"The Lip Reader" won first prize in Writer Digest's 73rd Annual Writing Competition: Inspirational Category.
The Lip Reader
By Michael Thal
I know there’s a God, for I know the lip reader.
At first glance, you wouldn’t guess that Jila (pronounced, Djee lah) is anything special. She is barely five feet tall. An occasional strand of gray adorns her long black hair. Jila is a middle aged woman whose appearance belies her inner strengths and weaknesses. She suffers from chronic back pain, the result of two traffic accidents. But her pain is concealed behind a perfect smile, behind teeth a fashion model would envy. And she dances.
One day Jila waltzed into my apartment shaking her shoulders like a Persian belly dancer. “What’s with the shaking?” I asked.
“You make me happy,” she said.
When I knew her better, I discovered she dances to overcome the pain.
Jila was born in Iran and at thirty-five immigrated to the United States. She speaks perfect English with barely a hint of an accent, a huge accomplishment for a deaf woman.
When she was two, Jila took ill. “I had a severe case of measles,” she said. “It left me with a bad complexion and lousy hearing.”
Growing up in Iran with a disability was a daily nightmare. The odds of having a good life were against Jila from the start. “I was a Jew. I was deaf. And I was a girl growing up in an Islamic nation.”
Jila learned early to read lips. She could communicate with her brother and two sisters, her family and friends. But there was an ugly downside. “There’s a lot of anti-Semitism in my country,” she said. “Kids called me a dumb Jew. I wouldn’t let them know I was hearing impaired.”
Nor would she tell her teachers. When Jila was eight, her second grade teacher posed a math problem. “I didn’t understand what the woman said because her back was turned.” Jila was chastised in front of the class.
As she recounted the painful childhood experience, tears filled Jila’s brown eyes. She adjusted the pillow supporting her back. “Then the teacher took a sharpened pencil and pressed it into my temple. But I wouldn’t cry. So she threw me out of the bungalow into a fierce snowstorm. I froze for twenty minutes before she let me back in.” Outside, huddled against the brick building, Jila made a promise to herself. “I have to be someone special. I must improve my life no matter what.” It was a tough promise to keep at a public school where teachers didn’t care.
At ten, Jila saw two “friends” talking about her. She was sitting alone nibbling her pita sandwich. “That Jew girl is weird,” one said pointing in her direction. “Does she have cotton in her ears?” They were seized with laughter that grew in intensity as Jila watched. She went home, quietly closed her bedroom door, and cried alone. She made a solemn vow. “I’LL NEVER GIVE UP, NO MATTER WHAT.”
Jila brushed hair away from her eyes, a hearing aid flapped over one ear and a cochlear implant receiver was strapped to the other. She focused on me with unnerving attention. “I know people not by the color of their eyes, skin or hair, but by the movement of their lips. You were the first man in my life that I had eye to eye contact when we first met.” We introduced ourselves using American Sign Language (ASL).
Jila’s father graduated from high school, her mother from ninth grade. In a country where it’s commonplace for women just to have a sixth grade education, Jila broke the mold.
After high school she was accepted at Shiraz University to study geology. Her brown eyes centered on me, intense, determined. “It wasn’t easy living away from my family, “ she signed haltingly in ASL. “I was lonely and frightened.”
Her fear was grounded in experience. “I didn’t have my family. My brother, Camy, wasn’t there to protect me. Janet and Juliet weren’t around to fend off catty neighbors.” It was from her supportive family that Jila learned communication was more than verbal discourse. She watched Cameron’s body language. She studied Juliet’s facial gestures and Janet’s use of tone in her speech, sounds Jila could barely hear, to grasp meaning.
Jila arrived early to every college lecture hall to get a front seat. She watched her professors’ faces studiously, trying to get all information they conveyed. And she saw her peers joke. “She’s in love with Dr. Abajami. Just look at how she stares at him.” She ignored them.
And her teachers were evidently endowed with the same level of sensitivity. One day, on her way to class Dr. Abajani was smoking his pipe and talking to colleagues in the lounge. She waved hello. He greeted her too, but with an attitude that said, “Hey guys, there’s the kid that has the hots for me.”
“I was humiliated,” said Jila, “but didn’t falter.”
Jila’s roommate took advantage of her. “My roommate was a drug addict. She stole money, clothes, anything to support her habit.” One day, in the university library, Jila saw two women pointing at her. When she read their lips she had to run to the restroom. “I laughed until my cheeks hurt.”
“What did they say?” I asked.
“There’s the drug dealer.”
I laughed too. Jila never smokes, not even one cigarette, and only takes a sip of wine during the Passover sedar.
Dorm life wasn’t easy for Jila. “Many girls made fun of my hearing problem and ridiculed my religious beliefs.” Her dark eyes flashed. “I was determined not to quit and get my degree.”
Jila earned that degree and influenced her siblings. Janet, her younger sister, said with a heavy accent, “Jila was my role model. She was always hard working and kind to everybody in spite of her hearing loss.” Janet also went to college and eventually became a pharmacist.
