SIMPLE

Worn. Out-dated. So not my taste, and too-long secured to walls that have been smudged, dented and cracked by kids, dogs, life.

Time for change. The wallpaper has to go.

I heat water and vinegar. I spray and soak. Tug and strip.

For seven hours.

Wallpaper tears in bits and pieces. 

Whole sections, if I’m lucky.

It's a slow, sticky job that requires the patience of a saint.

Which I have not.

Except for today. Today, I channel 'saint', because Ismael is waiting.

Patiently, he works and waits for walls to be stripped of gray paisley paper, and cleansed from gobs of pasty yellow muck.

Patiently, he works and waits to repair dents and cracks in the wall. To dip brush into paint, and spread color and vitality across a room that has long languished; dreary and neglected.

Ismael is patient.

Fourteen months in a concentration camp does that to a guy.

A decision to remain with his ailing mother in a war-torn country led to his incarceration.

“Soldiers want town for their people,” he tells me. “Men, boys, 15 to 50, they take to camp.”

“I see 3000 people. More.  Executions. Every day. No one believe if they do not see.”

I try not to look horrified.  Ismael continues, “I made to carry bodies. Throw over bridge into water. Family. Friends. Many, many people.”

Ismael tells me about the civil war in Bosnia, about Serbian troops entering the region to back the ethnic uprising. I cannot understand most of what he says, but I recognize names like Karadzic and Milosevic. I hear ‘ethnic cleansing’ and remember outrage in the mid-1990s over the mass murder of tens of thousands of Muslim refugees.

Muslims like Ismael.

Husband steps into the room. He has brought lunch for me.

I offer some to Ismael. I have noticed that he smokes, but does not eat.

Accepting a plate filled with chicken and rice, he quietly says, “I no eat. Once a day only. You know why?”

I shake my head, afraid to ask. I have already learned too much.

“When I first go to camp, I no eat. For 35 days. Water drink only. My stomach shrink so small, I no eat anymore.”

I sit across the room from Ismael. A ladder, a pail, two cans of paint, and a world of experience separate me from a man who would have died in a concentration camp had NATO not implemented a campaign of strategic air strikes on Serbian targets, taking photographs of the camps where Holocaust-style atrocities were being committed.

We eat in silence. I wonder what this man must think of our homes, our toys, our grocery stores and government. 

“Tell me about ambassador,” he says.

I explain that some assailants angered by an American-made film depicting the Prophet Muhammad in an unflattering manner had killed an American Ambassador and his aides who were on a diplomatic mission in Libya. We talk about protests in Cairo and the Middle East. We discuss 911 and the senselessness of retaliating against an entire country because of the actions of a few.

Ismael asks, “What is religion for you?”

“I am Catholic,” I answer.

“And I am Muslim,” he says. “Same thing. Koran. Bible. Same thing. All begin with love of God.”

“And end with love of neighbor,” I say.

“You see?  Same. In every religion,” Ismael says. “So why we hate and fight each other?”

I smile at Ismael. He hands me his plate and reaches for a can of paint and a brush.

Hours later, I sneak into the freshly painted room, and discover walls that are so clean, bright, patched, and perfect, they glow.  

I watch Ismael reach from ladder to ceiling to paint the trim, and wish that he could brush light into his eyes.

I wish that he could repair the lines that etch his brow, and strip the memories that haunt his soul.

I wish that lunch with Ismael could inspire a simple film about a man and a woman who have nothing in common, but work together to bring color and light to a place that has grown stale and dark.

The characters speak a different language.

And practice a different religion.

But they have the same heart.

A simple concept.  Would anybody watch?

 QUING Hereby Decrees:  It's simple. LOVE.