My two most favorite words
I’m not sure when I first read E.M. Forster’s Howards End, perhaps in high school; while I couldn’t tell you the story, I will never forget two words from that book that have stayed with me for over 40 years.
I remember cutting out the words “only” and “connect” from magazines and collaging them on the inside of my closet door in my family home in NJ, along with other feel-good messages. I was a shy, reserved girl growing up so I didn’t do much ‘connecting’ at the time. I stuck with my few close girlfriends, and certainly didn’t have the courage to strike up conversations with people I didn’t know. But I understood the value of those words, they were an inspiration, an aspiration.
Who knew that one day I would become a storyseeker and “only connect” would become my mantra.
Now I try and connect with everyone I meet in as meaningful a way as the situation and time allows. Like this exchange recently with Sammy, my uber driver, on the 16-minute ride from Saanya’s NoHo apartment to Penn Station.
Sammy was quick to smile as he put my carryon in the trunk; he was even more generous with his laughter, it simply rolled off his lips punctuating every other sentence. I’m not sure how we instantly started talking about his father; Sammy was an incredible storyteller and I was hooked. “My father is a very wise guy; people go to him for advice about business, marriage, life, he’s well known for that in all the region [in Sudan]. I’m going to tell you how my father is a great guy, sharp guy, super guy, fantastic guy.”
Music to my ears ...
“When I was a kid, my father found out that I was very good with numbers. So he took me to a private school in the city [Khartoum] and he told them, ‘I need my son to study here.’ They said, ‘you have to leave, we can’t take him without payment.’ My father insisted, ‘My son is very good, you have to find a way.’ The school said that if I score well on a test, they will admit me for free. I passed that test and since that time all my education has been free,” Sammy says chuckling joyfully.
“Then in high school, luck knocked on my door again. I was top 10 in my country. Can you believe this farmer! But I was not excited; I was still a farmer, living with my family in my village. Then I get a letter from the government saying that they’d be very happy to pay for college on one condition, they choose the college. The college was in Cairo. I was 1,000% sure that my father was going to say no. You know what my father did? In one second he looked at me and said, ‘are they going to feed you?’ I said ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Go!’ My father is like that; he fixes any problem just like that!”
“My life changed. I’m a farmer and suddenly I see cars, computers, lights—my village didn’t even have electricity; I’m like a kid, I went crazy. Every summer instead of going back to Sudan, I went to work in England, Germany, France, Spain, to have more experiences. After I graduated with a Masters degree in Economics, I went back to my country, but I couldn’t find a job. You know why – because I was overqualified!”
“So I’m sitting in my village, and I get another letter from the government. They said, we have a contract for you to work in Saudi Arabia. I worked at Aramco in the Executive Office for eight years; it was a dream job for anyone. So now I’m making money, and I eat for free, I live for free. I don’t know what to do with the money, so I send it to my father. My father tells me, ‘What am I going to do with this money, it’s too much money.’ I said, ‘Dad, buy a house.’ So he bought a house. ‘Sammy, it’s too much money.’ I told my dad to buy land, so he bought land. After a while, he said ‘Sammy it’s too much money, I don’t know what to do with it’. I said, ‘Dad, it’s your money, do whatever you want.’ He said we need a machine for the water pump. I sent him 10 machines. My father was very happy. Two months later he said, I need a generator. I sent him 15 generators.”
“What I did for my village in Sudan, it’s become a rule; now anyone who leaves the village has to contribute back to the village. The village is number one in education, it’s one of the most developed villages in all of Sudan.”
The story doesn’t end there. Sammy came to New York City to visit a friend who worked in a shoe store. The boss of that store offered Sammy a job, and advised him to get a degree in the U.S. Sammy studied management. He became Assistant Manager of the shoe store, then manager; the shoe store started turning a profit. The boss decided to open another store and asked Sammy to run it. “Then we opened another store, then another store, then another store, another store, another store, another store ... I was General Manager for one of the biggest retail stores in NYC for 30 years. Can you believe this farmer?!” Now Sammy and I are both bursting with laughter!
I asked Sammy if I could share his story. “Yes, of course,” he said as I dashed out to catch my train. He yells out the window, “And I have a title for it: I am the American dream.”
I’m reading a book by David Brooks called How to Know a Person. I find myself nodding on every single page; to be honest what Brooks writes seems intuitive to me, but he articulates the sentiment of “how to see others deeply and be deeply seen” in such a beautiful way. I turned first to Chapter 15, on Life Stories. He talks about how we live in a society where we simply don’t ask people to share their stories, perhaps because of the busyness of life or the fear of being rebuffed. But as research shows, social connection is the most important source of happiness, health, and well-being, so why are people not connecting with each other more. Brooks shares an experiment in which people were encouraged to talk with commuters on their train; when the ride was over and researchers asked about their trip, the response was overwhelmingly positive.
As Brooks writes, and Sammy confirms, people are happy to share their stories, if we take a moment to ask.
Hopefully we’ll relearn how to unbury our heads from our phones to start a conversation with a passerby …. and perhaps a beautiful tale will unfurl, along with peals of laughter.
With all my love,
Salma
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Please follow more inspiring stories on Instagram @salma.hasan.ali.
This is newsletter #38. If you know anyone who might enjoy this newsletter, they can subscribe for free here. A few past newsletters:
“What a beautiful time we spent together”
Every life lost a story (+ 12 wisdoms I learned from humanKIND)
Flying with chains (Wisdoms from Angelique Kidjo, Sanjay Gupta, Shahidul Alam at Chautauqua)
What I learned from my father-in-law
A Letter of Gratitude, for my Husband’s Surgeon