Memoir Monday: Listening for What Others Missed
Once, while hosting a high-level group of dignitaries from Ghana, West Africa, the director of our NGO (the man I supported by doing the work of seven people by my one self) lost his cellphone somewhere near the Damascus Gate of the Old City in Jerusalem.
That was a serious problem.
The phone held all the critical contacts we needed for the rest of our tour of the Holy Land.
We had already escorted our guests onto the van when he realized it was missing. He patted his pockets while I dialed the number repeatedly.
Now, if you’ve ever lost a cellphone, you know the first few minutes are critical.
It was still ringing.
That was a good sign.
Once it stopped ringing, I knew the search might be over.
Bound and Determined…
With the focus and determination of a police detective, I asked him the last time he remembered having it in his hands.
He recalled setting it down while we shopped for strawberries inside the city walls.
I grabbed him by the arm and told him to show me where, all while calling the phone over and over again.
Because as long as it was still ringing, I believed I could find it.
We retraced our steps.
He looked down, as though the phone might be lying somewhere on the ground.
I looked around me, into the faces of the many souls surrounding us.
We arrived at a table covered with mountains of fresh strawberries. He reenacted setting the phone down while picking through the fruit and filling his bag.
He began moving berries around, searching underneath them.
I kept hitting redial.
If the phone was still ringing, and whoever had it had not silenced it yet, I still had a chance.
While my director moved the mountain of strawberries, I stood still.
Looking.
Listening.
Carefully. Intensely.
And then I heard it.
Open Market Noise
That ringtone I had heard over and over again while serving as his assistant was calling out to me.
It was faint, but I knew that sound.
Then the captive of that very distinct ringtone locked eyes with me.
I hit redial again.
The ringing became louder.
I walked straight up to him and demanded that he give me the phone.
He pretended not to understand my forceful, focused Chicago South Side English.
Maybe he didn’t understand my words.
But he understood my voice.
He understood my determination not to walk away empty-handed.
The guilty captor reached into his pocket and handed me the phone, now ringing even louder, as though it were thanking me for rescuing it.
I snatched it from his hand as if he were a guilty child and passed it back to my director.
Then I grabbed my director’s arm again, and we returned to the van, where our anxious dignitaries were waiting.
A Superhero is Born
He retold the story to our guests, giving me superhero status.
Years later, people still tell that story as though I performed some heroic act.
I never saw it that way.
I wasn’t trying to be impressive.
I was trying to make sure our guests never felt the disruption happening behind the scenes.
I was determined to see the tour succeed.
The contacts we needed were stored in that phone.
Failure was not an option.
Success wasn’t an accident.
It was paying attention.
Looking where others weren’t looking.
Listening for what everyone else had tuned out.
That is what protocol taught me.
And looking back, it may have been preparing me for the work I do today.
Making order out of chaos.
Listening beneath the noise.
And helping people find what they thought they had lost.