Story 9

Story 9 a short story inspired by true events

Wanchain Leong

Preface I first conceived of the idea of writing novellas when I was in Melbourne, the first stop of my three-month travel. Following my 80,000-word novel, I wanted my novellas to also total 80,000 words. I started with the aim of either eight 10,000-word stories or ten 8,000-word stories.

When I began my novellas in Brisbane, I deliberately not titled them, but rather, numbered them as Story 1, Story 2, etc. At the end of my three-month journey, I arrived at nine novellas, collectively totaling 80,000 words. This is how the title came into existence. As you can see, the title does not reflect the content of the story, but rather, the writer’s three-month journey that resulted in the creation of the story.

Why a story and not a photograph? In his photo essay, the Turkish artist Aras Özgün said, “Art is for the people who are not yet there. Photograph is for the people who are not there anymore.” This story, therefore, is created for you.

A story has the power to transport its readers from their immediate environment, to a faraway land. By presenting this story, I hope to teleport you, on an invisible genie carpet, to the land I once visited.

Wanchain Leong January 2016

Story 9

December 1 “Hey Baba, can you go to Thessaloniki?” Zaliya sent a message on Skype while chewing on a piece of beef jerky.

“What? Where is that?” Abbas had just finished running on the treadmill. He stared at her question on his phone for a second before replying.

“It’s in Greece.”

“Oh … No, my course is in Zurich.”

“Can you visit Thessaloniki after Zurich?”

“No, my visa to the Schengen area is only valid for nine days. So I am going to stay in Zurich.”

Abbas said.

Zaliya and Abbas had been trying to coordinate their travel plans in the hope of meeting up after knowing each other for three years. Their paths had crossed by accident, and that accident resulted in numerous exchanges on Skype.

Three years ago, Zaliya was searching for a discussion on a rare gemstone with a diameter between 30 to 50mm. Without knowing the name of the gemstone, she searched “30 to 50” on Twitter. The search results showed an entry that said “30 to 50”, by a user named Abbas.

There was nothing else mentioned in the entry. She checked the profile of the user who tweeted that message. It was written partly in English and partly in Arabic. The only Arabic word she recognized in his profile was , as she remembered a joke about it that she shared with her Egyptian friend.

“What are you talking about?” She messaged Abbas.

“Oh, it is a joke.” He found it strange why someone who didn’t know him nor the background of the message to be replying him.

“What is the joke?”

Abbas hesitated whether to tell her but thought that there would be no harm in doing so.

Thus they began to exchange contact information. On Skype, he told her that the message was in response to an arrange marriage.

“Okay, what does 30 to 50 mean?” She asked.

“This is how the story goes. One day, my parents insisted that I married a girl. So I went to see her. When I first saw her, I was so shocked that I rejected the arrangement.” He was very repulsed by many of the traditions and customs practiced by his family. But he could not voice his opinions freely. Twitter had thus become his confidant.

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“Why? She was very ugly?” She asked.

“No.” “She came from a very poor family?”

“No. Her family was better off than ours.”

“Okay, so what was so shocking about her?”

“She was so young!”

“How young?”

“She was only sixteen.”

“Oh okay. May I ask, how old are you?”

“I am 32.”

“Oh, okay, yeah, that is a bit young.”

“How old are you?”

“Oh, I fit into your 30 to 50 range.” It was when she typed her answer that she came to realize the meaning of his tweet. She was then curious as to why he had the unusual preference for older women. Thus they continued their unusual conversation.

She came to know him as a Yemeni working as a researcher in psychology in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He came to know her as a Chinese Canadian working as an accountant in a library.

Their exchanges were often hilarious. It was over the course of one of their usual silly conversations that his nickname was born.

“You know, you should name your next teddy bear Abbas Abbas,” he said, after she told him about her stuffed wombat Why Why’s adventure to the Disneyland. One of the staff members at Disneyland asked her to pay for Why Why before letting her leave the premise.

All of her stuffed animals had double syllable names. She had introduced Jia Jia, her stuffed panda; Why Why, her stuffed wombat; and Da Da, Jia Jia’s girlfriend to him. However, Abbas did not notice that she only doubled the syllable and not the name, but she went along with him anyway.

“Well then, you will have to buy me Abbas Abbas.”

“Hmm … I would have to look for one with glasses.”

“Why?”

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“Because I wear glasses.”

For no particular reason, the universe decided to play hide-and-seek with Abbas. All the stuffed animals that wore glasses had conspired to go into hiding. After searching Riyadh high and low, he settled for a stuffed animal that wore a turban. “Instead of a teddy bear with glasses, I found you a teddy bear with an Arabic turban. I think that will be a good reminder of me, since I am your Arab friend.” He said.

“Okay.”

When the teddy bear migrated to Canada, she stared at it for a long time. Somehow the teddy bear reminded her of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, a book that was originally called The Arabian Nights before it came to the West. Hence she decided to call the teddy bear Baba instead. But Abbas insisted that it should be called Abbas Abbas. So Zaliya said, “Well then, he will be Abbas Abbas, and you will be Baba.”

Abbas objected vehemently. How could such a bright young man as he be reduced to a poor woodcutter as Ali Baba? Needless to say, Zaliya paid no attention to his objection. She started to message him “Hey Baba” on Skype. Surprisingly, he responded. Hence he had come to acquire the nickname Baba.

“Why is your visa only nine days long?” She asked while removing the cellophane off a lollipop. “Nine seems like such an odd number. Why not seven days, or ten days, or thirty days?”

“I don’t know.” He did not tell her about the elaborate administrative process that he had to go through to apply for a tourist visa. He did not have the same degree of freedom of mobility as she did.

“Okay, I am flying into Thessaloniki. Why don’t you fly to Thessaloniki from Zurich for a couple of days? They are very close.”

“Why don’t you fly into Zurich instead?”

“Because I have already been there before.”

“You can go there again.”

“Zurich only has a population of four hundred thousand. It is a small city. There is nothing else for me to see there.”

“There is Abbas.”

“Tell Baba to ask Abbas to go to Thessaloniki.”

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“Hmm … okay, I will see if I could book a flight to Thessaloniki from Zurich then.”

“Okay, let me know of your schedule.”

“When are you flying into Zurich?”

“Thessaloniki.”

“Oh sorry, I mean, when are you flying into Thessaloniki?”

“December 18th. When are you going back to work?”

“December 20th.”

“Okay, you could go to Thessaloniki for two days.”

“Hmm … I will see. How long are you staying in Thessaloniki?”

“Two days.”

“So short?”

“I think two days is enough to see the city. It’s a beach city. People just go there to sit on the beach. I sat on too many beaches in Australia and New Zealand already. I don’t think I will sit on the beach again for this trip.” Zaliya had just spent a month in the southern hemisphere a week ago.

“Okay, and after that you will fly into Istanbul?”

“Yes. How about you? When are you flying into Istanbul?”

“December 8th.”

“Okay, from there you will go to Zurich for your one-week course?”

“Yes.” “By the way, get me some Swiss chocolates while you are there. Swiss chocolates are the best!”

“Oh, you and your snacks!”

“Yeah, that’s what happens when I talk to boring people. I have to eat a lot of snack to kill my boredom.”

“I don’t think the dentists in Canada will thank you for your business.”

Zaliya popped a second lollipop into her mouth as she read his message.

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December 4 “Hey Zaliya, I need your help.” Abbas messaged.

“Okay, sure. How can I help you?”

“I booked my flight ticket, and I found out that I had misspelled my name.”

“You forgot how to spell your name?”

“No, I missed a middle initial on my flight ticket.”

“Oh okay. I think to be safe, it’s better to correct the spelling.”

“I know. I contacted the travel agent, but they said that I should speak to the airline. I contacted the airline, but they said that I should speak to the travel agent.”

“Oh I see. Why don’t you forward your ticket details to me? I will see if I have better luck than you.”

“Thank you so much! I will hire you as my personal secretary when I become a millionaire!”

“You mean in your next life?”

“No, I will be a millionaire in this life. And I will drive you around in a Maserati.” Abbas was quite well-respected in his field. He was very passionate about his work. He believed that the day would come when his career would be catapulted into the limelight and he would eventually become rich, either from writing a book about his expertise, or from starting a business selling his expertise. Abbas was a man who was not afraid to dream, especially to dream big.

He had always loved sports cars. He had fallen in love with Maserati after Zaliya advertised it to him. She told him that he would have a higher success rate in chasing pretty girls with a Maserati. Upon hearing that, he said he preferred the girl to love him for his looks, but Zaliya rationalized that his appearance would improve exponentially if his car’s appearance was equally good-looking. She sent him the sexiest-looking Maserati, and asked him to imagine himself driving in it with a pretty girl sitting next to him. Upon imagining the scene, he instantly fell in love with it.

