‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’
There is nothing more irritating than delayed baggage delivery at the destination with the carousel going in interminable circles with no sign of your bags even though they were tagged ‘Priority’, with the possible exception of delayed boarding with no announcements and the gate personnel laughing and chatting animatedly amongst themselves with total disregard for the waiting passengers.
That’s what happened to me the day before at Washington Dulles airport after a forty-six-hour journey. Finally, both of the bags showed up and I was off on an Uber headed home. The hour-and-a-half delay at the airport resulted in my reaching the parking lot of my condo almost exactly at 10:00 PM, an hour at which I do not normally venture out unless it was totally unavoidable.
The saving grace of this late hour was that there was no one around as I attempted to get my baggage to my condo about 500 feet (150 meters), slightly uphill, from the parking lot. With two checked-in suitcases weighing 50 pounds (23 kilos) each and an additional carry-on and a laptop bag to boot, there was no way I could move them all simultaneously, even though they all had rollers, excepting the laptop bag, of course. I got around this by moving two at a time about 25 feet ahead and coming back for the rest. At that hour, there was only one lady out walking her dog and all she gave me was a quizzical look before getting off the cemented pathway on to the grass.
I had got everything to within twenty feet of the flight of the outside steps leading up to my condo and, winded by all the effort so far, was planning to take a short breather before lugging the baggage one by one up the steps. It was at this precise moment as I was rolling the last suitcase towards the rest of the luggage at the foot of the steps that a young man appeared out of the blue.
“May I help you carry your bags to your home?” he asked politely. “I am young, and it is no problem for me,” he added.
After all the huffing and puffing, I could only nod a grateful ‘Yes, please.’
“Which floor are you on? I’ll bring them up even if you are on the top floor.”
Fortunately, these were only the steps at the entrance to navigate to get to my unit.
Placing his coffee mug on a ledge, he got to work with a smile. A couple of minutes was all it took to get all the bags into the building.
Extending my hand, I said, “Thank you. I am Abie.”
“My name is Ibrahim. And I live in the next building,” he said pointing to it.
“Again, thank you for your help, Ibrahim,” I said. “But may I offer you some money for your efforts?”
“No! I am your neighbor!” he said smiling pleasantly. “I was only helping you.”
Later on, when me and my luggage were all inside my condo, I pondered over the immense significance of Ibrahim’s words – “I am your neighbor.”
Helping our neighbor is a value most of us profess and hold dear, after the Good Samaritan. But how often do we actually act on it? Approaching a stranger at that time of the night may have appeared threatening, but Ibrahim took the risk, unlike the lady who played it safe and didn’t even say ‘Hi.’
At a time when our country is being riven with intolerance, self-interest, and, sadly, parochialism, I re-learned an invaluable lesson thanks to the delayed luggage. Ibrahim may have been an immigrant, I don’t know and I don’t care. English may have been his second language, but we communicated. None of that stopped him from helping a total stranger.
After thinking long about how to find Ibrahim again, I decided to write a thank you note and leave it where the mailboxes in his building are. Hopefully, he will find it and get in touch so we could go out for a cup of coffee.
After all, we have the same name – Abie being the diminutive for Abraham and Ibrahim and Abraham being two forms of the same name.
PS: The title is the motto of Boys’ Town Children’s Home founded by Father Edward Flanagan. It is also a famous song by The Hollies.