Last Thursday I was at Ataturk Airport to help a friend who works for the U.N., process 30 Iraqi and Iranian refugees who were flying to the USA. There I was, a voluntary refugee from America in Turkey helping Iranians and Iraqi’s who have made it as far as Turkey and have been waiting here for months, to go to the country I left.  I don’t know all of their stories but they are political and/or regligious refugees whose lives here are intolerable for whatever reason and have been granted asylum in the US. They were so excited like children the night before Christmas. After hours of shuffling through all their documents, checking passport photos with faces, police letters, sponsor letters, they were ready to go, except that a technical error was discovered on one document. After some discussion and several phone calls a family of five were told that they could not go. The chance that they might be deported or imprisoned if the error was discovered once they arrived in the US was too big a chance to take.  It was awful. The mother fell her to knees and sobbing, begged, “Please, please, help us. We have no money.” But there was nothing that could be done. The others were at last cleared and going one by one through security when I saw an older woman clinging to her adult son (who would remain). The two of them were sobbing and holding onto each other as if they knew they might not ever see each other again. Finally she broke away to head towards the gate with the others, but  turned to look at her son one last time.  That was when she saw me standing there with tears streaming down my face. She came BACK to the gate and hugged ME! Somehow this woman whose name I do not know knew me and I knew her in that amazing moment.

And here I’ve been complaining all this past week about doing my taxes! I will never complain about them again.