“I would prefer that you give me the Maserati.”

“I can do that if you live with me.”

“Alright, we will discuss the terms and conditions when you get rich. For now, I will try to change the spelling of your name to B A B A, okay?”

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“Would you like me to fire you before I hire you?”

“If it is logically possible, I would not mind.”

Zaliya waited for two days, but she did not receive his ticket details. She imagined he either had it sorted out himself, or he was afraid that she would switch his name to Baba. So she didn’t bother to follow up with him on his flight ticket.

December 7 “Hey Zaliya, I need your help.” Abbas messaged.

“Alright. What do you need?”

“I booked a hotel room, and then I realized that it was a five-hour walk from the hotel to the place where I would be taking a course at.”

“That is great! You will have an excuse to do some exercise every day. If you don’t want to exercise, you can simply take public transportation.”

“I don’t want to waste my time on commuting. So I don’t want to walk nor take public transport.”

“So you want to change hotels?”

“Yes, but the hotel said that cancellation was not allowed.”

“Oh, hmm … that happened to me before. I don’t think I can help you with that. The cancellation policy says no refund on cancellation right?”

“Yes.” “Yeah, sorry, I don’t think I can help you. You might be better off to figure out the transportation options between your hotel and your classroom.”

Their conversation ended there with no update from Abbas on how he had dealt with his accommodation. Since he didn’t say anything, she didn’t ask either.

December 8 Abbas had began his journey to Istanbul. Zaliya wasn’t sure how he would manage, so she messaged him on Skype. “Hey Baba, how are you doing? Everything okay?”

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“Yeah, I am fine. I am in transit at Abu Dhabi airport. It’s so awesome here! There is so much to see.”

“Okay.” She didn’t think that an airport would be worth exploring, but then that’s because she had been to so many airports, including all the international airports that had received the World Airport Awards, the most prestigious accolades for the airport industry, and she had long gotten sick of passing through them, especially when some airport authorities did not properly manage the flow of passenger traffic when volume was high.

“Have you been to Abu Dhabi airport?”

“No, I have only been to the Dubai airport.”

“Oh, I have never been there. How was it?”

“Hmm … very big.”

“Is it nice? Are there a lot of things to see?”

“Hmm … they have fake palm trees in the airport terminal. I don’t remember anything else about it. It is just like any other big airports.” Coincidentally, while they were talking about Abu Dhabi, her television screen showed a live discussion about oil price, and the discussion was taking place in Abu Dhabi. She wondered why there were so many coincidences she had with Abbas. Oftentimes she would think of him moments before he messaged her. One time, they talked about chocolates on Skype, and a coworker knocked on her door to offer her a piece of chocolate.

“Oh okay. I would like to visit Dubai some day.”

“Hmm … yeah, there are a few amazing architectures in Dubai. I think you will like it.” She recalled images of the futuristic city which she had visited a few years ago when she made her first circuit around the world.

“Cool! But I don’t know how easy it would be for me to see Dubai.”

“Why?” “Well, just now, I wanted to go out of the airport to explore the city, but the officer did not allow me. He said I did not have proper travel documents.”

“Oh really? You cannot enter the UAE with your Yemeni passport?”

“No. But I told him I was born in there.” He said.

Although he did not explicitly express his feelings, she was sure that he was both disappointed and upset. Being denied to enter one’s birthplace was akin to being disowned

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by one’s parents. Humans were very creative at expressing discrimination. “Did you ask them why they did not let you into the country?”

“No, they just said that I was not allowed to go out of the airport.”

“Hmm … okay. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding.”

“No, I don’t think it is a misunderstanding. They were quite condescending.”

“Huh? That’s strange. Because you’re a Yemeni?”

“Yeah.”

“If they are being condescending, then it is not your problem. It is their problem. So stop carrying their problem on your mind.”

“Yeah, but I realized that it’s so sad to be a Yemeni.”

“Oh, no, don’t think like that. There is nothing wrong with being a Yemeni. Everyone is equal. The ones who don’t see you as an equal are blind, so you should excuse them for their weakness.”

“Thanks.”

December 11 Since her last conversation with Abbas, Zaliya couldn’t peel her mind away from their previous topic. How it could be possible, even under the most inconceivable tyrannic rule, to be denied entry into one’s birthplace? She searched the internet for such examples. None found. Thankfully so.

“Hey Baba, I have a question.” After thinking of the different possibilities, she still could not understand how it would be possible that he would be denied entry to the UAE. “Hey Zaliya, what’s your question?”

“I am still baffled at how you were born in the UAE, but you said you are a Yemeni, and you were denied entry into the UAE. Something doesn’t make sense there.”

“I will explain to you later. I have to get some stuffs done for my course, and then I am going out for dinner with my classmates. They are from different parts of the world. It’s so nice to meet people from different cultures.” Abbas had arrived in Zurich and had just got back from a brief meeting with his professor. The professor had organized a dinner event to give the students a chance to mingle and share their experience and knowledge.

“Oh alright, I won’t bug you then.”

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“Sorry, give me ten minutes.”

“Okay.”

A few hours went by. By midnight, Zaliya received a message from Abbas. “I did not say that I was born in the UAE. What I said to the border control officers was that the UAE and the KSA were both Arab countries. We speak the same language. We believe in the same religion. We have the same culture. We are the same in every way. It doesn’t make sense that I cannot go to the UAE.” “Sigh …” She finally understood what he meant when he claimed that he was born there.

She often had trouble understanding his underlying meaning, and it would be impossible to decipher, as he had a very different perspective and different thought process than her on almost everything. Perhaps that was a natural outcome of him existing on a different planet, one with its own unique understandings and customs. She had once told him to come to planet Earth, to which he replied he would do so on the back of a camel.

“You were making comparison between the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Were you implying that you were born in the Kingdom?” She asked.

“Yes.” “If you were born in the KSA and you are a Yemeni, that means both of your parents were Yemeni?” As she understood it, most countries granted citizenship by blood and by soil. If the Kingdom did not grant him a Saudi citizenship, then it implied that neither he nor his parents had close ties with the Kingdom.

“Yes.” “Okay, clear as mud!” Now she understood why he was not allowed into the UAE. “According to the Saudi nationality law, you already fulfill the criteria for naturalization. Why don’t you apply to be a Saudi?”

“I did. My application was rejected.”

“Okay.” She had heard that the Kingdom was very strict in accepting new citizens.

“Actually, even in cases where the child was born to a Saudi mother, the child was also denied Saudi citizenship. The written law only has an ornamental existence.”

“Can’t they sue the government, if the government did not follow the laws that it had written?”

“Sue! You have to remember this is Saudi Arabia.” He scoffed.

“Yes, I remember that. I am just wondering what the options for recourse are.”

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“There is none.”

“Oh yeah, the KSA is not one of the signatories to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, if I remember correctly. But then why is the Kingdom the chair of a panel of experts on the UN Human Rights Council?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.” She Googled up the reason and found it wasn’t because the KSA did not believe in human rights, but rather, a different definition of human rights. Specifically, the Kingdom believed that the human rights outlined in the Sharia Law surpassed those in the UDHR. She thought it best to leave the philosophical debate on the definitions and the ideals to the experts. Hence, she switched to a lighter but more personal topic. “By the way, are you going to Thessaloniki?”

“Oh yes, I booked a flight from Zurich to Thessaloniki on December 18 th.”

“Okay, so we can meet on the 18th. My flight from Thessaloniki to Istanbul is in the early morning on December 20th. So we can spend two days together.”

“Oh really? I am arriving in Thessaloniki in the evening.”

“Oh … then we will meet on the night of December 18 th in Thessaloniki.”

“Okay, sounds good. I am so excited!” Abbas said. “Can you send me your hotel information, so that I will try to book a room at the same hotel as you?”

“Okay, I will email you the details.” She searched for the booking confirmation email and forwarded it to him. “Sent.”

“Thanks. I will try to book a room there.”

“Great.”

“By the way, I met an interesting gentleman here. He reminded me of you.”

“Huh? How so?”

“Well, he was a Canadian, from Montreal.”

“So that’s how he reminded you of me?”

“Yes. But he hasn’t been back in Canada for more than a decade.”

“Oh? So where does he live now?”

“Italy.”

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“Okay, go on. What’s so interesting about him?”

“We were in the restaurant of my hotel at breakfast. He was sitting on one end of the restaurant, and I another. There was nobody else in the restaurant that morning. We sat there quietly, at our own separate tables, having breakfast, facing each other. All the while as I was eating my crepe, the old lady in the kitchen made really pretty crepes by the way, I was wondering about this guy who was sitting across the tables from me. So after I finished my breakfast, I tried to make eye contact with him, which was not hard to do since we sat facing each other. Then I said something to him, but I don’t remember what I said. Maybe I asked him what he was doing in Zurich. He said he was on a business trip. Then we started chatting casually, each sipping our own cups of coffee at our own tables, for maybe f15 minutes. Then some other hotel guests came into the restaurant, and he took his cup of coffee and asked, ‘Do you mind if I come sit with you?’ He said it was silly that two people sat at two ends of the restaurant chatting with each other. So he came to my table and sat with me, and we continued our chat. That’s how we got to know each other.”

