Desperately Seeking Arshad

Chart 1 ---Thurs Jan 11, 2:48pm
I was getting ready to leave for errands with Ms. E.  I had been teary eyed since 2:20 trying to retrieve Arshad's number from the phone that had gone wacky several months ago..  I had saved the useless device, in hopes of figuring out how to get contacts from it that had not transferred to my new phone through my google account.  The old phone still booted up, but random images from various apps just kept cycling regardless of what prompts I selected. 

I have thought about Arshad several times but yesterday I finally began to do something about it. (Though this was posted Sun Jan 14, I actually wrote the essay Fri morn Jan 12.) 

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I met him in Walmart a little over a year ago.  He came up to me while I was looking at the tablets, pointed to one and said "I pad?" 

"Umm, no.  Not exactly.  Almost."  I pointed to the label under it and read "Samsung.  I think Android tablet, but i'm not sure."  The blind asking the blind.

"How much?"  he asked.

I wondered if he thought I worked there, but my arms were full, with a new dish drainer and a box of golf balls.  I pointed again to the label and read the price out loud.

He looked like he might be from India, but his English was super limited.  The only Indians I know speak English better than I do.  He kept asking questions and I seriously wondered if there was a hidden camera somewhere.  I wondered what I would say when the farce was finished and the pranksters revealed themselves.  I wondered why this man was determined to talk with me about about Android tablets and I pads.  I looked around for an employee to help him, but suspected I was the one he wanted to talk to.

So we talked about ipads and Android tablets and I asked him where he was from.  "Refugio," he seemed to be saying.  Something about United Nations and Afghanistan. 

"You are a refugee from Afghanistan?"

"Yes!"  He was delighted.  He had made himself understood.  I asked him where he lived.  He wanted to show me on his phone.  He talked into it, "Peterson," he said, in his thick accent.  A pizza place came up.

I laughed.  Now I was delighted.  I never play with voice control on phones and this was my first time seeing how fun the mistranslations could be.  But I was also impatient.  I took out my phone and asked him to spell the street name.  When it came up on the map I said, "We are neighbors!"  and showed him how close our streets are.

Already we were friends.  But this had been a difficult 15 minutes.  Every sentence was an agonizing puzzle.  Each word took several tries before I could grasp what he was saying.   I said I needed to go over to the grocery section and get cheese.  We walked together, new friends in the Super Walmart.

"Afghanistan," I said, "which language do you speak?"  And typing away now on my little phone the tears are coming back.

"Urdu." 

You, the reader cannot hear the beauty of the way he pronounced that word.  "Urdu."

I think the sound was familiar to me from the hindibasha.com app.  My phone won't do flash, so I can't be sure.  It seems like one of the letters I used to click on for pronunciation uses the word urdu for an example.  As soon as I heard him say it I was transported to my explorations of Sanskrit.

I asked him if he knew the yoga sutras and began reciting, "Atta yoga nushasanam.  Yogas chitta vrti nirodha.  Tada drashtu svarupe avastanam..."  He was delighted.  He threw his head back, his ecstatic gaze directed toward the rows of fluorescent lights above and brought his hands together, "You have been to India?!"

"No!  The internet!" 

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We exchanged names, jobs and ages.  I learned he is a couple years younger and washes windows.  I said I was old and tired and he insisted 58 is young and I should exercise.  He told me he went to a gym.  He wanted to wash my windows and those of my customers. He asked if I like beer.