A smile

I work at the biggest hospital in our country. Many people pass through it. Going to eat lunch at the local canteen is not the best experience for me for several reasons. If you want to get a certain meal you often need to go stand in a line. Unfortunately the definition of what that line should be, obviously, differs from person to person. Many people who want to stand in the line (I already stand at) decide to just stand in front of me. If I ask them to go to the end of the line they just tell me that they were standing there already. The tone of answer ranges from calm but resolute to very angry while accusing me of lying. One of the other problems (among others that are not the point of this post) is finding a table where to sit. When I go around and ask if I can sit down next to somebody there are people that will tell me that the place is taken even though it's not true so I usually just try to find a whole vacant table. It takes time until several people just get up from one table so I can sit there. When the situation is the other way round there are several scenarios that happen. One that I'm not entirely sure what to think about is this: someone comes to the table I'm sitting at, puts all their stuff down and goes sit at a different table nearby (or they use the table I sit at just to move their meal from a plate to a box so they can take it away). I find this kind of rude but I'm willing to live with this since it does not really involve a human interaction and it's not like someone would openly discriminate me. The second scenario is different though. There are often people walking around the table I sit at. They usually complain about no vacant seats even though there are 3 vacant seats just next to me (for your information this happens commonly at public spaces, be it in the train, cinema or the hospital). This is already something that can ruin my day.

One day a strange thing happened. I went to the canteen as usual. I got my meal successfully, went to pay for it wondering if I should say 'Good Afternoon' since the cashier does not tell me 'Good Afternoon', 'Thank you' nor 'Here you are' while I here her say that to everyone else. The only difference between me and them is that they are white and I'm not and it hurts. After all those thoughts I took my meal and went to sit somewhere. I was lucky because I found a table where I could sit.

I sat down and started to eat my lunch. I usually just zone out because I try to ignore all the people that often have nothing nice to say and don't want to think about it. Suddenly something caught me totally off-guard - I heard a kind of voice asking me in non-native English if he can sit down next to me. While I started answering I looked up. Many thoughts suddenly flooded my mind because during the past three years this never happened to me. When I saw the person in front of me I almost started crying. A handsome young man stood in front of me. He was black. My eyes met his and I saw a lot of pain and frustration in those eyes. When I finally managed to stutter an answer his facial expression changed. He became suddenly relieved and smiled at me.

There was a person who obviously had similar problems. The pain I saw when I first glanced at him was the very same kind of pain I feel everyday. When we smiled at each other our problems disappeared for a little while because we knew that we are safe, we shared something that is very difficult to describe.

That day I felt better because someone was nice to me and smiled at me. Unfortunately I couldn't stop all the bad thoughts that crept in because of that smile. I started wondering, why people do not greet me? Why people pretend I do not exist? Why people block my way? Why people don't let me sit next to them? Why everyone glares at me? Why people never smile at me? The answer is because I'm Asian.