Thank You to Mr. Niceman

It is important here to be seen as a good, moral, upright woman. Already I do not cover my head or wear a jacket long enough to cover my, shall we say, bum. So I need to take strong efforts to not give the impression that I am "easy" (as American women are often assumed to be). Therefore I do not make eye contact with men, I try to sit with women on the Metro, these kinds of things. An explanatory prologue, if you will... Therefore when Schroomie #1 and I were standing at the bus stop this morning, and the following scene unfolded, you will understand why we behaved the way we did.

I was facing her, talking about something or other, when I noticed a crazy-eyed man behind her smiling at me and looking back and forth between me and a taxi (implying, "Do you wanna go for a ride?"). I turn so that she and I are standing side by side, with our backs to him, and pull her a step closer to me and away from him. He walks over so that he is standing directly in front of us. We then both walk around a group of people to the other side of the bus stop away from where we'd been standing. We've quit speaking altogether now, so as not to draw attention to our English. The man still followed and stood near us, on our right.

At this point, another man takes a step forward, and positions himself directly between crazyman and us. We stand there quietly and thankful for a small bit of protection. Schroomie #1 whispers discreetly, "I hope he (niceman) gets on the bus with us." For at this point, crazyman seems to have no particular destination in mind, only the goal to follow us.

After a few minutes, he slyly moves around niceman and sneaks towards us again. We blantantly move back to the other side of the bus stop, standing as near to each other as possible. Crazyman follows. We turn, and walk right back over to where we'd been standing a minute before, making it obvious to everyone there that we are trying to not only be safe, but protect our honor from being ruined by this man. This last move on our part invoked the niceman to join our blatancy. He walked over to crazyman and said basically what sounded like, "Git!" (You know, like a southern woman says to a dog that's following on her heels.) I had been ready to bust out with my, "Your momma taught you better than that!" (Actually, in Turkish, a girl should say, "You don't have a momma!" Implying that he's acting so poorly that he doesn't even have a mother, much less that he wasn't brought up right.)

Instead, we sat down on the bench, and the man next to me says something like, "It'll all be okay," and scoots away from me to prevent me from feeling scared of him. We then watch the ensuing scene between niceman and crazyman (everyone's watching at this point!).

Crazyman did not "git" but said something strong back to niceman, who then shoved crazyman very roughly away from the bus stop. They yelled back and forth at one another for about a minute, then niceman grabbed crazyman by the shirt (like he was going to choke him or something), and picked him and threw him a bit. Crazyman then screamed, and did this odd movement Schroomie and I later refered to as a jump/spin in the air, hitting his leg with hand. It was obviously some kind of curse. He gave niceman a "so there!" look and then stormed off.

Schroomie and I sat quietly on the bench, realizing that now there were some cultural games we had to play. In America, we would have politely thanked niceman for protecting us. Not so here. It was time for everyone to save face, and help one another to do so. Niceman ignored us, so as not to remind everyone that we had been bothered (and almost dishonored), for this would have cost us to lose face. We ignored him, so as not to remind everyone that he had just been in a fight, for this would cause him to lose face. For all of us to save face, we had to act as though nothing had happened.

But deep down, we wanted to thank him. Thank him for stepping up and protecting the honor of two young women who were trying their best on their own. Thank him for making us feel safe. Thank him for not making me bust on crazyman's momma. Instead, we just got on the bus and went on our way.