I was sitting on the bench in our apartment’s playground area when she showed up, her daughter in the stroller and her son on his bike. She and I locked eyes across the playground and she shyly pushed the stroller towards me. She was covered, head to toe, in black, all of her face but her eyes concealed in the loose, modest dress.
“Hi. Your baby – she one month?” she asked in halting English.
“Two, actually,” I replied. “And yours?”
“She eight month,” she smiled proudly. “What is she name?”
“Jade. Like the jewel,” I explained.
“Beautiful. My is Tereem. Is mean ‘respectful’.”
She made a bottle of formula (which at first surprised me, but when I thought about it, public breastfeeding would be a major no-no for such a modest woman) and fed her daughter while we made small talk. She asked if I worked, and seemed pleased that I was a stay at home mother. “Babysitter is not mother,” she stated approvingly. She asked if I was American, and told me she was from Pakistan. I told her how I would like to visit that part of the world someday.
“Even with bombs and killing?” she asked, a little surprised by my statement.
“I think we should see as much of the world as we can. We are better people for it.”
She looked at me long and hard, and smiled.
“I think you are different from many American women.”
We talked a few more minutes, until Mike came home and I left, not wanting to make her uncomfortable in the presence of a man she didn’t know. But it was a really pleasant little conversation, and that last statement – “I think you are different from many American women” – well, I think it was about the nicest thing someone’s said to me in a long time.
AlliMonster Speaks 
I hear that a lot over here-that I’m different from what people expect of an American or different from other Americans they have met in the past, and it makes me feel good, like I’m being a positive ambassador. (I spend a lot of time explaining that America is a place of diverse opinions.) Lord knows we could use the good press, no? And I suppose that’s true of most of my friends; many of us have been luck y enough to have the opportunity to travel outside our own country and gain a littler perspective. Here’s to continued positive relations with other cultures and communities, including people who are new to our own!