“Are you speaking to me?” I asked the middle-age man standing next to me as we waited for the traffic light to turn green.
He whirled and shot me a look that said, “Why are you speaking to me?” In his left hand he held a tiny cell phone. When the light changed, he began striding across the street. As he neared the curb he glanced back at me. For a brief moment I thought he might apology. But he didn’t.
This scene took place yesterday in the plaza de Armas, here in Iquitos. The man who was so busy chatting with someone on the cell phone was not an American tourist. Instead, he was a local Peruvian I’d encountered from time to time during the eleven years I’ve lived here. We’d never had a lengthy conversation. But we’d always greeted each other with a friendly “buenas dias” — or a nod of the head.
The incident reminded me of something that took place when I visited my sister in Atlanta last year. I was “doctoring” my coffee at a Starbuck’s near her house when I thought the young woman standing in a bright blue business suit next to me had asked me a question. When I inquired if she was speaking to me, she shoved the cell phone into my face. Then replied curtly, “Can’t you see I’m on the damn phone?”
This has been happening all too often in Atlanta lately. And this bothers me. For centuries there has existed an “unwritten social contract” between people — regardless if they live in an industrialized or third world country — that a person recognize the presence of someone he encounters. This tradition has been one of the glues that has held societies together. I’ve noticed the deterioration of this contract in the states the past few years. But I never expected to see what took place in the plaza de armas the other day to happen here. It is my hope that it was just an aberration.