“Oh interesting meeting.”

“Yes. Actually, what intrigued and puzzled me the most was his identity. He said he was a Canadian, but living in Italy. Then when I told him that I was a Yemeni, we talked about citizenship, and that’s when the conversation piqued my interest.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Well, he told me that his children did not have Canadian citizenship.”

“Huh? Why not?”

“Yeah, exactly my thought. So I asked him the same question. He said, he did not take the oath of citizenship until after they were born.”

“Huh? That doesn’t make sense. He was not a Canadian originally? I mean, he wasn’t born in Canada?”

“Yeah, that’s what confused me too. So I asked him the same question. He said he was born in the US.” “To Canadian parents?”

“Oh, I didn’t ask him that question. But he did say that he was not a US citizen.”

“Well maybe he meant that he was not a US citizen anymore. I wonder if his children are US citizens.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that too. But he did not elaborate.”

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“Did you ask him what kind of citizenship do his children have? I don’t think they will be stateless.”

“Italian.”

“Huh? How come?”

“Because they were born in Italy.”

“Oh! Interesting!” She exclaimed.

“So after that conversation with him, I thought about the subject of citizenship. How some people have dual citizenships, while some are stateless. How some people look down upon citizens from another country. How some people are treated as second class citizens in their own birthplace. I have many questions in my head.”

“Interesting thought.” Her curiosity immediately prompted her to Google up the citizenship act of Canada. She was surprised to stumble upon stateless children born to Canadians. She had previously thought that statelessness was only an outcome of certain underdeveloped nations. She came across a remark about the Canadian government trying to meet only the bare minimum requirements of the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. It almost sounded as if Canada was simply doing its homework, with the aim of barely passing the test.

At the individual level, a person could be an orphan when he was removed from his parents.

At the national level, a person could be a stateless person when he was not recognized by his birthplace. Then she thought of individuals who were orphaned and stateless. She started to ponder on the concepts of identity and belonging. Humans were one of the species on the planet that operated in groups, and yet there were many people who did not belong, for all sorts of reasons, to any groups.

She continued to dig further, and a child born abroad to Canadian parents must go through an administrative process to apply for the certificate of Canadian citizenship. She was amused to learn that there were some “lost Canadians” who thought that they were Canadians then one day discovered by accident that they never were Canadian citizens to begin with as they had never applied for the certificate.

With the bits and pieces of clues that she gathered, she began to piece together the story of the Canadian guy. She imagined that he was probably trying to register himself as a Canadian, which meant intentionally revoking his US citizenship. However he probably did not have the time to complete the naturalization process, ie. go to court to take the oath of citizenship perhaps due to the pursuit of his career abroad. Hence when his children were born, they did not have Canadian citizenship.

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“So, did you have breakfast with the Canadian guy the next day?” After she satisfied herself with the citizenship puzzle, she resumed the conversation with Abbas.

“Yeah, he was there the next morning. But we did not sit together. He was still sitting at the same table and I was still at the same table, and we were still talking across the same tables in the restaurant from the previous day.”

“Hahaha … funny. Was the restaurant big?”

“Hmm … yes, quite so. Big and empty.”

“I see.”

“He said he was checking out that morning.”

“Oh, so you only saw him twice?”

“Yeah, but we spent the second day together.”

“How romantic!” She laughed as she typed her response. She would not miss any opportunity to make fun of him. “But didn’t you have to go to your class?”

“No, my class was in the afternoon. We spent the morning together.”

“Oh I see. So what did you guys do?”

“We went out of the city. He said he wanted to go see a place outside of the city, and asked if I would like to join him. I said okay. He said if I wanted to join him, we had to leave in ten minutes. So I quickly gulped down my breakfast and met him at the reception. After he checked out of his hotel room, we walked to the train station and took a train together. He knew French, so it was easy for me to travel with him.”

“I see. So where did you guys go?”

“Hmm … I don’t remember the name of the place. It is a small lakeside town. He and his business partner were trying to secure the license on a piece of land for the Sotheby’s. I thought that was quite a fascinating excursion, not only because of the nice view of the lakeside town, but also because of the purpose of the visit. I never thought of buying or leasing a piece of land for investment purposes. And I never went shopping for a piece of land before. This was luxury shopping for me. It was a million times more exciting than shopping for a Mercedes Benz or a diamond studded cell phone that you use to say hello and goodbye.”

“That is interesting!” She was intrigued by the idea. “Tell me more about it! What did you think about that piece of land that he was trying to get?”

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“Hmm … we walked quite a bit before finding the land. I mean, it was not clearly marked on the map. His phone couldn’t receive enough signals to Google it up the map. I didn’t have internet connection on my phone, so I was of no help. After we got off the train, we walked around the area, which was still undeveloped for the most part, but the view of the lake was very serene and almost otherworldly!”

“Did you take pictures?”

“Uh … not of the land that he wanted to get. We were standing on the sidewalk, with one side facing the lake, and another side facing the mountain. I took pictures of the lake. He took out a big SLR camera from his luggage, and started shooting the lake as well. After that, he started to zoom in and photograph the piece of land on the mountain that he was checking out. There were a few locals there. They all looked very wealthy. I did not see any tourists.”

“Interesting. Are there any resorts or hotels in that area?”

“Of course! Not many though. There were a couple of new ones. They looked extremely lavish. And he commented on how the architecture blended harmoniously with the surrounding landscape.”

“Hmm ... That reminded me of the Manrique brand of tourism in Lanzarote. Was there anything else to see or do other than to look at the lake?”

“Yes, there’s an old town. We went there. The houses and streets were all made of stones.

It was a very pleasant walk. There were a few coffee shops and souvenir shops in the old town. It was quite quaint. It’s a nice way to spend half a day there.”

“Hmm ... That sounds like the old town of Jerusalem.”

“Oh, and there was a church. There was also a library. And a fortress. There was an open public space, like a plaza, in front of the fortress. We sat there for a little bit, basking in the sunshine. There was a guy sitting on the other end of the plaza, playing a melodica. A handful of teenagers surrounded him and were clapping and singing along to his music. I was watching the performance, and suddenly a cat appeared and jumped onto the performer’s lap. She started to brush her head against the performer. I think she wanted to say that she liked his music. He continued playing his melodica. It was cute. Great ambience.

I really enjoyed the old town.”

“Nice. Sounds like a very relaxing place.”

“Outside of the old town there was a little dock. A few small boats were anchored at the dock. I am guessing that the boats were for people to go to their lakeside cottages. Or maybe to go fishing in the middle of the lake. We saw a lot of fish in the lake. People were

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throwing bread into the water. Then we watched a school of fish fighting to eat the bread.

The water was so clear that you could see everything in it.”

“Wow, that’s nice.” As soon as Zaliya finished typing her message on Skype, she drifted her attention away to her trip planning.

December 18 Abbas had finished his course and was about to fly into Thessaloniki.

Zaliya had already arrived in Thessaloniki. She messaged him from her hotel. “Hey Baba, how’s your trip?” The reason that Zaliya always tried to check on Abbas was not solely because she wanted to coordinate their travel plans. It was also because she was not sure how he would manage travelling in Europe. He had previously asked her to help him plan a trip to all the 26 countries in the Schengen area in one month with a budget of USD$2,500.

Ever since that request, she had become quite curious of his adventures.

“Hey Zaliya, good. I am checking out of my hotel in an hour. Then I will go to the airport.”

“Okay, so we will meet tonight at the hotel?” Zaliya had just checked into the hotel, and was messaging him from her hotel room.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you about the hotel. I couldn’t get a room on those dates, so I booked a different hotel.”

“Oh okay. Well, you have my hotel information. You can contact me when you get here.”

“Yes, that is what I intended to do too.”

“Okay good!”

“So how was your flight today?”

“Hmm … I saw a funny couple today.”

“How are they funny? Tell me!”

“I was sitting in a restaurant at Heathrow. There was a guy who sat across from his girlfriend. Guess what’s unusual about that guy?”

“He was very good-looking and his girlfriend was very bad-looking?”

“Umm … you are quite right about that, but that’s not the funny part.”

“Okay, what is the funny part?”

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“He was wearing sunglasses, but there was no sun in the restaurant.”

“Oh, I think I know why he had to wear the sunglasses.” Abbas envisioned the scene and immediately thought of the dread of sitting in front of an unappealing girlfriend.

“Oh … I think I can read your thought! That’s so hilarious!”

