The Box

I felt myself being squeezed back into a little box. It all happened in a matter of seconds and it started just by the look in his eyes.

It has been four years since I left a country that I poured myself into for thirteen years. Since the day I flew away, I have not seen a single person from there.

At first I didn’t miss it. Then I missed it terribly. As each day passed, I grew and changed. I tried new things, I found my voice, I learned that my opinions mattered and my gifts contributed to others. I gained confidence and slowly ventured out from the box that my former world had kept me in. I felt free!

But I still missed the people from my other world. Sometimes I wondered why I loved those ladies so much and why I couldn’t go back. If only I could go back now: now that confidence filled my veins, wisdom matured me and joy put a spring in my step.

One day last week, my husband and I enjoyed a delicious Arabic meal with friends. Ramadan (the month of fasting for Muslims) is in full swing, but the restaurant served us before the fast broke at sundown. We sat under colorful glass lanterns and watched young people playing on the beach as we dipped bread into creamy Arabic dips and talked about both the mundane and the deep.

As the sun creeped lower in the sky, more people wandered into the restaurant. Arabs and Asians from various countries sat at tables throughout the room. The non-Muslims ate their food eagerly while the Muslims waited patiently for the fast to break. My husband and I noticed a group walk into the restaurant and immediately knew they were from a land we formerly lived in. There were two men, a lady and two children. I admired their faces as they walked by. How I missed those faces!

After dinner, I wondered aloud if I should try to meet the lady. My dinner companion encouraged me to do so. The lady had gone to the restroom, so I followed her in and asked her where she was from. Our guess had been right! Her name was Wi’am. She and her daughter were very happy to hear a khawadja (white foreigner) speaking Arabic. She said that I spoke Arabic well. That was a very gracious complement, since I discovered only one in every three words that came out of my mouth were Arabic. The others were a mixture of Bahasa and English and I also had to resort to charades. What on earth happened to the Arabic file in my brain?

We chatted a little and then she excused herself and returned to her table. I rifled through my purse looking for a name card to give her, but I must have given them all away. My friend, who came with me to the restroom, handed me a piece of paper and pen so I could scribble my name and email address down. My hand was shaking out of sheer excitement. A woman from my former home! I loved those ladies!

I quickly left the restroom, but found that the family was already gone. Shoot! Then I looked out of the glass door of the restaurant and saw them meandering through the gift shops set up in the parking lot. At the risk of appearing “stalker-ish” in my excitement, I left my dinner party behind and walked briskly across the parking lot toward Wi’am. I gave her the piece of paper and talked to her a little bit more before the men walked up. Again, I was excited to speak Arabic and meet more people from our former home.

“This is my husband,” said Wi’am, as the men strolled up to us. I smiled brightly, eager to tell them that I used to live in their country.

Then it happened.

Any passerby would not have known that anything unusual had happened at all. The shop owners would have seen a group of North African tourists talking to an American lady for a few seconds and then would have seen them walk on their way. It happens all the time, every day. Why would anyone think it strange?

It started by the look in his eyes.

It wasn’t a bad look, or even a leering one. It was not so much what was in the look as it was what was NOT in it. It was a look that was void of respect. I was de-humanized in a split second. The words he said were cordial. But his look and his manner held me in disdain and crammed me into the tiny box “where you belong.” That man and every other man like him commanded me to shrink. Suddenly, my sleeves felt too short, my jeans too tight, my voice too loud, my manner too friendly, my walk too quick, and my stance too confident. What I would have given for a headscarf to cover my hair that moment. What on earth had I been thinking? His look shot emotions and reactions into my heart that I hadn’t felt in years. My mind saw every man who had leered at me and every man who had touched me or spoken to me inappropriately...I suddenly remembered every unspoken rule for a woman to survive in that man’s world. I found myself squished back into a tiny dark box.

There is no room for anything but me in that box- I am stripped. There is no room for self-expression or confidence. There is no room for talent or a voice of any kind. There is only me. I had been soundly put in my place and he didn’t even have to raise his hand. He never would have anyway. What man would shake hands with an infidel woman during Ramadan?

I turned and walked away. As I slunk back across the parking lot I realized I inadvertently gave Wi’am the wrong email address! In my excitement I’d confused two of my addresses and wrote down a mixture of the two!

Idiot! A thousand men just like him chuckled. See? You are a stupid woman!

A bell on the restaurant door jingled as I opened it and in a split second I had re-entered my own dimension. I sat at the dinner table and talked about strategy and vision. My ideas mattered. My voice contributed to the conversation. My confidence returned. I bloomed again and the tiny stifling box sat shattered in the parking lot.

It has taken me four years to get out of that box and let the Lord nurture and grow me. I don’t have to get back in that box. But what about Wi’am? She’s never known anything different. Now I realize: that’s why I love her and ladies like her so much. They are beautiful and only when I crawled into that dark place could I see them for who they really were. I could see the potential for what God had made them to be.

The box. It’s a place that only a woman can go. No man can truly understand it or feel the pain that comes with it. Although I have attempted to describe it, it’s indescribable really. It’s a place where women are living and dying without the hope of Christ. Wi’am is there...and all my friends from that country.

Will you pray for Wi’am and women like her? Will you pray for the men in their lives? There is just under two weeks left of Ramadan. As people like Wi’am and her family are more sensitive to spiritual things this month, will you pray that they will find Jesus? He really is the answer after all.

Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18-19