Layover in L.A.

  Los Angeles, California
Saturday, December 11, 2004

As we disembarked the plane and waited in line for customs I had the opportunity to talk to the gentleman with the Turban. The turban was part of his religion, Sikh. He had asked about me writing in my travel journal and if I was going to publish my life experiences. I just laughed. We talked about life and people.

Since he had a masters in Sociology I was curious about his impression of how the world had changed for him since 9/11.  He explained how a Sikh was killed right after 9/11. The man was also a Sikh and someone angry about 9/11 and not knowing the differences between Muslim and Sikh killed him in a gas station. It was only one of the acts of aggression against anyone from the middle east.

He talked about how in airports they tried to make him remove his turban and how he had to explain that the turban was part of his religion. Not to mention that unlike cartoons where the characters can pop a turban off like a hat his turban was wound and wrapped with his own hair.

He had lived in the United States for the last 30 years. He had been a teacher. He had left his country to get away from persecution and after 9/11 found it again in the country he had sought refuge. He still had a beautiful love of humankind.

He completely won me over when he told me that I had an eternal smile. He asked if I had always had it. I laughed and said "Yes but not always with so many teeth" He was very amused.

People like him are why I travel. These brief moments touched by strangers that reassure you that despite regions, religions and cultures people are all the same. I have so much to learn from travel and I am thankful for it. We flew back through L.A. Luckily this wasn't as long as the layover on the way here. I had a little fun with Jeremiah as we came through customs. There has been all of this talk about SARS. As we were passing through the customs one of the customs officials was joking around with Cory and I. He seemed to be pretty cool so I told him to give Jeremiah a hard time about the huge fever blister on his lip and give him crap about having SARS. The guy did it. I think Jeremiah wanted to kill me. Anyway it was back to just the three of us and we played cards for a while in the floor of the LA airport to kill the time. We were almost home.