Spend more than five minutes in any airport, and you’ll hear a woman’s voice over the intercom calmly warning you against unattended baggage. When a young man requested that Alyse and I keep his bag while he stepped outside of the JFK airport to smoke, it raised a red flag in both of our minds. 

We declined, reluctant to engage in any small talk, but he asked where we were headed.

“Pakistan.”

“Oh,” he replied, weirdly. “You know, people tell me to be safe, but I won’t tell you that. God will keep me safe.”

This man was shorter than I am, muscular, Korean-American. He wore a backpack larger than his whole body and sported a snapback and bro tank--not exactly the criminal-type, but his vibe caused us to be suspicious nonetheless. 

“I’m going to India,” he said without any prompting. “I’m going to find myself.”

“Is it a one-way-ticket situation?” I asked. I figured that would sound at least more flattering than a trite “Eat, Pray, Love situation.”

“How did you know?,” he asked with a stern glare. He looked at me like I had just caught him committing a crime. “Are you following me?”

I surveyed his appearance in greater detail (in the event that an account to the police would be necessary in the future) and noticed that he had a spray can of electronic coolant in his backpack. I didn’t know what that was, but it seemed unusual.

We made three attempts to alert airport personnel to double security check this man. The first two airline staff members said, “talk to the pilot” or “we’ll look into it,” obviously complacent.

By the time we spoke to the flight attendant, we’d built him up as a terrorist in our heads. Our panic increased over time, and the impending 15 hour flight with him intensified our worries. 

“He’s um--short--and Asian.”

“Asian like me or Asian like this?,” the sassy flight attendant asked, making an offensive gesture with her eyes.

“Asian like--East Asian!,” I replied, unable to replicate her politically incorrect gesture. We may have been physically on US soil, but American cultural norms were already obsolete.

I found it difficult to indirectly explain my concerns to the flight attendant. How do I say “I think this guy might have a bomb in his backpack” without sounding rude?

She found him almost immediately. Alyse and I watched her signal to us behind his back as she followed him into the aircraft. She came around moments later and said “I think he’s okay. He’s just weird.” I appreciated her directness.

We settled into our seats for the next 15 hours and heard nothing from or about the strange backpacking man. En route, I realized that what I thought was a spray can of electronic coolant (surely a dangerous substance, if it does exist) was actually a cooling towel, something that, Alyse explained, athletes use at the gym. It wasn’t until the last few hours of the flight that the man reappeared right beside Alyse.

“So how is your flight going?”

“Um. Good?”

“What have you been doing?”

“Sitting.” She was clearly not participating. 

The drink cart made its way down the aisle, so he lapped the airplane to return for another talk. This time he knelt beside her seat, clearly getting comfortable for a longer chat.

“How’s your flight been?,” Alyse asked flatly. She averted eye contact by busying herself with an interactive map of the flight path on the screen in front of her.

“Productive.” I found this answer to be vague and bizarre. Productive in your evil scheme?

He made another lap around the plane, as he fully blocked the aisle now. Other passengers surely sat squirming, waiting for their chances to finally access the lavatory. While he’d left to make space for the incoming garbage cart, Alyse and I decided that he must be in love with her. He was not an assassin--just bad at flirting.

The backpacker made another appearance, and this time reached over Alyse to turn off her screen. He may have intended to be smooth, but Alyse found him more annoying every moment. This audacious move could only precede an even bolder question: “What’s your purpose in life?”

He’d blindsided us. While we wanted to say “to make you go away,” we just sat in silence and exhaustion.

“Well--I’m just reading this book,” he said, revealing a book the size of a dictionary, A Man Thinketh. “Do you believe that we have free will?”

After another awkward silence, he volunteered, “I believe in Jesus. Do you have a good relationship with Jesus?”

At that moment, it all became clear. This man was not a terrorist, nor was he making horrible attempts to flirt with Alyse. Instead, he knelt beside us on this flight to Abu Dhabi in order to convert us to Christianity, a religion we’d both already accepted.

“Yes,” Alyse responded for both of us. I said nothing, too dumbfounded for words. This man was not a criminal, nor a player, just an evangelist.

“Then my work here is done,” he said chipperly, immediately standing up to leave. “See you in Heaven, I guess.”

Alyse looked at me and whispered, “hopefully not before.”

If you want an accurate representation of our time at the Dead Sea, Google “floating in the Dead Sea” and read an influencer’s travel blog. Look at the photos, but envision that everyone is freezing cold. It’s raining. Replace all the suntanned tourists with sketchy-looking teenagers, and think of every cocktail as if its a piece of trash. That’s what it felt like for Emmanuel and I, until we finally interacted with the main element: the ancient salt lake. The Dead Sea itself is an unimaginable, ecstasy-inducing experience with which beautiful people drinking margaritas in the sun cannot contend. It is a sacred place, special, and so so salty.

