Tales from Rural Maine: International friendship

My high-tech publishing work colleague in Minsk and I had a few minutes to visit the other day before our meeting leader arrived in a conference call. My colleague is a little younger than me. While we were waiting, he told me that he is very happy that I have found work (my yoga) that makes me so happy. He also said he had read my blog about Samantha Smith and that he talked with his older sister about it.

They remember! Vividly. He said Soviet children dreamt of being invited to the camp on the Baltic where Samantha visited. She represented, for them, a particular dream. And they remember watching her on television and reading about her in the papers. Their memories are positive.

It was wonderful--surreal--to realize that more than three decades ago my colleague and his sister and I were children on either side of the Iron Curtain; that Samantha Smith, a little girl from Maine, touched each of our hearts with a dream of peace and friendship—and summering on the Baltic.

Samantha died in a plane crash while she was still a young girl. But thanks, I believe, in part to her efforts, my colleague in Belarus and I are now collaborators and friends. I like to think that it all began with an open-hearted letter from a little girl in Maine to a communist world leader. Now, every year on my birthday and on the Solstice, too, because he knows I love it, I get a letter from a man who was once a young boy in the Soviet Union. This year on my birthday, he said this:

“Dear Naomi,

…You inspire us to use our language as proficiently as possible, but you also inspire us with your thoughts, blogs, ideas, etc. We respect you as a person that has a very deep soul and mind—and my wish is that it would be great if as much people as possible could learn from you. ;) So I would like to thank you for this—and remember that we are grateful not only today, but any time we think of you. ;) Have a good celebration! =)”

I have been working with Belarusians for seven years, but it wasn't until the other day, when my work friend brought up Samantha Smith, that I realized that having colleagues in the former Soviet Republic is actually remarkable. It has felt so normal, so unremarkable to me that until he brought up his childhood recollections of Samantha Smith, it hadn't even occurred to me that he was there then, one of the children in a country we were supposed to think of as the enemy. If things had gone differently, our leaders might have bombed us each into oblivion. If things had gone differently, we would not only not be collaborators, we would, technically, just by virtue of our respective citizenships, be enemies. We would not know the sound of one another's voices. We would not send beautiful birthday wishes. We would not learn the things we learn from one another. I would not have received his kindness and he would not have received my appreciation.

I know that there is a whole lot wrong in the world today and that our government is replete with ineptitude, greed, and bungling; that too many people are suffering under governments even worse than ours; and that “Muslims” have for many Americans become the “Soviets”—the stand-in for the concept of “bad guys” in our fantasies of a world where there is only ever one good guy…us (spelled “U. S.”).

But I believe that for every mad bomber with religious motivations, there are a thousand Alexeis and a thousand Naomis—people from different countries and cultures and faiths who look into the world and see the possibility for friendship, for peace, for learning. For every person seeking violent conflict in the world, I believe there are ten thousand children who dream of peace, just like Samantha Smith did.

To everyone who offers kindness in the face of conflict; everyone who understands “Muslim” is not the same as “terrorist.” To everyone who speaks truth to power: As Alex says, “I would like to thank you for this—and remember that we are grateful not only today, but any time we think of you.”

Read more about Samantha Smith here.