Meeting with Khalifa #2

       While trying to set up our second meeting, it was obvious Khalifa and I were improving our communication skills. This time we both showed up in the same basic location and in the same hour; a drastic improvement from our first get-together. We started asking how each other’s weeks were going and eventually were drawn to the topic of each other’s families. He asked about mine and I described my parents as well as my two sisters. In turn, I asked about his family and can honestly say I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Khalifa’s family is huge. The word almost doesn’t justify what I’m attempting to explain.  He and most of his direct family live in a compound that appears to be a giant mansion about the size of the TCU Commons. It was ridiculous. We spent most of this meeting looking through his phone at pictures of his cars, family, and other significant possessions. I honestly don’t remember the exact number of family members that lived with him, but I remember there being a lot. He continued on to start describing his uncles that lived in America. He has one that resides in California and one in Colorado. He also has quite a few cousins that are dispersed across the United States in various cities the names of which I can’t quite remember.

I knew the answer to my next question before I asked it, but I was curious as to how he would respond. I inquired if he missed his family. His mood turned a little more somber, and he replied with the obvious answer. He told me that he talked to his parents and sister on an almost daily basis and missed them terribly. He didn’t seem too broken up about it and quickly continued that he was having a great time in America. Thinking back on this conversation, I’m confident that I could live on a different continent than the majority of my family. At the same time, I’m not sure one can emotionally prepare for an experience like that. It would mean truly being on your own. I wanted to ask if Khalifa felt like he was maturing more in the states, but it didn’t feel like a good time to keep asking serious questions and I ended up making some dumb joke about an ocean.

Trying to experience humor in a different language was extremely intriguing and interesting, at least on my part.  There were multiple occasions when we would reach a point in conversation where it was blatantly obvious that neither of us knew what the other was talking about, and we would just bust out laughing. I feel bad admitting this, but there were several times during the middle of conversation that I would just start laughing to see if he would mirror my behavior. Most of the time he thought he had missed something and would start laughing with me. It fascinated me that humor was this sort of emotional eraser that seemed to be cross cultural, at least between Khlaifa and me.  No matter what we were talking about, any tension or awkwardness was immediately eliminated when one of us would start to laugh. We were not great at communicating with each other by any means, but the concept of humor was obviously prevalent in both our cultures, and it was an abstract form of common ground that we shared. It was one of those “circle of life” experiences where you realize that the world is a lot bigger than what you know, and that everyone on this planet is connected. We all experience similar emotions and have similar backgrounds. The environments in which we were raised are by no means the same, however, there are certain underlying themes that all run parallel regardless of geographical or cultural barriers.