Whizzing along the King’s Highway, racing the sunset and the time limit on our rental car, Emmanuel and I drove four hours with fierce determination to swim in the Dead Sea.

As the surrounding desert turned abruptly to tropical rainforest at the lowest point on earth, I Google’d (with our rental car’s portable hotspot) cheap beaches open to the public. We made it to the first only to find, not tourists and locals mingling in the sun, but instead police cars lining the entrance. They informed us that this particular beach had been shut down, so we kept searching.

Then we watched the first drop of rain splatter. This should have been a sign for us to turn around and stop trying, like nature waving a giant red flag, but we looked the other way. That first droplet soon revealed a downpour, which was just enough to make us rethink the whole plan. We’d relented our dream of swimming in the Dead Sea, when a glimmer of sunshine--of hope--peaked through the clouds. If it were possible, we were doing it.

We continued the search and finally arrived at a beach that looked more like the set of a carnival-turned-horror movie: still drizzling, grim, and completely deserted. We approached the cashier, who spoke little English. Neither of us speak any Arabic, which made it difficult to convey our desperation. The man managed to communicate that we didn’t have enough money. (People always find a way to make that clear.) And they didn’t take cards. We hung our heads. We should know better by now.

With enough persistence, Emmanuel negotiated a way for us to pay in US dollars. We were finally in! It’s the moment we’d been waiting for! We’d driven four hours just for this! We hesitated to admit it, but in actuality, it felt more like a crime scene than anything. I felt safer flying down the cliff-lined highway.

The few locals that were there wouldn’t stop staring at us foreigners. They probably wondered from afar about our frantic disposition. As the sun was setting fast behind Israel, we had little time to stop and enjoy (and little aesthetics around us).

As one does at the Dead Sea, I slathered mud all over myself before getting in the water. It’s therapeutic for the skin, so they say. Inching slowly into the oddly warm water, I knew we’d made the right decision. With every step I took further into the salt bath, more doubts melted away, until the water swept clear beneath my feet, and I floated. And I kept floating. I couldn’t stop even if I tried. The novelty of it felt euphoric. How is this possible?

We only had about 10 minutes in the water, so we savored every second. The rain had cleared everyone else from the beach, and we’re certain we were the only people in the Dead Sea for just a moment. It was still, silent, salty.

I disrupted the peace by accidentally splashing a drop of water my eye. The burn felt impossible to remedy, since the rest of my body was covered in salt and mud. It felt like a good ending point--abrupt, and not ideal, but appropriate for the experience.

Before returning to the car, we took icy cold showers, exposed to the rain that had reappeared. Arriving back to Amman soaking wet and covered in a thin film of salt, we returned our rental car two hours late. We surely looked more like criminals than travelers, and we felt just as unstoppable.

Nothing could keep us from taking our moment in the Dead Sea—not rain, not a line of police cars, not even running out of cash. We reveled in the memory of the day, which already felt distant. A certain thankful sadness sets in when it’s time to go home. The whirlwind was over, but we’d made it.

I decided one evening to spice up the small talk around our family dinner table and breached the topic of interracial marriage. 

“You’re not interracial,” my mom replied.

I almost dropped my fork. Emmanuel and I looked at each other, unsure of what to say.

“Mom, we literally are.”

“I mean--you are a little bit, but not really.”

I wanted to unleash years’ worth of anecdotal proof, but her comments were well-intentioned. I joke at times that she loves him even more than she loves me, her only biological daughter. Emmanuel took the reins instead and stated the obvious: I’m white; he’s not.

While my mom certainly knows that I’m white and understands the definition of race, she was not recognizing that our differences run much deeper. The fact that, after a week on the beach, we might look nearly the same color, is irrelevant. It is our cultures and racial experiences that have made all the difference.

It would be incorrect to ignore the effect that our skin colors have on our lives. Our education, housing, healthcare, citizenship, and even social opportunities started as distantly as possible on the spectrum of availability. What has impacted us more so, however, are the cultural differences that accompany our races. Cuban culture is especially unique in that it borrows from both African and Spanish tradition, resulting in a beautiful Afro-Carribean blend of values and traditions. When I met Emmanuel just after spending five months in Peru, I thought I was more than prepared to enter into a white/Latino relationship. Experiencing, through him, the diversity of culture within Latin America both jarred and humbled me necessarily.

