Of Helplessness and Humanity

We had a few new students in our class at the International Institute this week. It’s the beginning of another six-week session, and it’s summer, so we expect new people to show up and regular students to bring their children. Yadu is back, grinning and grunting next to his grandmother, constantly waving me over to hold his hand, and Indira’s fat son is back, eating his way through the first half of class and playing noisily in the hallway for the second half.

Two women in their early forties (if I had to guess) that I didn’t recognize were sitting in the front row Wednesday. I introduced myself and asked their names. Tika and Pabithra first said they were sisters, then modified this to say that the men they were married to were brothers. Tika wears tiny, wire-rimmed glasses and has a network of pale scars in figure eights around her eye sockets. Pabithra is plump and round-faced and speaks English much better than Tika, with full sentences and effusive facial expressions.

In our second hour, as per my usual, I formed my small group with these two newest students, along with a Thai woman who started last week and our long-time remedial student, Karma. I began with simple, repetitive questions and answers.

“My name is Sharon; what is your name?” One by one, the students answered then asked the question. “Are you married?” was the second question.

I asked Asara, the Thai woman, if she had any children, and we spent a few minutes working on her pronunciation. She has a lot of difficulty discerning the l sound from the r sound. I thought her name was “Asala” until she wrote it down for me.

Asara asked Karma about his children, and after he labored out his answer, Karma asked Pabithra. Pabithra was sitting on the same side of the table as me with her elbows on the table. Karma’s voice is soft and unsure, so when Pabithra looked away toward the rest of the class instead of answering right away, I thought she just hadn’t heard him. I told him to ask again. Pabithra did not turn toward Karma or the table, but moved her head down toward her forearms. I still thought she couldn’t hear the question because Susan was working through an exercise with the rest of the class that was a little loud. I reached over past Tika and touched Pabithra’s arm to get her attention and asked the question myself.

“Do you have children?” I pronounced all the syllables slowly and clearly, hoping to help her understand better.

No reaction. Pabithra’s head remained turned away from all of us and leaned slightly forward over her arms.

I looked at Tika with a questioning look. She flipped her palm upward in the international gesture of I don’t know. I tried again. I leaned forward and touched Pabithra’s arm once more, repeating the question a fourth time.

Then I noticed Pabithra’s torso shaking just a little. She was crying.

It’s easy for me to forget that these students are refugees who have had everything in the world taken from them. I am lulled into a false complacency by their easy smiles and the safe atmosphere of the Institute. The repetition of the questions we work on also has a kind of numbing effect. I know most of the students memorize the sounds of these questions and answers by rote without really understanding the content of the words, and that lulls me, too. It lulls me into thinking the information they recite about coming to the US, marital status, and number of children is nothing more than any other demographic detail compiled for bureaucratic record-keeping.  

Until, that is, one of them understands a question in the context of still-fresh wounds suffered amid unimaginable loss.

Did Pabithra have to abandon her children in Bhutan? Did a child of hers die there? Has she never had children and, now that she is older and far from her homeland, fears she will never have any?

I’ll never know the answers to these questions, nor to how Tika got those awful scars, and in a way I’d rather not know. Last December, I asked a Jordanian student, a petite, elderly woman with beautiful handwriting, when she had come to the US. It was a standard question we worked on every day because getting dates in the correct format was difficult for our class. She hesitated, and when I repeated the question, she, too, began to cry. She had told me earlier that one of her sons still lived in Jordan. I’m sure thinking about when she had left Jordan reminded her that she might never see that son again. I felt guilty for making her cry and helpless for not being able to comfort her. I touched her arm and gave her a tissue.

I love working with my refugee students, helping them make tiny breakthroughs in language comprehension. But I must never lose sight of the fact that they are not as young and innocent as the elementary lessons I teach. And the information we teach them to fill in on forms or recite in class is not just information, but a short-hand version of their lives. Lives that have been ripped apart and tossed onto a garbage heap, then transplanted half-way across the world without regard for their memories, their injuries, their sorrows. Losing sight of these realities diminishes their humanity. Forcing myself to face them makes me feel helpless. And a little guilty. But also grateful and humble and renewed in my commitment to do what I can for them.

I felt helpless and guilty with Pabithra, but I couldn’t sacrifice the entire class to indulge my petty feelings. All I could do was pass her a tissue and move the group to another, more innocuous line of questions. Luckily, a discussion of fruits and vegetables rarely brings anyone to tears.