Worry lines

By Ivan Morgan

When I shop, I refuse to use a robot. When I buy things, I prefer to deal with human beings, not a machine that makes corporations richer. If I can’t get a living, breathing human cashier, I leave without buying anything. I am weird like that. Also, I try to make it my business to get to know the folks working the cash.
One of the people who checks out my groceries is a sophisticated young woman who I have learned is a foreign student doing a post graduate degree at MUN. Because she is a foreign student, she currently cannot work in her chosen profession, and has to make do for now as a cashier.
I tell her not to worry; I was a young student once and had to do what I had to do to get by. I tell her she is young, obviously smart, with a serious degree, and working a cash register for a bit isn’t going to hurt her. She smiles.
Last week I was getting some supplies. When it was my turn in line, I noticed she was uncharacteristically pale, not her cheery self. I asked her how she was.
“Not great,” she whispered.
I was taken aback. I asked her if everything was Okay. She nodded yes when it was clear everything was not.
I pressed her.
Looking into my face, she whispered, “My parents are in Tehran.”
Fighting tears, she whispered how worried she was.
Like many of us, I have strong opinions about the events involving Iran, Israel, the Palestinians, Gaza, and more recently the United States. That is not the point of this column.
Lots of people have strong opinions on this issue. Frankly, I don’t think it matters where you are on this. All my opinions evaporated when I looked into the frightened eyes of this scared young woman.
The point? War destroys people, it destroys families.
The look of fear in her face reminds me that these conflicts involve people. It reminds me that these conflicts destroy people’s lives. It reminds me that no one is safe from this misery – anywhere. Not even in a St. John’s supermarket on a Thursday evening.
Most of my generation know a little about war. I was raised by people who went through the Second World War, and were sure to teach me about the pain, the sacrifice and the sorrow. The generations after us not so much. Today the majority of us thankfully have no experience of war; we go about our lives in this peaceful place.
It’s important to remember, however, there are many places in the world where people will kill others who don’t agree with them. It’s important to remember there are people so caught up in ideas that the safety and well being of their own citizens is of little concern to them. There are people happy to put innocent neighbours in harm’s way to further their own beliefs and agenda. Hate replacing humanity.
Like most of us I go about my life, occasionally frowning over a headline or footage of events “over there.” It’s a very different thing when it’s put in front of you, in the form of a bright young person here in Canada looking for a better life, better education and more freedom.
This isn’t a matter of picking sides, of self-righteously pronouncing who is good and who is bad. This is a matter of simple human decency, of concern for a young person deeply worried about the safety of her parents.
The stress and worry on this hard-working young woman’s face made me think of a piece of Newfoundland literature, a poem by E. J. Pratt, a Newfoundland poet of yesteryear. The conflict in the Middle East has been decades, if not centuries, in the making. Pratt was writing about a different type of tragedy, but the gist is the same.
It took the sea a thousand years,
A thousand years to trace
The granite features of this cliff,
In crag and scarp and base.
It took the sea an hour one night,
An hour of storm to place
The sculpture of these granite seams
Upon a woman’s face.

Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com