They both laughed at the unspoken joke.

“Well, another reason could be that he was blind.” Abbas resumed his rational thinking after he finished laughing.

“Hmm … when he walked out of the restaurant, he did not have his sunglasses on.” She recalled how he walked out of the restaurant.

“Oh, part time blindness.”

“Is there such a disease?”

“Yes, I had just created it.”

“Did you also create the cure for it?”

“Well, I would not be able to make much money if I were to offer a cure for it right away.

Wait five years, when it has reached a catastrophical level, then I would write a book and offer a cure to the world.”

“Oh … right, all the major problems in our world started out small when nobody cared to nip them at their buds.”

“Correct. So for now I will just collect data and follow the subject. So five years later, when the psychotic condition has compounded multiple folds with disastrous effects, I will have the data necessary to explain how to undo the snowball effect of a simple problem.”

“Ah … then you can be rich.” They both thought of the Maserati that was waiting for him.

“Exactly. Anyway, I am going offline now. Got a plane to catch!”

“Safe travels!”

In the afternoon, Zaliya went out to explore Thessaloniki. After dinner, she returned to her hotel to watch television, while waiting for Abbas. She watched a documentary on Greek history. Then she watched another documentary about tiger cubs in captivity reuniting with their parents under human supervision and eventually being released into the wild successfully. Then she looked at the clock. It was 8.30pm. She phoned the reception. No one came to visit her.

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She decided to nap a little. When Abbas arrived, the receptionist would phone her, and she would wake up.

She woke up from her nap, and checked the clock next to her bed. It was almost midnight.

She brought the clock closer to her face, and stared at it for a second longer. That could not be right.

She got out of bed. She looked into the mirror in the bathroom. Her hair was disheveled but she didn’t care. She took her room key and walked to the reception on the main floor.

“Hey,” she approached the receptionist and asked, “Did anyone come to visit me this evening?”

“Hmm … are you in room 1501?” The receptionist recalled the phone call from Zaliya earlier asking the same question.

“Yes.” “No.” “Oh …” Zaliya was extremely surprised. Nonetheless, she thanked the receptionist and went back to her room.

She wondered what happened to Abbas. Did his plane crash? She checked the news on her phone. There was no mention of any plane accident in Europe that day. Flight delays were not reported in the news, so she wouldn’t know if his flight was delayed or perhaps cancelled. He did not message her. She didn’t know whether he couldn’t or he wouldn’t.

She did not know which flight he was on, so she couldn’t check his flight status. She did not know which hotel he booked, so she couldn’t check with his hotel. The only thing she could do was to message him.

She hesitated for a moment. What should she say in her message? Where are you? She absolutely hated that question, because certain friends had a compulsive and obsessive habit of asking of her whereabouts. She couldn’t understand why some people were so obsessed with her whereabouts when they had no intention of meeting her. Sometimes, they would ask her the same question repeatedly, even when she had answered them repeatedly, in the same sitting. Why did some people have such a strong, not to mention unusual, desire to check on her every move, every few seconds? Simply because she was nomadic? Should she be tied to a string, like a kite?

She used to post pictures of her whereabouts on Facebook, because some individuals wanted her to report her whereabouts to them, so that they knew that she was safe.

Reluctantly, she did as told. Taking pictures of every new city became not so much of a hobby but a kind of homework which she quickly came to detest. After they saw her pictures, they would ask her ‘Where are you now?’ even though she had just posted the

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answer on her Facebook. Out of politeness, she would repeat the name of the city to them.

Then they would ask, ‘Are you in your hotel now?’ She wondered if she should report her every move, from dawn to dusk: bedroom, washroom, kitchen, balcony, dining room, living room, etc.

The two most annoying questions she repeatedly got were: (1) why are you going there? and (2) where are you again?

She had no trouble explaining why. She only had difficulty explaining why to people who had a very narrow understanding of travel. There were people who equated travel to beach and Las Vegas. Any other travel destinations that did not fall into these two categories were judged to be strange, and sometimes, of very bad taste.

The second question annoyed her because she did not like to repeat herself, because it meant that the person asking the question was not listening, which then begged the question: if you are not listening, then why are you asking?

This past year, she had completely abandoned the idea of telling her friends and family that she was going to travel. Sometimes she might mention of her travel plans in passing, which then quickly triggered a round of whereabouts questions. So she had grown very discreet nowadays. Regardless of who it was, she would make a point of not telling them of her travel plans, unless of course she was travelling to meet them.

So she agonized over what to say in her message. Should she say she was worried and restless? She did not want to sound like a control freak, or any kind of freak. She decided to type the following message to Abbas: “Hey, are you okay?” She sent the message, and then returned to her sleep.

At Athens International Airport, near midnight, Abbas sat next to a few passengers who were waiting for their next connecting flight to Thessaloniki. The flight from Zurich to Athens was delayed for a couple of hours, as there was a sick passenger on board. The passenger felt a great sense of discomfort almost as soon as she got on board. At that time, the plane was taxiing, about to take off. As soon as the aircraft lifted itself into the air, the passenger called for medical assistance.

Shortly after, one of the flight attendants announced, “Is there a doctor on board? Please identify yourself if you are a doctor.”

Everyone on the plane looked up and looked around them. Moments later, a woman stood up from her seat and walked toward the front of the cabin. All the passengers then understood this woman to be a doctor, and all eyes fell intently on her.

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Moments later, there was a painful shriek, followed by a faint cry. It was as if the pain was so debilitating that the patient did not even have any energy left to cry. Everyone on board wondered what kind of an illness did the patient have. Appendicitis?

The cry, although faint, was almost too unbearable for anyone to hear. Everyone was edgy, staring tensely at the commotion at the front of the cabin, eagerly searched for clues as to what was happening.

After about ten miserable minutes, the captain of the aircraft announced that they would be making an emergency landing due to some medical emergency. Not a lot was revealed about the actual medical condition suffered by the patient, perhaps due to confidentiality policy. The pilot only asked and thanked everyone on board for their patience and understanding.

Everyone understood that it was a dire emergency, and some almost felt that it was a relief that something was done to address it, as they could not bear the wailing. A few, including Abbas, were praying for God to take the pain away from the patient.

The aircraft was diverted to the closest airport, which was the Zurich airport. Approaching the Zurich airport, the pilot waited for the air traffic controller to signal it to land. A paramedic team was already on standby at the airport. Swiss efficiency impressed Abbas.

The paramedics came on to the aircraft. The flight attendants assisted the paramedics in dispersing about a dozen passengers who sat around the patient, so to give space for the paramedic crew to work on the patient. The paramedics tried to calm the patient down and to relieve her pain. After a while, they carried the patient away on a stretcher. Everyone on board watched intently as the whole process took place. The flight attendants tried to maintain order amidst the tense atmosphere.

By the time the aircraft had re-entered the taxiway and lifted itself again into the air, it was almost two hours after the scheduled departure time. Part of the delay was caused by waiting for a late passenger who was being bounced around unnecessarily by airport staff as they had to further inspect his travel documents. The forever optimistic Abbas calculated that perhaps he could still make the connection to Thessaloniki.

After he disembarked the aircraft, he followed the signs in the airport. He searched for the departure screen. After walking for a couple of minutes, he found the screen. The screen said that his next flight was boarding. He noted the gate number, and proceeded to look for the gate.

As he was walking toward his designated gate, he started to take pictures of the airport. It was a rare opportunity for him to be in Athens International Airport. In fact, it was a rare opportunity for him to be in any airport. He turned around and tried to find the best angle to take his pictures. He took a few pictures of a couple of the boarding gates.

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His name was being announced over the public address system. He was not concerned. He estimated that he would arrive at his gate in a minute.

The last picture that he took interrupted his walk. In that picture, there was a woman with a headscarf. He immediately thought that she was Muslim. Her headscarf did not cover her face, but only her hair. She had an Asian face, which reminded him of Zaliya. He became quite curious about her. She was sitting on one of seats at a boarding gate that was perhaps 30 feet away from him. She appeared to be wiping her eyes with a piece of tissue paper.

Abbas looked more closely at the woman. Her downcast eyes did not reveal whether she was crying or not, but her expression was unmistakably sad. He wondered why she was sad.

He wanted to know if she was okay. He continued to look at her, from afar.

For a long time, she did not move, nor did she look up. Abbas noticed that her nose was slightly red. Perhaps she had just finished crying, he thought.

His name came on the public address system again. He ignored it. He continued to look at the woman. He was waiting for her to look up, as he wanted to see if she was okay or not.

She moved her fingers, but she did not look up. She was surrounded by passengers, but none of them paid any attention to her.

At that moment, Abbas began to recall a social experiment that he had watched on YouTube.