To my mom’s credit, it’s deceiving on the surface. Emmanuel speaks English perfectly, wears vintage sweaters, shoots 35mm film, and listens to Tame Impala. We share many of the same interests and preferences. Those factors, however, make him no less Latino. He also wears Aeropostale flip flops around the house, washes all of our dishes with ultra speed, stays listening to salsa music, eats rice with every possible meal, infinitely values his family, etc. It still amazes me how he manages to hug every single person in almost every room he enters. (Disclaimer: I’m aware that these stereotypes do not represent every Latino person or country, but I use them as examples of the culture that I have witnessed. Plus I think they’re cute.)

Our internal differences were especially pronounced while dating. We responded differently during meal times: I’d never ask for food at his house, whereas he felt welcome to treat mi casa as su casa. For our first official month of dating, I gave him a belated card, and he showered me with thoughtful gifts--so much so that I ultimately asked him to pare down his generosity.

Even I underestimated, and still do at times, the effect that our cultural heritage has had on our worldviews, values, personalities, habits, and everything else. It is pronounced in obvious ways, like when I’m clingy at a family event because I need a translator, and in those more discreet, like the way that we process emotion within our families. In dating and marriage, it has meant and will mean constant compromises from both of us.

He must extend grace when I can’t shake my American individualist attitude, or even more commonly, when I walk into a room of Cubans and forget to kiss someone’s cheek. (Admittedly, this happens often. And as someone who’s really into personal space, I can find it uncomfortable.) I must understand when Emmanuel invites himself into a friend’s house or speaks too directly when asking for a favor. (We’ve had at-length discussions about the importance of  “softening phrases” in English, like “possibly,” “maybe” or “would you mind if.”)

These differences and compromises are real and true and deep. We see them manifest daily. There have been times that I resented our differences and wished that we could think or act more similarly. But compromising makes us better. It makes us more empathetic and adaptable towards other people and, strangely, more unified together. Thanks to Emmanuel, I understand a piece of the world a little bit more, a privilege no upbringing could have afforded me.

“The fact that, after a week on the beach, we might look nearly the same color, is irrelevant. It is our cultures and racial experiences that have made all the difference.”

The way that Emmanuel and I trudged through the Dana Valley in Jordan, you’d have thought we were climbing up a mountain at a 90 degree-incline. In reality, we were walking entirely downhill for eight miles.

I’d championed the idea, and Emmanuel went along with it. He’d sigh and say, “I can’t believe you convinced a Cuban to do this,” between long breaths. What he really meant was, “I told you this would be miserable.”

Just when the hike became not only exhausting but also monotonous, we found ourselves face to face with wild sheep. There were at least one hundred, plus a few mountain goats. Beyond the wildlife, we caught a glimpse of two men, the sheep herders.

They waved, motioning us to join them off of the path. I hesitated but followed Emmanuel as he made small talk with them. By “small talk,” I mean there was very little talking and a whole lot of pointing.

“Sheep,” Emmanuel said, motioning to the sheep.

The herders nodded. “Good.”

It is amazing, though, how much is communicable without words. They somehow asked if we wanted tea.

We sat down, while the two men began their preparations. One made a fire from dirt and sticks; the other took out a teapot and various ingredients from his bag.

I gave Emmanuel a side glance, hoping, like the Bedouins, to say as much as possible with few words. Apparently he was a master of non-verbal communication. I looked at him again, motioning with my eyes towards their stash of items.

“Emmanuel, they have cocaine!!!,” I wanted to yell. I could not believe he’d missed the small bag of white powder lying plainly in front of us.

My panic intensified, especially as the men proceeded to pour their mysterious powder into glasses.

“He must just be playing it cool,” I thought. “I’m sure we’ll make our quick departure any second.”

But to my surprise, Emmanuel took the glass and drank it.

“WHAT. Is he blind?!!” I was planning our exit.

Emmanuel passed the glass to me, and I shook my head with fervor. I finally whispered, “No!” and drew his attention towards the sketchy ingredients.

“You want it without sugar?,” he asked innocently.

I hung my head. Still skeptical, I reached for the glass, smelled it, and tasted the sweet black tea.

The herders thought it a good time to keep us entertained. One presented a flute and played the loudest, most dissonant noise possible. I could never enjoy such random notes together, but it was—quite literally—music to that man’s ears.

The situation was so strange at this point, I felt that I must actually be hallucinating. I managed to crack a joke about “falafel shawarma,” take a selfie, and exchange WhatsApp information before we said our goodbye’s.

We set out for five more deserted hours of hiking before reaching the end of the trail. At some points we found ourselves so tired that we were sure we must have been drugged after all. In the end, we figured that if we made it the whole way, it was probably just sugar. 

It’s difficult to decipher when trust is earned and when fear is warranted. In the middle of an empty trail, where the only other life that exists is in the form of a sheep, I would normally be more cautious. But this moment reminded us that the world is not all bad, that sometimes people want more than just money, that it’s possible the sheep herders’ only goal was to share hot tea and an experience under the desert sun.