Busy-ness at Busboys

Lunchtime at a cafe in suburban America – just barely outside DC-city limits.

A group of office colleagues are seated to my right, wearing variations of a white collared shirts – white with pale green stripes, white with barely-there lavender stripes – discussing politics in the workspace. On the left are two African-American elderly women, classically dressed, pearls in the earrings of one. They lean across the table, share their meals and exchanging comments in French, eating with their forks in their left hand, and knives in their right. An Asian man sits diagonally across from me, his back to the window, his hat facing the window. He’s absorbed with what is on his black Apple’s screen, his fingers occasionally moving over his keyboard.

The cafe is bustling, with light instrumental music broadcast over the speakers – the oudh? – adding to the noise. Rain – once heavy – has now almost entirely stopped, leaving not a clearing of skies, but an overcast presence of clouds. The cafe, initially a refuge away from the heavy rain, is now thinning as customers wrap up to return to work.

It is just a typical day in a typical week in typical suburbia.

***

My mind flits to  ’Say You’re One of Them,’ a compilation of stories as told through the eyes of children. The first few pages of the one told through the eyes of a child living in Shanty-town, Kenya, led to a visceral reaction: I felt nauseous this morning reading about his simple life, begging to make ends meet while his sister prostitutes herself at the age of thirteen. Even as I remind myself that the Nigerian author Uwem Akpan has put together a work of fiction, images cross my mind of children I have seen on the streets in various countries, in various cities, who I have vaguely processed but then ignored. Children for whom this life is reality.

From the corner of my eye, as I type this, the waiter takes away a plate of food belonging to the lady with the pearl earrings. The plate hovers half-a-foot away from me  - the sprouts, the chips, half a burger, the plate, literally, half-full, would be luxury to the children in the novel.

The rain droplets draping the wire chairs on the patio outside symbolize freshness, a beginning of new life – but for others, in other parts of the world, rain symbolizes disaster and hardship.