Haha-Hanan (1)

In my mind I tried to think of what she would look like. I wondered how I would pick out a face I had never seen.
I tried to conjure up all the notions of Saudi Arabia that I could and realized that I knew so little about this person. What could I assume from only a name and a country?

I saw a woman seated at a table wearing a nautical-striped blazer with long wavy dark hair and olive skin, and walked toward her, hoping I had made the right guess.

I have always had my reservations about approaching strangers, let alone someone with a supposed language barrier. But after raising my hand to wave hello and asking, "Hanan?" my fears were immediately dispelled. Her smile was incredibly kind, and as she demurely held her coffee she welcomed me to the table like a friend she had known for years.

We greeted each other and she graciously explained to me the correct way to pronounce her name. She said, "say the H like you are laughing." And I tried. We laughed.
She called me "Raschel," but I didn't mind. Her accent made me sound exotic.

Hanan asked me what I knew about her home country, and I admitted I knew little about Saudia Arabia except the stereotypes: Deserts, oil, maybe even camels. We laughed because there was obviously more to it.
I asked her to tell me more, and I listened attentively as she told me a little bit of her story.
Born in Jeddah, Saudia Arabia, she grew up along the seaside as the youngest of a family of 4 brothers and 1 sister. She spoke fondly of her close-knit kin, and the strong family community she grew up in. She and her husband came to Texas last January to pursue their doctorate degrees in business. She said it's different here, but that Texans are wonderful. I was inclined to agree.

I learned in the course of our conversation that Hanan loves to travel, and has spent a good amount of time vacationing. I marveled at the places she had been, confessing I had never left the country. She urged me to see the world, because some of her most cherished memories had been made in countries much different that her own.

We talked for the better part of an hour, just getting acquainted. We shared laughs about Texas's bipolar weather and I made her a list of some of the best places to get steak in Fort Worth. It was a very comfortable experience, surprisingly.
I told her I would have more questions next time, and told her I'd do my due diligence in learning a little about Saudi Arabia.

After parting ways I realized the whole thing was funny to me. Not funny haha, but funny interesting. There were some things so similar about the two of us, just sitting there being human, and some things that could not have been more different. Our experiences have shaped us into divergent people, and yet we were able to share a laugh. I think that's pretty cool.