In that experiment, a girl was arguing with a guy in a park, and the guy hit the girl. A passerby quickly came to the girl’s rescue. After that, the video showed a girl covered up by an abaya arguing with the same guy in the same park. The guy hit the girl, repeatedly.

Passerbys saw them, but pretended not to notice or tried not to intervene. It took quite a few long minutes and repeated hitting before a passerby finally came to intervene. Abbas thought that the message in that video was deliberately skewed. However, now that an actual scenario appeared before him, of a Muslim woman surrounded by people who did not even bother to show any sign of care or concern, Abbas finally understood, that the headscarf and the abaya formed an invisible wall: not only was it preventing the wearer from extending herself out to the world, but at the same time, it was preventing the outside world from reaching to her. A wall, whether tangible or intangible, worked both ways.

Abbas felt compelled to approach her. He didn’t know what he was going to say.

Nonetheless, he approached her. By the time that he was a few feet from her, she put her hands over her face.

That simple gesture worried Abbas. Was she going to cry again? He continued to watch her, this time, from a lot closer. He was almost certain that she was either unwell or unhappy. He hesitated as to whether he should go up and talk to her. The seats to her left and right were both occupied by handbags. He could not sit next to her. He thought he would just ask her straight out.

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“Excuse me miss,” he stood in front of her and said in English.

She did not hear him.

He repeated himself.

She still did not hear him.

He tapped on her shoulder.

She looked up. Her eyes were teary and slightly red.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She nodded and wiped her nose with a piece of tissue paper.

He didn’t know why she would say she was okay even though she was clearly crying. So he asked, “Is there anything that I can help you with?”

The woman shook her head and looked at the tissue paper on her fingers.

He didn’t know what to do. He still wanted to know what caused her to cry. The less she said, the more he wanted to find out. So he found an excuse to talk to her. He asked, “Would you like something to drink? Coffee?”

“Hmm … Coffee.” The thought of a familiar taste brought a slight sense of comfort to her.

“Okay. I will go get you a cup of coffee. Wait for me here. I will be right back.” He was excited to be doing something for this woman. He was particularly fond of women who were quiet. He had a strong distaste for women who were loud, like those women haggling in a fish market.

He looked for the closest coffee shop. He walked briskly.

There were quite a few passengers lining up at the coffee shop to buy drinks. Abbas lined up impatiently. He bought two cups of coffee.

She was still in the same position with the same downcast eyes when he returned to her. He held a cup of coffee in front of her. She looked up at him, took the cup, smiled briefly, and thanked him.

He wanted to talk to her. So he knelt in front of her. She watched him in his awkward position, and she cleared the handbag from the seat next to her. He took the seat.

His name appeared on the public address system again. This time, his baggage was said to be removed from the aircraft. He heard it but did not even flinch as he had something more important to do at that moment.

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“Were you crying?” He asked.

“Hmm …”

“Is there something wrong?”

“Hmm …”

“Can I help you with anything?”

She shook her head.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded.

“Really?”

She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t move. He waited. She took a sip of her coffee.

“Where are you going?”

“Dubai.”

“You live there?”

“No, I live in Jeddah.”

“Oh, really? I live in Riyadh.” He was excited to find that they lived in the same country, the same country which seemed to exist on a different planet than the rest of the countries.

She didn’t say anything. He observed that she was very pretty, in an unconventional way.

She wore no makeup. Her facial features might appear plain, yet there was a kind of exotic and indisguisable gentleness and grace in it, and it was precisely this delicate femininity that very much enchanted him. She appeared about his age. She had slender fingers. There were no rings on her fingers. He wished that those fingers would be holding a bouquet of roses, instead of a crumbled piece of tissue paper.

“Are you a Saudi?”

She shook her head.

“What’s your nationality?”

“Canadian.”

“Huh?” “Canadian.”

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“Uh … were you originally from Canada?”

She shook her head.

This time he didn’t ask her to tell him where she was originally from. Instead, he waited for her to elaborate. But she didn’t.

“Were you from China?”

“What?” She exclaimed. She looked at him imploringly. There was a tinge of annoyance in her eyes.

He was surprised by her gruff response. He explained, “You look Chinese.”

She looked away from him. She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t interested in a discussion of her ethnicity, citizenship, birthplace, or place of residence. Nor did she feel a need to satisfy some nosey guy’s curiosity.

“Are you Chinese?”

She shook her head.

“What is your ethnicity?”

She cocked her head to one side, her eyes gazing at the cup of coffee in her hands, and said nothing. She wasn’t sure if she should tell him that she was a Kalmyk. Most people had never heard of it.

“Where were you born?”

“Russia.”

“Huh?” She was sick of answering this series of questions. She was even more sick of answering them more than once to the same person. Almost everyone who had met her asked her the same questions. On some days, she got asked at least a dozen times. To her, these questions were utterly meaningless. None of them had anything to do with who she was inside. They were merely labels. Labels that conveniently shaped people’s stereotypes.

She turned toward Abbas, and said slowly and deliberately, as if he was deaf, “I was born in Russia.”

“Oh … were your parents from Russia?”

She nodded.

“Were they Chinese?”

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“What is your problem with Chinese? Why do you keep associating me with Chinese and China?” She raised her voice. There was an unmistakable annoyance in her voice.

He was taken aback by her reaction. “Sorry, I just thought you look Chinese. I like Chinese people. That’s why I asked.”

It was like a Mercedes Benz being mistaken for a BMW. She kept quiet.

“I’m sorry if I had annoyed you.” Abbas said.

She said nothing.

“Are you Asian?”

She didn’t know why he had such a strong desire of trying to know her label. Why couldn’t he just focus on the content instead? When she met other Middle Eastern people or African people or just anyone who had a different skin color than her, she never thought of asking about their ancestry, their ethnicity, their birthplace, and so on. To her, it was perfectly natural to encounter someone of a different skin color. Yet when she travelled to some underdeveloped nations, they would always ask her this series of questions. When people shopped for a Mercedes, did they actually ask, where was it manufactured in, where was it designed in, and where was it tested in?

She stayed silent for a long time. He kept looking at her, hoping that she would satisfy his curiosity. She drew a long deep breath, and asked, “Do you know that there is a kind of plant called cabbage tree?”

“Umm … no,” he was surprised by the sudden change of topic, but being curious about every thought in her head, he went along with her.

“The cabbage tree is native to New Zealand. But you can find it in Italy, in the US, and in a few other parts of the world too.” She paused and turned to look at him, to see if he caught her point. He appeared a bit dazed. So she went on to elaborate, “Same thing in New Zealand; you can find plants that are native to the UK and other parts of the world too.” She watched him after she finished talking.

“Hmm … interesting.” He gave a customary response.

She realized that he still didn’t get her point. “Humans have been transmigration for centuries. Animals too. Even living things that are immobile like plants can also transmigrate, half way across the globe. Sometimes they even create hybrid species.” She looked at him to see if he caught her point.

“Are you saying that your ancestors were originally from Asia?”

“Maybe. I didn’t ask about my ancestors. Does it really matter?”

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“Hmm … I’m just curious. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“We live in a period of globalization. Being Asian or being Chinese doesn’t really mean anything. It is just a genetic characteristic, and you don’t appear to be interested in genealogy. I think what is more important for you is to start modernizing your thought process to catch up with the modernization of the world. We are advancing so fast now that we create one problem. Do you know what that problem is?”

“No.” “Physically, we are advancing. We have the new clothes, new houses, new cars, etc.

Mentally, most of us are in the stone ages. The body is moving forward, the mind is moving backward. How do you think you can achieve harmony and health?”

“Hmm …” He had never heard of such a problem. He only knew that sometimes people’s past experiences held them back from achieving their dreams and realizing their full potential.

“It’s like a new hardware with old software installed. It’s a compatibility issue.”

“That’s a nice metaphor.”

“It’s quite a serious problem actually. The sad thing is that people are not even aware of it.

It’s like your left foot goes west and your right foot goes east. And you wonder why you are constantly frustrated.”

“I think it is possible to embrace traditions while living a modern lifestyle. We can blend traditions with modernity, like a fusion of the old and the new. ” “Agreed. But there are a lot of thoughts, values, and traditions that are incongruent with modern times.”

“Well, history is worth preserving because it reminds us of our roots. Just like a tree. The roots have to grow strong and deep into the ground, in order for the branches and leaves to grow up higher into the sky.”

“I agree with preservation and record-keeping. But I don’t agree with living and breathing old thoughts and values. For example, in the old days, we would carry a bucket to the well to bring water back to our homes. We can preserve that lifestyle, in a museum or in a book, but to live like that everyday in modern times is absolute insanity. Yet, some people are still doing that everyday.”

“Hmm … I understand your example. But I still see potential to blend the old with the new in your example. I mean, we can continue to utilize water from wells, springs, or the underground, and we can bottle them and distribute them to every market. I think that is a

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hybrid, whereas a completely modern approach would be to treat the water at a plant and then pump it into our pipes.”

