Sandra Gaynor
Chicago, Illinois, United States

Kena motioned for me to come up to her apartment. I had driven her home from the knitting circle, as I did every Wednesday. This was the third time she had asked me to “come up for tea,” and so I accepted.

Kena is in her fifties, I think. She is quite short and has a pretty head of dyed black hair with long, betraying white roots. Her most noticeable features are the many lines on her face that create a perfect map of complete sadness. She is a refugee from Iran or Iraq, or possibly both, as refugees are forced to move from place to place, always seeking safety. She has had a home here for one year.

Two of my friends and I organize a knitting circle for refugee women that meets weekly. This circle provides them with both a safe place to be outside of their homes and a way to meet other women. For different reasons, these women are not eligible for the English classes taught by the refugee organization. They may be too old, too uneducated, too frightened, too much of many things. They are not employable outside their homes. Sharing language and experiences in this group is one of the few socialization activities they have.

We meet on a cold third floor of a behemoth of an old Methodist church. My colleagues and I solicit donations of yarn from whomever we can. We haunt knitting shops, armed with our donation speaking points. We describe how the knitting circle helps women who have been traumatized, teaches them some skills, and creates a safe place to gather. We also carry our letters to provide tax deductions for generous shop owners.

Most of the women who come to knit are Muslim. There are a few Christian women, but they are a minority. The Muslim women are comfortable in the church because there are no men there and they can safely remove their hijabs. There are no men, but unfortunately, there is also no heat and no flush toilets.

The only languages spoken are English, Arabic, and Swahili. One developmentally disabled woman speaks Arabic and English. She is our only source of back-and-forth translation. We cannot always trust what she interprets, but she is our only option. We have learned pantomime and demonstration skills that are useful with the Swahili speakers. We have about six regular attendees, but the group is welcoming and engages new arrivals. The women are consistently affectionate. There is frequent kissing on both cheeks, hugging, and touching each other, even as strangers. This we take a sign they feel safe here. There is constant chatter with no one seeming to understand what the others are saying. The Muslim women always bring food. A get-together without a pot of rice and chicken is unimaginable.

My friends and I supply wool, needles, and lots of knitting books. It has taken a year for us to learn that refugee women do not knit from books. They knit by sight. You learn quickly when the option of not learning is being in the cold. Most of the women do not read. If they do, it is from right to left and from back to front. The knitting patterns we have provided are useless. Many of the Middle Eastern women come from refugee camps in Turkey. They knit by sight, studying a stitch, and then playing with it until they have duplicated what they see.

Kena and Nida are expert knitters. We have noticed over the last months that our donated skeins of yard are dwindling at an unusual pace. Both women leave each week with huge bags stuffed with the best yarn, but they do not return any finished pieces. We have come to realize that they are either selling yarn or making pieces and selling them. It is my job to speak to Kena about limiting her yarn acquisitions.

So today, when she gestures for me to come up to her apartment, I agree, hoping I could communicate my message. We enter her building through the basement. The windows are above ground, and the light exposes the battleship gray floor and the row of white washing machines guarding the stairway to the floors above. I understood later that the basement entrance is preferred because the entrance stairway is so dark you need a flashlight no matter when you ascend it.

Kena’s third-floor apartment had a spotless white kitchen and a living room. The counter that circled the kitchen was completely bare—no coffee maker, no toaster, no dishtowels. A lonely pot for boiling tea water sat alone atop the stove. The living room consisted of a single couch, a coffee table, and a television set.

I found the starkness of the rooms unsettling. No pictures or mirrors on the walls, no plants, church calendars, no tchotchkes from vacation trips. There was nothing to identify the uniqueness of this woman who called this home. Where were her memories?

Well, almost nothing. On a shelf in the kitchen were four five-by-seven picture frames. They held photos of her three sons. Her husband had been killed thirty years ago fighting in Iraq, when the boys were toddlers. One son sleeps in the bedroom during the day. He drives a taxi at night and leaves in the evening so Kena can sleep in the only bed. Another son is in Iraq, unable to leave, and the third is in a refugee camp in Germany. Kena’s eyes overflow when she shows me the pictures and kisses them one by one as she replaces them on the shelf.

Kena spent seven years in a refugee camp in Turkey. She is Christian and the town she is from is now firmly Muslim. She cannot return home. She brings tea in two Christmas mugs I recognize from the relief organization’s holiday lunch.

I do not know the pieces of her story. I have learned it is better not to ask. I try to help her with English. Today we practiced “I am knitting, you are knitting.” She jumps up and turns on the TV to show me how she tries to learn English. It is a channel that runs endless episodes of Law and Order. But she has a satellite hookup and every minute or so the picture disappears, then reformats, and the picture is replaced by pixel groups. As the audio continues, the words no longer match the mouths of the actors.

Kena retrieves her Arabic Bible to share with me. She kisses it and tears streak down her cheeks. She is the face of human suffering. I do not need to see the overseas news with the terrified faces of refugees coming ashore to feel empathy. One who suffers and knows the meaning of survival is right here next to me every Wednesday, offering me tea, trying to connect without being able to speak.

She kisses both my cheeks as I leave. Kena takes my hand and guides me down the dark stairway with a flashlight. She waves goodbye until I pull away. Even then, I see her in my rearview mirror, arm raised to another person leaving her alone.

I call my friends and tell them we must let the ladies take all the yarn they want.