Message in a Can

Unlike subways in other parts of the world, New York's subway has awful sound systems. Most announcements are garbled and unintelligible.

On the way home from the Metropolitan Museum of Art today the E train was held at the 50th Street station. The announcement that came through the sound system speaker was a jumble of static save a single word: patience.

For once, I appreciated the notoriously crappy public address system. This message said it all and did so simply.

A Girl Like That

Once again I rushed to Times Square today to enter the West Side Story ticket lottery. As I ran up the stairs of the 50^th Street subway stop, I noticed a young couple pressed together along the wall of the stair landing.

They appeared to be about 16-18 years old. He was African-American. The girl had cafe au lait colored skin and brown eyes. She could have been Latino, African-American, or Middle Eastern. It was difficult to gauge her ethnicity.

Seeing amorous teenage couples doesn’t really bother me. It is a fact of life that adolescent kids fool around and many of them have sex.

However, the young woman wore a veil over her hair. It surprised me to see a young Muslim girl engaging in a public display of affection. She was modest enough to cover her hair, yet she would allow herself to be kissed and pawed by her boyfriend in front of hundreds of strangers.

There was a Muslim woman in my graduate program cohort. Through that acquaintance, I know enough about Islam to know that this kind of behavior is forbidden. From what I have read about practices in other parts of the world, even if this girl were married she could be jailed or worse for acting this way in public. If her parents or brothers saw her, most likely she would be severely punished.

When I didn’t win the ticket lottery a half hour later, I returned to the same subway stairway. The couple had not moved, and the girl’s veil was still in place. They could be the Maria and Tony of 21^st century New York City.