The Accidental Linguist

There is a coffee scene here in town, a little place with coffee merchandise on the first floor, and an upstairs loft with couches and a microphone.  On Monday nights they have open mic for musicians.  Today I was there with a friend; we saw mohawk girl, who had been sitting and glaring in the corner, until she rose to the tall stool with her guitar and sang two or three beautiful pieces.  We saw two guys who looked like soldiers, musical twins wearing Abercrombie, play a smooth set with harmonious lyrics.  There were plenty of bongo drums always ready to keep the beat.

When we first went up to the loft, and stood on the stairs, there was a man who left the microphone and paced the floor, as he told a story, maybe true, and his friend strummed the guitar.  He told of how he and a buddy had been stranded in a strange rural town in the deep south in the 1970s.  They walked into a convenience store to see if they could get a ride.  Both of them were black; the store owner told them that they had better move along.  So they began to walk along the highway, away from the town.  When nightfall came, they were afraid what would happen if anyone from the town would find them.  Just as they were preparing to lie down and sleep in the ditch beside the road, they saw headlights coming from the direction of town, and the store owner rolled up, and told them to come with him.  He drove them back to his store and gave them food and cigarettes and a room to sleep.  All he asked was that they be gone before the sun came up the next day.

The storyteller said he always remembered the store owner’s kindness, and the fact that he hid it.  He was unable to show what was inside of him, the storyteller said, because of the environment that was around him.

The storyteller also chastised someone in the audience who had been talking loudly during one part of the song, and told him if he wanted to flirt he should whisper in her ear, and then said that all that loud talk was just like George Bush, and blamed the loud talker for getting that man elected.

Dinner today was an occasion for happy announcements; it was made known that both I and a friend of mine are getting married to Muslim girls.  This wasn’t the first word on the subject, of course– I had heard the rumor about my friend months ago, and I had been perpetuating it ever since, thinking it was false.  I consider him an old friend.  He met his girl in the Philippines and liked her immediately because she didn’t want to talk to him.  We have concluded that her father, an importer-exporter, without a passport, who makes business trips to Indonesia and Malaysia traveling at night on speedboats, is probably a terrorist.  But it takes all types.

Our friend wooed her, stole her away from her long-time fiancee, won over her family, and can now look forward to a hefty dowry payment.  And he seems completely happy.  Our friend is not one of those who could not have gotten a girl until he stumbled across some needy foreigner.  He is short, and hairy, and cross-eyed, but he made himself notorious for finding attractive girls just about any time he wanted.  He knows people.  Some of my other friends say he is throwing away a great gift, but he seems confident that he is finally putting it to good use.

So people will find out when they find out, and they will think what they think.  I’m sure it won’t be as awkward as he expects.  After dinner I treated the group to dessert at my favorite Turkish grill.  We ordered a big plate with different kinds of baklava, and everyone had either coffee or tea– I had both.  Turkish coffee is strong and comes in a very small cup with about a quarter inch of pure coffee grounds in the bottom of it.  The restaurant is run by a Turkish man and his tall, out-spoken Greek-American wife.  He was a New York taxi driver and she was a waitress.  They are both very friendly and make even new customers feel as if they are invited guests in somebody’s home.  And their Baklava has plenty of walnuts.