For fifteen years after graduation, Jila worked for an Iranian company. “I was a heavy mineral specialist studying lead, coal, iron, and uranium samples from different mine fields throughout Iran.” She was also put in charge of training new employees.
At work, co-workers tormented her. It was the first time in her life she wore a hearing aid. Maybe being a Jew at the dawn of the Iranian Revolution spurred intense anti-Semitism. Whatever the reason, many of her colleagues would keep vital information from her by purposefully talking with their heads turned during important meetings.
After the Iranian Revolution, Jila was able to obtain a medical visa to the United States. “The feeling of isolation in Iran was so severe for me that I often felt like an outsider in my own country.” Through the efforts of her friend, Ferry, who moved to the States years before, Jila was able to get an invitation to come to California for treatment for her hearing problem.
“Ferry is a precious, rare friend,” Jila told me as we flew to Hawaii for Ferry’s son’s wedding. As the airplane streaked westward, Jila’s smile glowed, eliminating years from her face. “I can’t forget how hard she worked for my medical invitation.”
At the wedding, as people danced and chatted, Ferry said, “It became a daily routine contacting doctors, following up with contacts.”
“Jila really owes you big time, huh,” I said.
“I live by this philosophy: Giving is better than receiving. I’m just happy she’s here.”
Once in the United States, Jila waited for fifteen years before she received the cochlea implant she had dreamed about. There was a waiting list. And her hearing, though minimal, was too good to be a recipient. Once it deteriorated to an acceptable level, she was approved.
As she waited, she gave back. “I helped Janet raise her three children as she prepared for her degree in pharmacy.” When elderly relatives and friends took ill, Jila was there to care for them.
Her youngest sister, Juliet said, “Jila has always taught me how to turn a negative into a positive. When I first immigrated to America she took over my role as mother to my son, Sina, so I could take the dental boards.” Observing through the years how her big sister coped with deafness made Juliet stronger. “I would look at Jila, then see my situation, and realize that I don’t have worries about my future. If my sister can do it, why can’t I?”
Cameron, Jila’s brother, has similar sentiments. “I didn’t have aspirations to go to college. But when I saw Jila’s successes, it affected me. She was my catalyst.” Today Cameron is a pediatric physician.
In America, Jila hoped to be accepted. She hoped for a freedom that she couldn’t find in Iran. “I was astonished to experience that same isolation here in a country that has given freedom to everyone.”
Jila grimaced, a flash of pain stormed across her otherwise serene face. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I was in an accident a few years ago. I crossed the street on a green light. I didn’t hear the ambulance coming. “
“You can hear some noises, “ I said. “An ambulance is pretty loud.”
“So is my tinnitus, “ she said. I thought I was hearing the loud noises in my head”
During the Iranian Revolution a car ran over her feet. “In America it happened a few times.” The effects on her spinal cord are sciatic and arthritic pain and injury to the lumbar discs. “To sleep at night I take medicine for anxiety attacks and depression. But I still have hope for a better life.”
The accidents made her tougher. “There’s no power that can stop me. I embrace life.” So she uses yoga, meditation, dance, and she sees a chiropractor and an acupuncturist to fight the pain.
Her niece, Azin, has seen her aunt’s pain. “Aunt Jila has had set backs in life, but she still perseveres. This has taught me to use my gifts and I will succeed at anything I set my mind to.” She paused, looked at her aunt talking to her mother in the kitchen and continued, “Aunt Jila doesn’t only say it, she lives it. Immigrants with perfect hearing don’t bother learning English. My aunt never gives up.”
Through it all, Jila’s eyes shine a godly radiance. Her smile competes with the glow of the sun when she enters a room. Though she suffers from chronic pain, deafness, and tinnitus that would drive a normal person to the brink of insanity, Jila struggles through each day with a dance. And she’s sensitive. She cries for evergreen trees that are lined up for sale at Christmas time.
This is a woman with whom I have a future. It’s a romantic kind of complete feeling of being happy and hopeful. Jila brings sunshine into the lives of everyone she meets. Though she has lived five decades with a disability that usually isolates its victims, Jila has adapted to her situation by providing a positive role model for anyone willing to look.
Jila is my reminder that God exists.
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Reviewed by Cheryl Sansone
1/4/2006
It seems to me that this story is as much about the goodness of Michael as it is of the goodness of Jila. I think it takes God to see God.
Thanks, Michael for being one of those who has eyes to see. And a heart that shares its experience.
I remember well being a recipient of YOUR generosity when I was in need. The heart that gives gathers, doesn't it?
You are Jila are gifts to one another. A wonderful story of water appreciating having found its own level.
Note: Since my husband's cancer surgery 4/25/05, this book content has been integrated into the public speaking content for audiences interested in a sassy approach to personal and/or community awareness events. Another chapbook on intimate love poet