“Hmm … Interesting point. I like your analogy of the tree. What I want to clarify is that the tree is not embracing its history. It is embracing nature. It flourishes because it clings to the thing that supports it. It clings to the soil.”

“Well, the soil is to the wisdom as the history is to the roots.”

“Okay, you are saying that we need to preserve history because we need to preserve ancient wisdom? And the some of this wisdom may still apply to this day?”

“Yes.” He was beginning to enjoy their dialectic.

“And throw away the traditions that no longer serve us?”

“Well, I think humans tend to cling to traditions. They don’t go away that easily.”

“There’s a biologist and philosopher called Edward Wilson. He said that old beliefs die hard even when they have been demonstrated to be false.”

“Yes, I agree with that.” He said.

“I might look Asian to you, but I have never lived in an Asian country, and my thoughts are Western. So how would you label me?”

He thought for a moment. She did not wait for his answer. “Have you heard of the Syrian poet Adonis?”

“No.” “His real name is Ali Ahmad Said. He is quite a philosopher. If you ever want to modernize your thinking, you can read his writings.”

“Okay. Can you tell me some of the things he wrote?”

“Hmm … One of the things he said was that people in the Arab world are consumers on the international stage. Some of the Arab countries might be rich, but their only contribution to the world was in the form of consumption. They did not invent anything. Is it because there is no talent in the Arab world? No, there could be as many geniuses there as anywhere else.

Adonis said the problem was the suppression of the religion.”

She sipped her coffee. They sat in silence for a while as Abbas tried to digest the things she said.

“I feel that you are a very liberal thinker. But Islam is a very conservative ideology. Don’t you find that a lot of your thoughts conflict with your religion?” He asked.

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“Oh, you’re talking about my abaya?” She pointed to her headscarf. “I am not a Muslim. I wear the head piece because I did not have time to straighten my hair this morning. It’s kind of nice to have the option to cover yourself. You can look as messy as you like, and nobody will know. If I were in Canada, I would wear a tuque instead.” She laughed.

“Oh I am sure you will look nice no matter what.”

“Thanks. When I take the plane from Dubai to Jeddah, I will put on the niqab. I don’t really like eating and drinking when I am wearing the niqab. I almost think that the niqab could be included in a weight loss program.”

“Good idea. What do you do in Jeddah?” He asked.

“I’m working on a project for one of the hotel chains.”

“I see. What is your name?” He enjoyed talking to her.

“Zoleikha.”

“Nice to meet you. My name is Abbas.”

“Nice to meet you.” After a moment of silence, she asked, “Where are you going to?”

“Thessaloniki. But I have just missed my plane. I will have to find another flight.”

“Oh …” She wondered when he was going to leave her alone. Since he did not have the same destination as her, why was he still sitting next to her? “Are you going to find your next flight?”

“Hmm … okay, I will go ask around.” He looked around, not sure where to go to get his replacement flight. He turned back at her and asked, “Is there anything I can get you?”

“No, I am fine.”

He wasn’t sure if he would see her again if he was to leave right now to arrange for his flight, so he fumbled through his carryon luggage, and found a business card. He handed it to her.

“This is my business card. I am located in Riyadh.”

She took his card, although she didn’t know why she would need it. She looked at him questioningly.

“If you’d like, we can be friends. I don’t have any Canadian friends in Saudi Arabia.” He said.

She wasn’t sure what to say. It was nearly impossible for a woman to have any male friends, and vice versa, in Saudi Arabia. She wasn’t sure what was the point of him even suggesting it. Nonetheless, she said okay.

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He stood up and said he was going to find out how to arrange for his next flight. She said bye to him. He was hoping that he would see her again when he came back, but he noticed that she would be boarding in a couple of minutes. So he left her reluctantly.

He walked around the airport, asking a few airport staff, and finally found the counter where he could rearrange his flight. He planned to use his charm to convince the girl at the counter that he missed his flight due to a late arrival, which was not entirely untrue. He would just omit the part where he did not make an effort to arrive at the boarding gate on time.

Instead, he would say that an airport staff had misdirected him and sent him to a different boarding gate.

When he finally went up to the counter to speak to the girl, he discovered that she was crosseyed. He was so disturbed by her eyes that instead of charming her, he stuttered.

“Can I help you?” She asked, seemingly looking at her nose.

“Umm …yes.” He scratched his head like a monkey and looked at her fingernails. Finally he said, “I uh missed … missed my connection.”

“Okay, what happened?” The airline must first establish whether the passenger was at fault or not, in order to determine the appropriate next step.

He told her his version of the story. She verified that his previous flight did indeed arrive late, but she said that he should still be able to make the connection. He then gave her a few reasons as to how, due to no fault of his own, he was not able to catch the plane. She was satisfied with his answer, and proceeded to book him on the next available flight to Thessaloniki. His next flight would be the next morning.

She gave him instructions to claim his luggage. He followed her instructions. He found his luggage.

He was now sitting at the airport, waiting for his next flight. He had just remembered Zaliya.

Would she be wondering what happened to him? He wanted to message her, but he was not able to log in to the free wifi at the airport. He thought he would just meet her tomorrow morning. He did not realize that by the time the plane was to land in Thessaloniki, it would be close to noon, and by the time he was to arrive at his hotel, it would be afternoon.

He closed his eyes. He wanted to sleep. But he couldn’t sleep vertically. So he maintained a semi-sleeping state for the next few hours, alternating his postures every so often.

December 19

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The next morning, Zaliya woke up around 8am. She checked her phone. No message from Abbas. She phoned the reception to ask if there was any message for her. None.

Disappointed, she headed for the restaurant to have her breakfast.

At the restaurant, she checked the news to see if there was any plane accident. None. She began to think of all kinds of reasons why Abbas would not message her. Perhaps his phone got lost or stolen. Perhaps his phone fell into the toilet. Perhaps his phone was out of battery. Perhaps he lost his passport and was detained at the gate or was held by some lunatic police officers for travelling without a certain document. Perhaps he was being suspected of being a terrorist, and was held in an interrogation room. Or perhaps he simply changed his mind and did not want to meet her.

She couldn’t stop herself from brainstorming a hundred wild possibilities. She had similar experiences before. She had friends who would suddenly stop all forms of contact with her.

She had friends who said they would meet but suddenly fell off the face of the planet. She had friends who said they did not have time to meet her even though she flew half way across the planet to their cities. The more she thought, the more she began to question the quality of her friendship with different individuals.

After breakfast, she went back to her room to rest. She debated whether she should stay in the room and wait for Abbas to show up, or whether she should go out and explore the city.

If she went out, then for sure she would not meet him, since she did not have a Greek phone number. But if she didn’t go out, then she would be wasting her time.

She decided to go out.

Abbas arrived in Thessaloniki in the late morning. After he found his way to the hotel, he discovered that the hotel lobby was full of foreigners. Some of them spoke German, some spoke French, some spoke languages that he did not recognize. Reluctantly, he waited in line in a chaotic lobby for about half an hour. Chaos was the last thing he needed at that moment.

When it was his turn to speak to the receptionist, he found that the receptionist had such bad breath that he almost wanted to terminate the conversation immediately.

Unfortunately, the receptionist not only exhaled bad breath like a dragon exhaling fire from her mouth, but she was also very slow, doing her work at a pace that even a snail would competently surpass. She kept saying, “Just a moment.” He kept wondering, did the hiring manager deliberately specify ‘only the slowest moving human specimens need apply’ as one of the job requirements?

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Nonetheless, as he was just about to exhaust his patience, she told him that the earliest time that his room would be available was 2pm. He looked at his watch. It was 1.30pm. He said okay.

He sat in the lobby while waiting for his room to be ready. A French woman sat next to him.

She was playing with a baby girl with golden curly locks. The girl threw her stuffed turtle at him, inviting him to play with her. Very sluggishly, he threw the turtle back at her. She laughed, revealing a few baby teeth.

The French woman said something to him in French, and he responded to her in English. He did not understand anything she said. But she kept talking to him. So he kept nodding his head, although he really should be shaking his head. He was so exhausted that even if someone was to tell him that his mother was a man, he would still nod. He had not slept since he began his trip in Zurich. He didn’t sleep at the Athens airport, and he also could not sleep on the flight from Athens to Thessaloniki.

An older couple came and sat next to him. Their hairs were wet from standing and walking in the heavy snow. They smiled and greeted him. They asked if he was from the nearby apartment. He said no. He wanted to say he was from the desert, where there was no snow but sand. Yet he did not have the energy to make an unnecessarily long reply. They said that there was a small fire at the apartment, so everyone from the apartment ran out. It was then that Abbas realized that all these foreigners who were crowding the hotel lobby were from expelled from that apartment.

