Fall 2021 Contest Finalist
Meeting a Stranger
If you looked deeper, you’d see that everything is interconnected. Humans. Books. Arts. Every other thing. Like in the book Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak where Ella found Aziz after she started reading his manuscript sweet blasphemy as a reader of the literary agency he submitted his manuscript to, searched him online, found his email address on his online page, and sent him a message, I found my Aziz. Although they had the same first Alphabet in their names ‘A’, mine was not Aziz. Let’s call him Akan. Unlike Ella, I was not the one who found Akan. Akan found me. The words that connected us at that moment were:
Hello Hajaarh,
We are writing to you in relation to a project that we are currently working on — one that we would like you to be a part of.
Reading through the email, the project sounded interesting. I sent a reply accepting to be part of it. It was my first time hearing about the magazine. The team fascinated me. I thought this was an opportunity to build me up and help me gain the ground I have always sought to stand on. Accepting the invitation to be part of the project, the brain-cracking moments began. I’d stand by the balcony, staring out into the city and the hills visible from our two-story building, and wondered what kind of story I’d write that’d get me past the scrutiny of the whole team.
Ella met Aziz at the point in her life she felt everything was going down; the fight with her daughter, her husband who she suspected was cheating on her, and the sudden awareness that she was lonely; something she didn’t want to accept. In her first letter to him, she told him about the misunderstanding with her daughter. He replied saying her email found him in a village in Guatemala called Momostenango. It’s one of the few places left where they still use a Mayan calendar. Right across from his hostel, there is a wish tree bedecked with hundreds of pieces of fabric of every color and pattern she can imagine. They call it The Tree of the Brokenhearted. Those with broken hearts write down their names on pieces of paper and tie these to the branches, praying for their hearts to be healed. He told her that after reading her e-mail, he went to the wish tree and prayed that she and her daughter would solve the misunderstanding they had. Even a speck of love should not go unappreciated, because, as Rumi said, love is the water of life.
At this, she was touched, moved to learn that a complete stranger in a remote corner of the world had prayed for her well-being.
I understood how she felt after I began exchanging emails with Akan. I made some recommendations to him, from there, the direction of our conversation pivoted from the magazine to how we spent our days. At the end of every email, Akan would pray for my wellbeing, happy to have known someone like me. The power of having a stranger pray and wish you well when everyone around you moves with an air of nonchalance could move you to tears. He was, at that time, a knight in shining armor who could lighten my mood. I was neck-deep in my school project practical work, emotionally exhausted, and having a hard time writing but I didn’t want to let this project pass me by.
When we wrote about our days, we came to a realization that we could relate with each other on what we were going through. Like when he knew I was studying at the Federal University of Technology Minna, it turned out that he had also studied there before he left the country, so he knew exactly how frustrated I felt, how drained I was. He said the school’s acronym FUT which the students translated into ‘Frustration under Tension’ reminded him of the old days. When I wrote about waking up to a chilly morning and how much I loved to stroll down the street and go up the hills, he told me about Luxembourg; how chilly it was that same morning. He had gone for a run through the vineyards to warm up. I imagined how the vineyards looked like, how being in Luxembourg felt.
I searched him on Instagram, found a photo of him standing before a field of sunflower, his back was facing the camera in such a way that his face was not seen. He was looking at the scenery. In the photo, the field of sunflower was before a pathway and there was a river that stretched and crawled far away. There were houses scattered close to the river. One could see a hill ahead of the buildings. I imagined what it felt like to stand there in place of Akan or beside him and stare at the vineyards, marveling at such beauty.
Under the picture, a caption was written; In between runs… Basking in the warmth of the sun. #Luxembourg #Lamoselle #PureCardio #Vineyards.
A smile graced my lips as I stared at the picture. I wondered what was on his mind at that moment. I would love to walk through the vineyards if fate would ever take me there, but more than that, I’d like to meet Akan someday if fate was kind enough to cross our paths. He was not just a stranger. He had become someone I felt connected to; a friend I had never met before and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever meet him. But someday when our path crosses, I’d look at him and smile, knowing I had found a friend who could relate and understand even without me explaining, who had been a bank where I could pour all my feelings while he listened and at the end of it, pray for me and tell me you did well.
