Grandma Ma

You remember that we found a baby sitting alone on the street after dark? Then we met her Grandmother, who was helping to run the adjacent restaurant?


Yesterday I went to the cloth market, a huge open-air complex about two miles from our home. The market consists of over 100 shops, each about the size of a single-car garage, bursting with every kind of fabric and all varieties of people.

As I considered a bolt of brown fabric, from the back corner of the same shop I met the smile of...that Grandmother! Grandma Ma (her surname is Ma) is easy recognizable with her black head covering -- she's a Chinese Muslim, called Hui-zu. Actually, as an undergraduate I wrote an ethnography on Grandma Ma's people: the Hui-zu. It took me two semesters, a conference and a summer internship to research and write this paper, so I feel connected to Grandma Ma. She said that Changsha does have a mosque, women can go, but she doesn't go. She does prostrate towards Mecca 5x per day. I told her Who I identify with; we found some common ground in stating that there is only One.

It is no coincidence that I ran into this friendly lady again. We plan to eat lunch at her restaurant on Saturday. I hope to see her granddaughter again and meet the rest of the family.

Rachel



p.s. This Hui woman who looks much like Grandma Ma.