Neighbors

There are two little girls who live with their families next door to us. They are both about seven. One girl lives in the downstairs flat. She has hair the color of the sun, hair that streams across her face, so that she is constantly pushing it out of her eyes and mouth. She is very tall with the long legs and knobby knees of a foal.

Upstairs lives her best friend and our other neighbor. Her hair is the color of night, hair that hangs down past her knees when it is not gathered into a long, thick-braided rope. She is smaller in stature, but bolder than her downstairs friend. During the bitter winter months, we barely see them. But now that it is summer, they are constantly out of doors, riding their bikes, arguing in the little garden that their families share.

The girl with the dark hair has a large family. They have planted strawberries and tomatoes in their side of the yard. We give them some of our bean plants to add to their garden. They give us a kabob hot off the grill, dusky with spices. Her family cooks out almost every night. Sometimes, the little garden is filled with people eating and smoking the hookah pipe and laughing.

The girl with the blond hair has only one little brother. Her family gives us pirogues, fat with sweet, mild cheese or pillowed with potatoes. We give them bouquets of roses. To both families we smile and nod over the chain link fence, saying “as-salamu alaykum” to one and “dzien dobry” to the other. Those are the only words we know to speak to our neighbors.

We are fascinated to watch the little girls, as they switch effortlessly from one language to another. They speak English to each other, but when their mothers call them, they answer back (without missing a beat) in the staccato of Arabic, or tongue twisting Polish. Then they turn to each other and continue their interrupted conversation in the broad, flattened A of Midwestern American English.

They call to us as they fly by on their bikes, best friends, bold adventurers. Their hair streams out behind them, one the color of sun, one the color of night. They turn to us, blue eyes, brown eyes. They wave and shout,

“HELLO NEIGHBORS!”

We wave back, smiling, watching what is special and wonderful about America ride by. Here in this great city, in this good land, there is a child of the Middle East and a child of Europe who daily cross the cultural chasms of religion, world view and language with complete ease and grace. As we watch their bikes disappear into the distance we know that they carry with them the promise of our country and the legacy of our city; the world comes here and becomes our neighbors, and sometimes our best friend.