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.
