the eyes that looked like these??? Photo from online…
Sharing the same space, and gaining that little bit of understanding about people who are, different than we are, translated…
The last day of 2017, I’d finished my very last work, riding on the trains, transferring from the ocean lines into the mountain lines.
In the crowded trains, there was, a mixture of skin colors, and various languages being spoken. Other than English, I could make out Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Indonesian too. Then suddenly, I’d realized, that even IF I held no stereotypes, I can understand the beliefs of others, seeing the Japanese and Korean youths were here to visit, backpackers, and the youths from Vietnam and Indonesia were workers here.
The train’s seats were shaped in an “L”, and so, my eyes, would lock on the passengers in front and by me, sliding on their cell phones.
In front of me, there was that Vietnamese youth who’d let up his seat to an elderly woman, and after the elderly got off, she’d, mentioned him to sit back down. He was having a video conversation with someone.
The child in the webcam was crying endlessly, and from the young man’s anxious lips came, a string of words unknown to me, perhaps, he was, trying to soothe his own young from afar…………
Then suddenly, he’d become, silenced for a while, I’d looked up to look at him, and he was, lifting his head to the light on the ceiling of the trains.
His posture was, too familiar to me, I’d always, held all my sneezes in like this. But, from this young man’s cleared eyes, I’d, seen tears, glistening, under the light, he was, trying really hard, to keep them in; I knew, he was, working, so very hard, to bottle his own sorrows back up.
And yet, just like this boy’s way too young appearances, I couldn’t tell if he was the young boy’s father; and the Indonesian man sitting next to me, had that hair dyed to too young, but he’d appeared, aged, I couldn’t tell how old he was.
This Indonesian man too, slid on his cell. From the tone of voice, there’s, that sense of urgency and desire, he’d spoken in Indonesian, which I couldn’t, understand.
And, not long thereafter, came the announcements of the stations, I’m about to get off. I’d gotten up, and, it’d, shocked me to realize, that his shiny eyes was, filled with blood. And that was when it’d, dawned on me, that the colors of his eyes and hair, wasn’t from the salons or the contact lenses, but from the dusts in the construction site he’d worked at.
This last drift of the end of year, it’d, reminded me of my mother. I’d looked at these international workers, being so far from home, and my mother, was in their home country; thinking of how my mother stopped needing to worry in her elderly years, and she’d, always smiled beautifully before me, contrasting how these foreign workers looked, it’d made their worries, seemed even more worrisome.
The train was parked, the doors slid open, my thoughts were, interrupted by the cold wind, wrapped up by my coat. It’d felt, a bit, souring.
I think, perhaps it’s, New Year’s Eve, that I’d, accidentally, bumped into, those eyes that, spoke.
So, this showed, just how hard it was, for those, foreign workers to work away from their hometowns, away from their loved ones, and that we should, all be thankful, of what we have, our loved ones, and try to spend as much time with them as we possibly can.