Found in translation
On a brutally cold and foggy Friday afternoon, our local sponsorship group welcomed our new Syrian friends to our city in Canada. Several times as I was driving them from the airport to the home we had prepared for them, I wondered what must have going through their minds as they looked out on the frosty white scenes that greeted them. Have they dropped us off at the North Pole?!
I couldn’t ask them what they were thinking, of course, because I speak zero Arabic and they speak next to no English. It is incredibly frustrating to be unable to communicate.
A few of our dear Muslim friends had been at the house on that first day to translate, and this was immensely helpful. But on several occasions since, I have dropped by on my own to see how they are doing. Once we get past “hello” and “how are you?” and “was the house warm enough last night?” we often end up just sitting and smiling at each other. My new friends always insist that I stay for coffee. And so we sit around the table, smiling and struggling together across a chasm of incomprehension. Sometimes, through a combination of Google Translate on my phone and hand gestures, we can make a bit of headway. But at least as often we just end up grinning and shaking our heads at how the app has translated our speech. No, that’s not what I meant. Not even close.