When 2pm came, he went to the receptionist, covering his nose as if he was about to sneeze, and asked if his room was ready or not. She did not open her mouth. Instead, she slid a room key across the counter toward him. He picked up the key and went to his room. He immediately fell on the bed and instantly drifted into the dream land that beckoned him incessantly and to which he repeatedly replied, “Just a moment.”

Zaliya returned to her hotel around 5pm. She asked the receptionist if anyone had left her a message. No. She used the hotel wifi, to see if Abbas had messaged her. No. At this point, she was getting a bit upset. How could he ditch her like that?

When she was upset, she thought of food. Thus she went in search of a restaurant. She spent a long time choosing a restaurant. After dinner, she strolled around for a while before heading back to the hotel.

She returned to the hotel around 7pm. She asked the receptionist the same question. The receptionist gave her the same answer. She checked her phone. No message. She was indeed very upset now. That bastard!

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She updated her Facebook status to “I want to throw many many many elephants at someone!” She had invented a technique of managing and expressing anger. Whenever she got angry, she would throw tomatoes, elephants, or bombs, depending on the level of severity. In response, her friends would send her an unlimited supply of tomatoes, elephants, or bombs, depending on her needs. Before she finished throwing, all her anger would have transformed to joy.

After updating her Facebook, she turned on the television. It was too early for her to sleep, but she was too tired to go out for a walk. Staring at the television screen, she had no interest in the content of the program. Her mind was occupied by a truckload of elephants, all flying toward the man from another planet.

Just then, a message appeared on her phone. She quickly snatched the phone from the table. She thought the sender of the message would be the target of her flying elephants.

“Hey, how’s it going? Where are you now?” Hussein asked.

She was surprised to find that it was her Egyptian friend. He rarely contacted her.

Sometimes when she messaged him, he would take days or even weeks to reply her. But whenever he messaged her, she would reply him as soon as possible. He was one of the few friends who could ask her of her whereabouts without her getting angry.

“Hey Hussein, long time no chat. I’m in Greece now. I met a muezzin today.”

“Oh really? Tell me about it!”

“Well, this morning, I went to a mosque.”

“Is there a mosque there?”

“Yes, from the Ottoman Empire. But it doesn’t function as a religious building anymore. I just walked around the courtyard and took pictures of the exterior. I went inside too, although it doesn’t function as a mosque.”

“I see.”

“I stayed at the entrance inside the mosque. I did not roam around. I just looked at the walls and the ceilings, and took pictures of the calligraphy. I saw a man sitting quietly in another corner of the mosque. After a while, he got up and headed toward the entrance of the mosque, where I was standing. I stepped aside, waiting for him to pass. But he didn’t.

Instead, he suddenly stopped walking and stood still. I turned toward him. He was looking at me. I thought maybe I did something wrong, although I made sure that I did not touch anything or walk anywhere that I wasn’t supposed to walk on. He asked me, ‘Where are you from?’ I said Canada. He looked overjoyed. He asked, ‘Would you like me to tell you about the mosque?’ I said sure. So then he started to tell me about the history of the mosque.

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Then he started to translate the meaning of the adhan to me. While he was doing so, he recited the adhan melodically. The melody flowed out of him so naturally that I was awestruck. Not only that, I could sense that every cell in his body was dancing to the melody.

He sounded like a real musician. When he sang the adhan, there was a kind of pure joy oozing out of him. I was so surprised. He spoke so cheerfully and sweetly about the adhan.

He was so happy that he kept on talking, and half the time, he kept apologizing that his English was not good. But I assured him that I could understand him. So then he taught me how to recite in Arabic. He translated it to me, saying that it meant there was no god other than Allah. So I followed him in his recitation. Then he took out a tasbih from his pocket, and explained to me why there were 99 beads divided into three sections.”

“Oh we call that a misbaha.” Hussein interjected.

“Yeah I know. Misbaha is Arabic. Tasbih is Turkish, or Persian originally. The muezzin was an Albanian who used to live in Sarajevo. Since Albania and Bosnia were heavily influenced by the Ottoman Empire, that’s why he used the Turkish word instead of the Arabic word.”

“Oh I see.”

“Anyway, I saw that tasbih, and thought of my Zimbabwean colleague who told me that he had been searching everywhere for a rosary made of a darker wood. That muezzin had exactly the prayer beads that my Zimbabwean friend was looking for. I kept ogling at his tasbih while he taught me how to use it.”

“Why does your Zimbabwean colleague want a rosary?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. But somehow he was very eager to get one. He told me that he went to many Asian stores to look for it. But he was searching for it in Canada. We don’t really have that many selection of such a thing, you know. I told him to go to a Tibetan store.

He stared at me as if he didn’t know that such a thing actually existed.”

“Oh interesting. Okay, go on with the muezzin. He taught you how to use the tasbih. Then what happened?”

“Well, after that, he talked about prayers. He told me, whatever it was that I needed, I could just pray to Allah, and Allah would grant me my wish, regardless of what my wish is.”

“So did you believe him?”

“Yes.” “That’s interesting. Why do you believe it, since you are not religious, and since you don’t know much about Islam?”

“Because of my own experience and understanding of the universe.”

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“What do you mean? You have prayed to Allah before?”

“No. But I believe in the power of thought and intention. More specifically, I believe in the power of the mind. Also, I believe in the power of passion and the power of the heart.

That’s why I am not religious. It is not religion that has power. It is man that has power.”

“Hmm … okay.” He didn’t embrace her idea, nor did he refute it. He had always maintained a healthy distance between them. He let her say whatever she wanted, while maintaining his own belief and opinion, oftentimes keeping them to himself. He was resolute in holding onto whatever was taught to him, regardless of whether it proved to be valid or not. Thus the two friends had always maintained their ideological differences. It had always baffled her how they could maintain their friendship, when they were so different, in every way: religion, culture, language, tradition, age, and gender.

She remembered a quote from the Turkish writer Elif Shafak which described her friendship with Hussein quite well: “Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven’t loved enough.” One of her major transformations was that she had written a novel, inspired by their friendship. That novel had necessitated a dramatic shift from technical writing to creative writing, a shift that had given her a completely new way of looking at life.

“So what else did the muezzin say?” He asked.

“Well, the muezzin was trying to convince me that it was true that whatever I needed, I could just ask Allah to give me. He kept saying, ‘Believe me. Believe me.’ Then he told me a story.”

“What story?”

“He said, at one point in his life, he was very poor. He had no money, but he was in desperate need of 40 Bosnian marks. So he prayed to God. The next day, a friend came to him and gave him money. Guess how much that friend gave him?”

“Forty marks?”

“Fifty.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I laughed when he told me that. He was exhilarated as he recounted the story.”

“You believed him?”

“Of course! Don’t you?”

“Hmm … sure. Did the muezzin say anything else?”

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“Yes, he told me stories about the people he met. One guy was thinking of committing suicide. He talked the guy out of it. Now the guy is happy with his life.”

“Really? That’s marvelous. What did he say to the guy?”

“Well, he didn’t give me a detailed account of that story. He only said that he tried to convince that guy. Seeing that the guy was in such agony, he told the guy to recite . He said, whenever he recited it, he felt so much peace and joy in his heart. The guy went home and started reciting. A few days later, the guy came back beaming. He told the muezzin that he was happy now.”

“Wow, that’s amazing.”

“Yeah. Then he told me another story about a girl from Argentina who came to his mosque.

She was in despair. She felt that there was no meaning to life. There were so many religions and so many gods, that she did not know who to turn to to even ask for the meaning of life.

She felt quite lost. So he talked to her. When she went back to her hotel, she invoked Allah, and asked him to show her some sign, to tell her what to believe and who to believe. Then she went to sleep. In the middle of the night, she woke up to get a drink of water. Suddenly, at the back of her head, she heard a very clear voice said ‘Allah’. She was so shocked that she went back to the mosque the next day to look for him. She told him that she wanted to convert to Islam. He was so surprised that he told her that she should think carefully before making such an important decision. But she was very resolute.”

“Wow, that was quite a story!”

“Yes. He told me many stories. He was quite excited to share his stories with me. I found his happiness to be very different from the happiness of others. His was almost childlike. The smile on his face as he talked to me was almost as pure as the smile from a baby’s face. As I listened to him talking, I wondered, where that pure joy came from?”

“I see. You guys talked for a long time?”

“Yeah. There were tourists coming and going. He didn’t talk to them, except to tell them that they did not have to take off their shoes.”

“Hmm … that’s interesting. What else did he say?”

