Re + ligare

(Lat. "to bind," "to tie up")

A slight delay at the YMCA reception counter. As I'm waiting to show my card, from the corner of my left eye I register someone's physical presence at my side, a little too close. At first I ignore it -- there are always people pushing and crowding at reception desks; but then it becomes clear in that elusive body-informed way that this person is looking at me, on the brink of addressing me. So I turn, and see a tall man in his forties with sharply chiseled features and a slightly hooked eagle-nose smiling at me shyly. He doesn't look me in the eyes and takes a few seconds of embarrassed hesitation before he says in half-whisper, the delicate smile -- strangely nestled in his rough-edged face -- never fading, "What country are you from?"
I follow his downward gaze and see that he's looking at the card I'm holding in my hand, with my name printed on it. "Oh," I say, "I'm Serbian."
"Yes, I saw your name there," he adds, nodding in confirmation of his own guess, that little smile still around his lips.
"What country are you from?" I ask, echoing his smile and trying to analyze his accent mentally. "Show," I point towards his YMCA card, making sure my voice sounds playful. He hesitates a couple of instants, then flashes the card at me but so briefly that I don't manage to see all the letters. His first name begins with an A, his last with an L -- that's all I could make out. I shrug my shoulders and look up questioningly.
"I'm Albanian," he explains in half-whisper, with a tone of someone caught in a misdeed.
"Ah, ok," I smile more broadly, and for a moment I don't know if it's solidarity or awkwardness that snaps tight between us. Just then our cards are checked and we go our separate ways.

* * * * * * * * * *

An hour and a half later, I bump into him, tall and solitary, on the metro platform. In order to round off our abrupt parting a while ago, I walk up to him and wish him a good day, intending to pass by. But he wants to talk, and now he's a little less hesitant so as the train docks in and we get on, he tells me he doesn't go to the Y as much now because of this -- he lifts his right arm in evidence, and I can see that his hand is in plaster, sticking out from the jacket sleeve, wrapped into a sheet of gray plastic. This protects the plaster from the rain; 2 more weeks and he'll take it off. I ask him what happened, he says he slipped and fell. We start the usual immigrant chit-chat (how long have you been here? where were you before? what do you do?), and so I find out he was in New York before Montreal, where he worked as a waiter and liked it there but couldn't stay because of his visa; now he is a shipping clerk, although he would really like to be a bus driver but his French is not good enough. In Albania, he studied for a lawyer, but that's worth nothing here. As he speaks, he keeps his plastered hand hidden beneath a backpack he is holding in his lap.

Then the ball is in his court. He asks me all the questions in the ad-hoc immigrant chit-chat protocol, and I answer them. "I'm assimilated," I conclude triumphantly, although I'm not quite sure that I am, or that, if I am, I like it. I ask him if he ever goes back; his "no" is quick and curt. His eyes shifting around, he adds he hasn't gone once in the last 11 years. (I keep at a safe distance from asking why he left -- there is a clichéd alarm inside my head ringing "blood vengeance!"). He has two brothers and a sister; he doesn't mention parents. The darkness of his black eyes and thick eyebrows hanging over them is singeing the metro floor, despite the faint traces of that built-in smile. Barefoot, I walk the fine line between sympathetic interest and impolite probing for a few more minutes, then it's my stop. I make small pre-disembarking motions, he looks like he's about to say something (or is it my imagination?) but he doesn't. I offer him my left hand, and he gives me a firm, long handshake. His eyes are not shifting now. "Good luck," I say; he wishes me the same, I'm off, and the door closes.

Later, I read the passage in War and Peace where Pierre and Davout exchange a glance which saves Pierre from the execution. A glance, a handshake, a look upwards just in time to see an inverted V of geese coming back after the winter. A momentary re-connection.