This man tried to guess my ethnicity

This man stopped me on the street yesterday
and tried to guess my ethnicity.

This is what he said:
"Can I have a minute of your time?"
"Can we play a little game?" "
I'm going to guess where you're from, what language you speak."

He paused, one eyebrow raised, brought it back down, raised the other,
and said, "Do you speak Arabic?"

Encouraged that he got it right, he decided to guess where I'm from.

"Saudi Arabia?"

"Absolutely not," I replied.

"Are you Persian?"

"They don't speak Arabic."

"Ah, yes, yes..."

He gave up.

"Egyptian," I told him.

This man, what he does is he stops people on the street
and talks to them about them.

It's a hook.

He knows
Everyone Likes to Talk About Themselves.

"That's such a pretty scarf."
"I like your necklace, I have one too."

He makes connections, parallels,
shows he's interested in you, and no one else on the streets of this vast city
and look, we have things in common,
we both wear necklaces.

He's not really interested in you though,
I know because this has happened to me before
and I'm waiting for the punchline.

These are not pickup lines.
He's not friendly for the sake of being friendly.

It's always the same.

"You see I work for this organization
and we're ending world hunger
we're ending poverty
we're building homes in Guatamela
feeding children in the Congo
cleaning up after the devastation in Haiti..."

Gianni, that's his name, and he's from London.

Well Gianni pulls out a laminated piece of paper
printed on it is a picture of a little girl
maybe Vietnamese, possibly from Laos,
but the photo is covered with statistics
none of which I can remember.

The photo is a little pixelated but the yellow numbers aren't.

This many children don't have three meals a day.
This many girls don't know how to read, can't go to school.
This many families are freezing through the winter.
Don't you want to help them? Gianni asks, wrapped in a thick coat, a grey scarf covering that necklace he says he's wearing.

I mentioned that this has happened before, right?

Yes, it was another young man, from somewhere in South America, or maybe it was Spain.
I can't remember.

They're always good looking, these people on the street, talking to you as you walk by.
They have perfect teeth, and look you straight in the eye as they talk to you.
They high five runners as they sprint past them.
They act like they're everyone's best friend.

The other one, I don't remember his name, asked me where I got my bag.
"London you say? Oh you must like to travel then? Have you ever been to any of these countries?" He points to a map he's holding in his hand.
On the map, are names of countries where children
are starving
sleeping fiver or six or seven to one room
cause that's all they've got.

I don't know what it is about my face or demeanour that makes these people stop me
to tell me that there's death and destruction and want
in every corner of the world
and for just a few cents a day
29 to be exact
I could make a difference.

Maybe it's in the gait, or a facial expression,
or simply that I was the 7th person to walk by and they're playing games in their mind
stopping every 7 people who walk by.

They're salesmen.
Their pitch is more refined than you'd hear on a used car lot
or at one of those kiosks dotting the pathways of the Pentagon City Mall
But they're still salesmen

selling you an idea
of all that is wrong with the world
and how you
little ol' you
is going to fix it.

Both times, I say the same thing,
well you see, I'm Egyptian,
as I mentioned,
and we have starvation
hunger
misery
all of our own
and the difference I'll make will be for them.

They always have a comeback
for everything you say though,
Gianni says something about children
everywhere in the world
are the same, from Egypt to Bolivia. They all need.

Gianni is very good at his job.
I wonder how much of his hard earned salary goes back to these little children
he so desperately wants us to think of.

I should have asked him that.

But I was on the way to the pharmacy
to pick up medicine for my father.
60 pills for almost $300
because you see my father, he doesn't have insurance
but he has high blood pressure, diabetes
he's prone to blood clots
he walks slow, since he had the second stroke,
he is more impatient,
more like a child, and I more like a parent,
and I could have told Gianni,
you see, I have responsibilities
I have a man over 70, who's mind is as sharp as ever,
but his body can't keep up
and that's a tragedy
and that's my tragedy
and that's what I'm working so hard to
make a difference for
so that I can buy him $300 medication
without insurance
and make sure that he eats right
and doesn't sneak that extra piece of bread
or eat that meat that his brother made for him
when he knew full well he shouldn't have.

But I don't tell Gianni any of this,
because I don't know him.

I say something, I don't remember what and Gianni asks me,
"Where did you go to school?"

I ask, "Primary school or university?"

He says, "Ahh, England," smiling, thinking he has me pegged,
by my choice of words.

He doesn't have me figured out this time.

I say no.

The spell is broken and I'm running late, must catch the pharmacy before it closes.
So I ask him, "So what do I need to do then? Why don't I give you my number?"

I'm sure no one else offers their information like this
but I am impatient and running late and cold
but not as cold as that little girl in the pixelated photo with the statistics covering her feet.

"No, here take my number,"

I pull out my iPhone. It's chipped in the corner from where I dropped it on the asphalt
but suddenly its white is flashy, and my nails click on the screen,
bringing more attention than ever
to this piece of hardware that I don't need, but want.

He gives me his number, I tell him,
"Yes I'll call you to find out more."

We both know
I'm lying.