Belgium


Upon one of the beautiful nights, I spent in Belgium last week, my cousin and I were sitting in a restaurant waiting for Maghreb prayer to dig into the pizza that arrived a bit early and was so hot and beautiful lying on our table. A very nice Tunisian waiter we have met as we ordered came out of the restaurant door and said out loud: ‘ladies, time!’
My cousin unwrapped a plastic bag with dates inside and reached out to me offering me a piece. Two older men were sitting on the table next to us, very confused by everything going on, asked: ‘what is that in the bag?’ My cousin said it was dated, and explained that we are fasting and this is what we break our fast with.
The night went on and we kept talking to them. One seemed to be in his late 30 and the other a bit older with white hair and a white beard. They both seemed very educated, very smart. Discussions with them went beautifully, we talked about things from politics to ice cream. Fascinated by their personalities we asked them what they worked, the younger was a clinical psychologist and the older said he was a religious man. That made sense, as he spoke I thought he must be some kind of lecturer, the way he talked and delivered the information was not like any normal person. When we got home later that night we found the older man on the web, he seems to be a very important religion man, he has a lot of writings and is quite famous. Anyway,
As the night came to an end the older man said something beautiful that I cannot recall literally, but to sum up the idea it was something like: we are just here to have a drink, we saw you two and we talked, we communicated. If the world could do that; communicate, it would be a better place. It doesn’t matter what religion you come from, all religions speak of peace, of coexisting, of communication and in the end we are all the same, humans.

It is random people like this and random situations like this that widen your eyes and expand your brain. It is people like this that make you feel like it is good in the world, and ignorance didn’t yet take over.


On a less serious note, I had extremely beautiful days with my cousin in Belgium. It is a beautiful city with people from all over the world; the variety of culture you can see in one street is quite fascinating. It is not as perfect as Germany and I loved that. Too much perfection kills the soul, I think.
The feeling of family, though, waking up to family and sleeping to family, was the best feeling after months of living alone. Setting a table for two, having someone to ask about a piece of clothing you’ve tried, chatting with someone about the shallowest and the deepest subjects, laughing with someone nonstop for minutes, all in all having a family member present in your life, actually in front of you and not on the screen of a computer is such a blessing that I think I only realized when I got deprived of.
Here is to another chapter in this little adventure of mine, a chapter now over but very beautiful and will remain beautiful in my head.
Here is to peace and here is to hope. Cause such optimistic beauty still exists.














Until the next one.

Coincidence?

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