The People

The two men were talking about the car. I had left it at an abandoned gas station over night, then in the morning walked a couple of miles to the auto parts store, and grabbed a late breakfast, and now had returned to find two men discussing my car. Except I couldn't understand what they were saying. Even with Spanish, I can usually pick up some words and piece together some sort of meaning, but what these men were speaking was completely alien.
And then I remembered something from books I read for fun several lifetimes ago. "Din'ne?" I asked tentatively. The two men stopped and stared. They weren't staring at me as if I said something wrong, but as if I had said something exactly right, and they weren't expecting it from me. I got that look a lot in Japan. I also got the other look a lot in Japan, too.
These two fine gentlemen were Navajo. After introducing ourselves, one of them was fluent in English and Navajo, the other in Navajo and Zuni. And the three of us set about installing the new belts on my car.