Mashallah: a Canadian in Kuwait

When I was 23, I moved from Canada to Kuwait for work in an English speaking private school.

A little backstory about me, I have ADHD. It can make people who have it develop emotionally slower than their peers. Almost can make them blurt things out without thinking and interrupt. That’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation.

Even though I was 23, I was less socially developed than my friends and coworkers while learning to navigate a new culture by myself and my first grown up job.

Everyone there was always incredibly welcoming and friendly.

One woman (I wish I could remember her name for sure but we’ll call her Huda) was that plump, gregarious, openly affectionate friend who gave the kind of warm hugs that envelope you body and soul- all wrapped up into an immaculately pinned hijab.

There were a small group of us standing around the school library chatting one day, including Huda.

She was telling us how her son had payed off his student loans. Having just graduated uni I was feeling the weight of my own loans looming over me.

From the side of the group, I muttered, “Must be nice.”

There was no way this was a “Good for him! He must be so relived!” use of the phrase. Looking back, I would call my tone petulant.

Huda focused the conversation on me to ask if I had said “mashallah.”

Mashallah translates to “God has willed it” and is said when something good happens.

As soon as she’d asked if I’d said mashallah, I knew how childish and negative my comment was.

I cannot fully explain the excruciating embarrassment and shame I was suddenly drenched in. I wanted to vanish on the spot. I felt so small.

Picturing it in my head even now, I see Huda and the group towering over me, surrounding me, and looking down. Like a bug under a magnifying glass.

Obviously, that’s all in my head rather than what happened but that’s how I remember the moment they focused on me.

Acutely aware that all attention was on me, I had to explain to the group and lovely sweet Huda that I wasn’t congratulating her son’s success and hard work, but, instead, dragging the mood down with my comment.

To her eternal credit, Huda didn’t make a big thing about it and moved the conversation on.

I didn’t move on. I replayed the conversation over in my head and cringed at all hours of the day and night. ADHD also loves to be obsessive and intrusive at the worst times.

As annoying as that was, something good came out of it.

It made me realize that I didn’t want to be THAT person. The one who always brings bad vibes with negative comments masquerading as sarcasm. The “it was just a joke” and “it’s not my fault you can’t take constructive criticism” friend.

I discovered I was an opinionated, immature, angry young woman who didn’t know how to behave in the land of adults. And that I was making myself and (very likely) my new friends miserable.

I made active changes to become someone I’d want to be friends with.

I worked on what I could change in my life from how I thought and spoke, to the media I consumed, to who I hung out with.

I did my best to think before I spoke and to inspect what I wanted to say and WHY.

Why did I want to say this? What would it add to the conversation? What affect would it have on the person I was speaking with? Was it nice?

I’m still highly sarcastic, but I’m now the annoying optimist in my friend group.

Everything has a bright side.

Everyone gets the benefit of the doubt.

Everyone deserves what help I’m able to give.

I’m the coworker that will compliment you in the hall because I like your shirt and that means you need to know it- even if it does earn me a weird look from time to time. What good does keeping it inside do? There’s never any harm in sharing a bit of happiness in the day.

Truthfully, I’m glad it happened. It (and making a new friend there who was even more negative and pessimistic than me) lead to the first time in my life that I really looked inside myself to try and understand why I was unhappy.

Huda, wherever you and your family are these days, I wish you nothing but light and love.