By all means...this is not the right time for her to travel.
The plane should take off exactly one week from now to this other part
of the world.
Right now, she has no money for this kind of thing. She would be unemployed in a few weeks time with no other new contracts in the horizon. It was a gloomy period, her being worried about covering
her expenses until she finds a new job, in that very specific field.
She was desperately hopeless and depressed.
She didnt have any days off left for an annual leave, and her boss
was out of town to be able to even ask him for the favor of letting
her travel before contract end.
It is high season and all plane seats had been booked 3 months in
advance. No seats on international flights free. For that country
all train tickets were sold out for internal transport, internal
flights were also out. Her friend who lives there and had arranged
for the very tight schedule of the trip to share with a third friend
was out of town and couldnt help solving any problems. She had to
find transportation for the exact timing otherwise she wouldnt be
able to spend the vacation with them.
Her passport has been missing for two years. She has no time to have
a visa issued
Yet, they kept telling her to try and join. She just decided that
within that week she should try her best and see what comes out of
it.
For some reason, she gets a good job offer to shut up all the
worries about future, career, independence and stuff.
The other day she finds her passport. Apparently it had been moved
to the balcony with the old books as they were decorating their
house.
She sends an email to her boss without any hope, yet he miraculously
agrees to let her travel. He also gives her an unexpected
compensation to travel with.
She manages to get herself internal flights from Cairo instead of
the fully booked trains. And gets the extra open end plane
reservation her friend had for contingency.
She manages to get a visa, and one day before departure she asks
them to make it a multiple entry and she succeeds.
And, one week from that date, looking at the clouds from the planes
window she cant believe she could actually make it. Many of her
friends were all I disbelief. Many thought she would never make it.
She has the nicest time with her two friends, only interrupted by
her parents getting worried about her cuz she was at one of those
countries where the Tsunami hit.
She spends new years on the shore of a beach, three nicely dressed
girls sitting there watching Chinese lamp shades being blown out in
the air to shine, chatting, legs wiggling down the wall to the
beach, only struggling with the international phone card to wish
their families a happy new years.
She has been asking everybody from the locals about a fortune teller
without any success. She forgets all about it. But then on her way
to the airway office she bumps into this Sikh guy with a large
turban, who tells her her mothers name. He tells her intimate
details about herself. He gives her the advice of life and tells her
to pray as her own religion dictates together with meditation. He
tells her its faith. The secret is to have the real faith in God.
With that you can withstand anything cruel life might throw at you.
She crosses the border overland and alone. She visits a major dream
of her life and dwells in the amazing rich history combined with
exciting beauty of the place. She counts her blessings once more for
being able to do that in this life time.
After having done all the sight seeing, mingling with the locals and
breathing in the culture of the place she takes a walk. She walks
along this never ending street, her lonely planet guide tucked in
her Rucksack, she has no idea where this street leads to.
She strides forward watching the people in their homes, the plants,
the Buddhist temples, the children on bikes. It must have been 3
hours or so since she been walking aimlessly when she bumps into a
sign saying "institute for revival of traditional khmer silk". She
of course goes inside.
She meets this Japanese volunteer who shows her around. He tells her
that out of 1700 original patterns only 300 survived the war. And
now they are barely trying to save those 300 left. She watches the
golden pure silk died using only natural dies, spun, dried, woven,
by older women who show younger ones. She takes a lot of pictures
and talks with the women.
The Japanese volunteer asks her to go up to have a look at the
products. She tells him she had no money to buy things now, he
insists.
He leads her to a big piece hung on the wall and tells her to come
forward for him to explain the designs on their most precious piece.
He points to a structure and tells her they believe it to be either
a temple or a mosque. She sounds very surprised! Mosque? How come in
this Buddhist country? He says wait, and points to two blank stripes
framing the piece, and says: we think this is a mosque, because we
think those blank lines used to be Arabic writing but we
unfortunately have lost them, we do not know how to make them so we
produce the piece as it is and leave these two lines blank.
She is very surprised of what she is hearing and asks him, weather
he has a picture of the original design somewhere. He says: yes, and
gets out so many old books flips through their pages, page by page,
the dust flying out with the motion of paper, until he finally
exhales. Here it is. he says, and hands her the picture in the old
ruffled book.
She takes a look at the picture and to her shock, those first and
only words in Arabic that shock her eyes.. لا الله إلا الله محمد رسول الله
She is not excited anymore, she is in shock thinking what was it
that brought her, the all time skeptic, to this part if the world,
to walk down this particular unknown street, have her find this
unadvertised institute, only to read those words after being away
from anything Islamic for one month living a totally different
culture.???
How come it was her, who neatly wrote out those exact words again
for the older women to reproduce in the lands of Buddha...It must
have been a conspiracy, such things do not happen just like that.
They happen for a reason, we sometimes just need to listen...
Noha El Shoky
12-06-05
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