W^{aiting Room by Marie Kazalia}

A large sign just outside the door stated “foreigners waiting room” in English and several other languages. Inside the room bare comforts to suit her immediate needs--one short vinyl couch against one wall, a clock above--just after 5 p.m. A few hours wait for the next train to Shanghai. She’d been traveling for days and this the beginning of the end of another long eventless one looking out train windows over colorless flat landscapes, eating bland cold food. Hoisted her bag up off the floor onto her shoulder one more time and headed toward the small couch just as someone pushed past knocking her to one side--a short older Asian man in a dark suit. She recognized Korean characters in the headlines of the newspaper he held folded under his arm as he dropped his suitcase and collapsed into the exact center of the couch throwing his arms out wide in a tired gesture dropping his head back to rest. She stood in disbelief for a moment. He lifted his head back up--his dark eyes caught hers and cut at her indignantly. Instantly her annoyance flared to the forefront of her thoughts. But she understood that everyone here -- all over Asia--expected her, a mere woman, to make-way for any man--especially an older one--to show him respect and demure to his needs. even if they were strangers. She knew her Western customs didn’t apply when it came to public transportation -- it was everyone for themselves -- push and shove your way onto buses and trains -- for seats anywhere, in waiting rooms. But even after three years in this part of the worked if was still difficult for her to tolerate any stranger’s casual brush against her in a crowd. In the U.S. people made such efforts to avoid getting too close to each other in public places, and said excuse me when accidentally bumping into another. But not here. She’d tried to imagine how all of Asia would slow to a dull inefficiency if the millions upon billions of people crammed in all the cities started respecting each other’s personal space using the same social rules as Americans. It wouldn’t work, obviously. Tokyo, Taipei, Bombay, Bangkok--in every big city--people in traffic made up their own rules--turned 4 lanes into 6 lanes to get things moving more quickly. But intellectually knowing and understanding all this didn’t help her much when she had to deal with, put up with crowds of pushing and shoving and bumping 24 hours a day 7 days a week--along with the constant stares on top of it all. People seeing blue eyes for the first time, her light hair color, such a tall woman--she was five foot four--or one with a nose like hers, her strange clothes, the way she carried herself. But then I’m not Asian either --she told herself--so don’t have to follow their customs and traditions--as she dropped her bag on the floor and jammed her ass into the small open area at the end of the slippery vinyl couch. The Korean man moved over just a bit, reluctantly, stiffening his face in annoyance. She felt too tired to fight for more room--knew some Japanese words and had studied Mandarin for one and a half semesters at the university in Hong Kong--but didn’t know one word of Korean, only found the unique circles and oval shapes of the Korean characters easily identifiable compared to Japanese and Chinese writing. She didn’t like sitting next to this guy but it certainly was better than standing, so she tolerated him. Then he pulled the metal floor ashtray up beside his knee and without even a gesture of hesitation as to whether his smoking might bother her, he lit a cigarette, blew smoke and unfolded his newspaper--scanning the wide pages--elbowing her in the ribs as he dragged the bottom edge of his newspaper over her thighs. Just then a multi-lingual announcement came over the loud speaker out in the main station, telling of the next train departures. The Korean man glanced at his watch. Great, we’ll probably get stuck on the same train together and he’ll do his best to try and ruin my entire trip she thought--just becoming aware of the stiffness of a magazine under her hip. Pulled it out--left by a foreigner in this waiting room where locals don’t wait, wouldn’t so recklessly leave something this valuable behind--a Japanese magazine--she recognized the writing and design. Just then the Korean man snatched the magazine from her hands! Such arrogance of authority and demeanor! Such injustice--such sexist treatment! She could only sit and rage to herself--use all her methods of self-control to keep from blowing up--shouting. How dare he! Yelling angrily doesn’t make sense here--he wouldn’t understand what she was saying, why she was mad--what right she had to be furious with him--and only attract a crowd. So she just sat, convincing herself not to snatch the magazine right back--justifying--she couldn’t read it anyway, it really wasn’t hers--yet on principal, Western thinking, he shouldn’t have grabbed it from her like that. The thought occurred to her that she might take her suitcase over to the other side of the room, sit on it leaning against the empty wall--to get away from him--but didn’t want to smash her clothes and things inside her bag. She got up, stood looking at the clock. Only about a half hour had passed since she’d entered this waiting room, yet it seemed much longer. Still hours before the train would arrive and boarding begin. She couldn’t leave her heavy bag here and felt too close to exhaustion to attempt to carry it around the station. She wasn’t hungry, just tired. Tired of this Korean guy, tired of people swarming everywhere--inside the station, on the streets. She got to hoping he’d leave the tiny waiting room to go use the toilet or go get some snacks or something--but he stayed. Soon his head flopped forward in sleep. Fuck him--she thought-- sat back down in her spot, this time jostling him over hard--using her hip and shoulder-- taking her share of the couch. He flopped his head back up awake. He needed to learn some of her Western ways, just the way Asians demanded she adopt theirs.