Sometime near the end of my hospital stay, I was taken back to the eye clinic for new scans to determine how my eye was clearing up. With optic neuritis, the swelling and fluid on the nerve will go down before vision returns, so though I'd had a very small increase in visibility, the doctor wanted to see just how effective the steroids were in treating the cause (very effective, it turns out). Transport came up to my room and fetched me, because the clinic is a long way across from the main hospital, and set me up with a wheelchair and a blanket and off we went. When we got there there was a little confusion about why I was there and who had sent me because the orders hadn't come through yet, so they put me in the waiting room while they straightened things out.
As they wheeled me in, I noticed a young, beautiful Emirati girl sitting in there behind big sunglasses. She had on a gorgeously embellished but simple abaya and shellah, and I was pretty sure her shoes were designer. She was impeccably dressed. I smiled at her and she smiled back, and then they parked my chair across from where she was sitting and left us alone. Now, I was an absolute mess after being in the hospital for a week plus, and my bad eye was frustrating me, so I kinda sat with my head in my hand to cover it, wrapped in my hospital blanket because the clinic was freezing. I wished I'd brought my phone or my tablet with me for something to do. I'm not usually one to just openly talk to some person unless they address me first, and I didn't know if the girl wanted to be left alone because it was a doctor's waiting office and you just never really know. It's kind of an awkward place to chat people up.
CNN was on the television in the waiting room, and they began running some ISIS related story. I cringed internally and half paid attention to the TV (watching TV at that point was still an exercise in frustration) and what they were saying when I heard a very quiet "This is so sad, isn't it?"
Surprised, I looked up to face the girl and realized she was talking to me. When I agreed that it was, in fact, incredibly sad, she suddenly opened up and bared her soul. "It's so sad. It has to be stopped. What they are doing, it is not right." She continued, talking about how ISIS was presenting a terrible representation of Islam to the rest of the world, and then she said, "And it affects how they see us as people. I hope they do not see all of us like that, we are not all murders, we are peaceful people."
I thought about all of the backlash and ugliness in the US against Muslims recently (this was even before the San Bernandino shooting), and I nearly wept right there in the waiting room. It broke my heart.
All I could do was assure her that there were people out there who did not see all Muslims as bad people, that there were people that understood, and that I was one of them - that I understood that Islam is a peaceful religion practiced every day by millions of people, that I have lived beside them for a year and a half and knew that they were just normal everyday people with kind and giving hearts who were trying to live their lives like everyone else - only in a manner different from ours, and with a different name for God.
The conversation switched at that point, and she introduced herself after I told her I liked her shoes (Jimmy Choos, of course). She told me all about how she'd had a nasty infection in her eye and how it had affected her sight, and I told her about losing mine. She talked about how something like that really changes your perspective on life and makes you think. She told me about her family, and how she has a little brother who she wasn't able to hold and play with because she was afraid of transferring her virus. I told her how I came to be in the hospital, and about being diagnosed with MS.
We talked for several minutes, chatting about anything and everything (she talked about Friends - she liked my name because Monica was her favorite character) before the imaging tech came to fetch me, and then we wished each other luck as we said goodbye. She was gone when I was done with my scans, and I didn't see her again.
But I held a silent, secret, unspoken promise to her close to my heart as I was wheeled back to my room in the main hospital. I would tell people about her wish and the talk we'd had. I would share my own wonderful experiences living among a Muslim population, a peaceful population, in a place where I have felt more safe at times than I have living in the US. I would work to change hearts and minds who view all Muslims as terrorists, murders, rapists, who make value judgments against an entire people because of the actions of a few radical extremists. I would no longer remain silent, as I have, hoping not to incite arguments, when they were attacked. I would become their defender.
I implore anyone who reads this to sit and think, really think, about the way you view the world and its people. All it takes is one small moment to change someone's mind, one kind person. Just as all it takes to ruin something is one awful person, one bad experience. Yet we can't simply judge an entire people on the actions of a few. It's not fair to the quiet, peaceful people who are just trying to live their lives day to day like you and I. I know the counterarguments. I know it happens on both sides. This is just as much a plea to them as it is to you, that they would reach out and give a Westerner a chance just like this girl did for me. Maybe if we all were a little humbled and sat down to talk, things would get better. We would see we're not so different after all.
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