion or ambition or even cleverness was he, I thought. Joyous, successful? How ever do his kind mange to survive? I envied Philip.
THE END
© 2011 Robert R. Schwarz
By Robert R. Schwarz
At the end of our interview, Sr. Christine was asked what final meaning she sees in her life. Her words came easy, without hesitation: "I learned that in the worst part of my life God was there with me and has never left me. Even in the car that night—God was with me . God doesn't make things like that happen, but sometimes God allows things like that to happen –because the ultimate gifts that come from things like that are worth it. I would today not change anything in my life, including the bad things."
