In Montrose there is a little street with a bunch of small businesses on it. There's a vaguely old-fashioned feel to the street, as if a few of the stores have been there since the fifties or sixties or seventies. Toward the end of the street there's a block with a tailor, an antique dealer, a beauty salon and a beauty supply store.

Back when we had money I used to get my nails done on that block (the manicure shop has since moved), and I got to know the proprietor of the beauty supply store. So I've been going back there for all the things that we get the "brand names" of (hairspray, for example: that's one thing I don't like to get at Rite-Aid).

The woman who runs the shop is a Christian from Iraq. A few weeks before we invaded her country I went in to ask if she had family in Baghdad.

"My uncle," she told me. I expressed concern, and told her I'd pray for him.

"What can we do?" she responded. "This has to happen. They must get rid of Saddam." She told me stories of being taken down to the street as a child to watch mandatory viewings of bodies: people Saddam's henchmen had killed. "It's awful," she told me. "Horrible."

Two doors down is my tailor. She's from Lebanon, and was there a few months ago, visiting her sister. She told me stories about relatives of hers who left for work and never came back—victims of the random violence of Islamists. She was less angry about the Syrian occupation than I expected, but outraged that every time a bomb went off her relatives had to call everyone, counting their children and hoping that no one had been killed or maimed.

"I'm optimistic about the future," I told her. "I'm an American." And I know it's stupid: the departure of the Syrians doesn't stop the bombing. Not yet, anyway.

Whenever I go to get hairspray, or have my pants hemmed down to dwarf size, I see the Iraqi woman in the doorway of the Lebanese seamstress's shop. She always goes to her own shop when she sees me park my beat-up old Saturn, and I usually go there first.

I pray that one day neither of these ladies will have to live in fear of what Islamists might do to their loved ones. In the meantime, I ask God to look out for their families.

And up on Foothill Blvd. there's a new beauty supply that's closer to my house. And a dry cleaner that advertises $7 to hem pants (vs. $10 in Montrose). I can't go either of these places, of course. Just can't.

Posted by: Attila at 03:49 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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