Strangers on a Train

It was my first time in Africa. It was also my first time in a mostly Muslim country.

The combination of 100-degree temperatures and full-coverage was a very new, very dehydrating sensation for me. As we awaited our six-hour transit, my companions pulled out two notebooks. We were practicing Arabic and French, two of the most widely used languages in Morocco.

It wasn’t going well.

Quietly reciting a few Google-translated phrases, I noticed that there were very few solo travelers. None, in fact.

How odd, I thought. No one travels alone here?

Just then, a woman boarded, alone.

There were plenty of available seats tables, but her eyes locked on the one at our table. The woman stowed her bag and casually dropped into the seat facing mine with the kind of blasé I admired.

Seeing the handwritten phrases in the notebooks, she made a gesture that indicated she was interested in what was on the paper. Nervous sweat dripped from my palms. Nonetheless, I turned the notebook toward her.

She smiled in excitement.

Pulling out her own pen, our new friend, Aisha, started writing notes in our books, speaking aloud in Arabic and French, gesturing for us to recite after her.

My pronunciation strengthened with each drip of sweat that fell from my nose and onto the spiral notebook, and so did my comfort on this train, in this country. I allowed my gaze to linger, in solidarity, on the other pods of travelers.

Where there was a group of four chatty males, two were now asleep, one sat silently and one had apparently already detrained.

Another pod of previously chatty travelers had also shrunk, by two.

Looking around this time, I thought, maybe everyone wasn’t traveling together. Maybe they were all ‘Aishas’ who chose to sit together instead of alone.

Coming out of this epiphany, I felt the beads of sweat gather on my brow as I was caught smiling at a nearby baby traveling with two women. The mother’s eyes found mine before I could look away.

Without saying a word, she lifted her baby and placed him onto a stranger’s lap. My lap. She smiled too.

Thinking of my train rides back home in the States, most people purposefully sat alone. Or, when the constraints of rush hour eliminated the one-seat buffer, they sat hunched over a phone with music on to eliminate any invitation for interaction.

I spoke English and my new broken Arabic/French to the baby, bouncing him on my lap and laughing as he did.

He was well on his way to being an Aisha someday.

Just like me.