“After happily telling me many stories, he said, he finally understood why he wanted to come to that mosque that morning. He said that he was a retired muezzin who used to work at a mosque in Sarajevo. After his retirement, he moved to Thessaloniki to live with his son and his Greek wife. Nowadays he normally prayed at home. But that morning, he had the strange urge to come to the mosque next to my hotel. Then after he met me, he understood why. He said, Allah had brought him there to meet me. So then I told him, I went there because I saw a sign saying that it was open to tourists during the morning. He was Story 9 Wanchain Leong

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overjoyed to hear that Allah had brought me to meet him. So he said, he had a tasbih that he wanted to give me, so that I could use it to recite . But he didn’t have it with him. So he told me to meet him at the mosque after the Zuhr prayer. Then he would bring me the tasbih.”

“Oh what did you say?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure if I would be around that area after the noon prayer, but I said okay.

Then I went to another part of the city. I walked around for a bit. I wasn’t sure that I would make it in time to meet him at the mosque. I thought, if the bus could take me to the mosque after the noon prayer, then I would go see him again; if the bus could not take me to the mosque by that time, then forget it.”

“Oh … But did you want to see him again?”

“That question did pop into my head. I was indifferent. But when I thought of the tasbih, I was eager to see him again.”

“Because you wanted the tasbih?”

“Yes, because the tasbih reminded me of my Zimbabwean colleague. I thought that it was a little bit like a coincidence. I never had an interest in rosaries, had it not been my Zimbabwean colleague. So in a sense, that colleague had piqued my interest in this muezzin.

Do you see the connection?”

“Hmm … yeah.”

“I was fascinated by how people and things were connected, especially when they appeared totally unrelated. I think that’s the beauty of stories. Don’t you think?”

“Sure.”

“So I wanted to write a story on the muezzin. That’s why I thought, if I could get the tasbih, I could take a picture of it, and post the picture next to my story.”

“I see. So you managed to see him again after the noon prayer?”

“Yes, surprisingly, I was able to catch a bus, out in the middle of nowhere, and then the bus brought me to the mosque, exactly after the noon prayer ended.”

“Wow, really?”

“Yes, it was perfect timing. Divine timing!”

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While she was chatting with Hussein, she set her alarm to go off at 5.30am the next day. She estimated that she would need one hour to pack up and get ready. Then she could use two hours to get to the airport, although she estimated that one and a half hours should be sufficient. Then she would arrive two hours before her departure.

At about 9pm, she started getting ready for bed.

At around the same time, Abbas played Angry Birds on his phone, while sitting on a bench in a park waiting for Zaliya to arrive. Suddenly, he heard trumpeting and growling from a herd of elephants. He was surprised to see elephants roaming freely in a public area in Greece. He was even more surprised to see their agitated behaviors. They were not the calm animal that they normally appeared to be. Instead, they were charging at him, at such high speed that the ground beneath his feet shook. His eyes widened. He was immobilized by fear. The elephants began to fly toward him, not one at a time, but seemingly all at the same time. An elephant attack!

When one of the elephants was less than one inch in front of him, he realized that he should run. He turned around and ran. But he immediately fell on the floor, next to the bed in his hotel room. He picked himself up from the floor, and looked around his room to see if there was any elephant. It was dark and quiet. He realized he had just run out of his dream. He checked the time. Already 9pm! He gasped! Everything in a foreign city was so alien to him!

Even the passage of time felt so foreign to him. He only intended to nap for 15 minutes.

His stomach began to growl. He had not had a proper meal since he left Zurich.

He went to the washroom to wash up, and then immediately dashed out of his hotel. He walked along the streets, surveying the different restaurants. Along the way, he took some pictures of the picturesque surroundings. After a while, he decided to try a small cozy familyrun restaurant.

After dinner, he tried to get back to his hotel. He needed to contact Zaliya. He realized that she had been waiting for him all day. In fact, she had waited for him for more than one day.

He wondered if she would be worried or upset.

He kept walking, and then he realized he didn’t know how to get back to his hotel. He was so absorbed in trying to find a restaurant in the first place that he did not know where he had walked to. Now, after dinner, he was so absorbed in what he should say to Zaliya that he did not know where he was walking toward.

Operating without a map, he asked for directions. After walking for a couple of blocks, he asked for directions again. Then he walked for a couple more blocks and asked for directions yet again.

Finally, he arrived at his hotel. He asked the receptionist to give him directions to go to her hotel. But then he checked the time. It was 10.30pm. By the time he got to her hotel, it Story 9 Wanchain Leong

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would probably be 11pm already. What time would she be going to bed? He vaguely recalled that she had an early plane to catch the next day. Perhaps he shouldn’t disturb her so late at night?

He went back to his hotel room. He sat in a chair and stared at the mini bar. He wondered what he should do.

At that moment, a message appeared on his phone. He checked his phone. Zoleikha had just messaged him to thank him for the coffee. He was thrilled to hear from her. He thought he would never hear from her again.

He asked Zoleikha to help him figure out what to say to Zaliya, after making her wait for two days. After he sent Zoleikha the message, he noticed that he had overlooked a message from Zaliya. Oh geez, not only was I late, I was also ignoring her message too! Gosh, Zoleikha, you have to help me!

Zoleikha said she got an idea.

December 20 At 5.30am, Zaliya’s alarm went off. She woke up. She moved around sluggishly. She checked her phone to see if there was any message from Abbas. None.

Well, she should stop hoping for a message by now, she told herself. She methodically proceeded to get ready. She made tea and had some snacks before she checked out. It was too early for the hotel restaurant to serve breakfast. In anticipation of that, she had prepared the snacks the day before. Her morning tea was punctuated by the bitter flavor of her disappointment at Abbas. Apparently she had not thrown enough elephants.

She had previously thought of the different possibilities of how their meeting would turn out, but never once had she entertain the possibility that they would not meet, or more precisely, that he would not come to meet her.

At 6.30am, she checked out of her room. This time, she did not repeat the same question to the receptionist. However, to her surprise, the receptionist said in a heavy accent, “Someone left something for you last night.” He handed a paper bag to her.

She looked at the bag. It said Frey, a brand of Swiss chocolates not easily found in Canada.

Upon seeing signs of chocolate, she was immediately enlivened, and grabbed the bag excitedly like a hamster who hurriedly stuffed too much food into her pouches. She peered inside. A bar of Kit Kat, a small bag of chips, and a can of Diet Coke greeted her. No Frey chocolates. Next to the snacks were two pieces of paper, both folded. She unfolded one. It was a printed copy of the sexiest-looking Maserati that she had sent him. She unfolded

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another piece of paper, a letter-writing stationery with the name and address of a hotel at the bottom of the page. On that stationery was a hand-written message: Baba’s Maserati broke down two days ago, and is now recuperating in the intensive care unit of a faraway hospital. In the absence of his beloved Maserati, Baba came here by camel. Hence his lateness. He wants to assure you that he will honor his promise of giving you a ride in his Maserati. As his Maserati was anxious to meet you, he decided to enclose a picture of it here.

At your request, he had prepared a box of Swiss chocolates. But somewhere along the journey, his hungry camel took the liberty of rewarding itself with the sweets. So Baba had collected some other snacks for you instead, in the middle of the night when all shops were closed. These snacks were the collections from his hotel mini bar.

He hesitated to call you up so late at night. Instead, he thought it might be more fitting to leave the snacks with your receptionist. He hoped that the snacks would cheer you up. He was really sorry to make you wait. He hoped that you would forgive him.

Prior to stepping out of the hotel’s wifi network, Zaliya messaged Abbas on her phone: “You forgot to give me the key to your Maserati.”

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Appendix We are constantly exchanging energy with our environment. We exchange ideas, emotions, and things. We shape our environment, and our environment in turn shapes us.

Over my three-month journey, I have collected fragments of different ideas and things.

Through some distillation, I stitched together the diverse and unrelated fragments into a story. Below are the fragments, before my synthesis.

The muezzin: Salim was an Albanian living in Sarajevo. One thing that surprised me about him was that at one point in our conversation, he said, “I don’t know how to say it in English, but the German word is angst.” My eyes almost popped out as I heard that. He is Albanian, so naturally he should have some knowledge of that language. He lives in BiH, so that means he should know Bosnian. He teaches Arabic to people at the mosque. He speaks English, obviously. And he knows German too?

The Sotherby’s: This story came to me when I met Jerome. He had not told anyone else about the land title business, which meant that I was not to reveal any of its details. The details in the story therefore were altered.

Jerome told me many other stories. One of them was about the rocks in Sardinia. One of the rocks completely healed his injured ankle, when conventional therapy didn’t. Another rock healed him in a rather amusing way, by pulling his body toward it. He said that resting on the rock was so relaxing that he couldn’t remove himself from it. When he finally wrestled to detach his body from it, he felt rejuvenated, and his bodily complaint disappeared.

Kalmyk: I was ignorant of this ethnic group until I watched the Russian movie Chaiki on a KLM flight from Calgary to Amsterdam. The actors and actresses looked Chinese, so I was not curious about them. What piqued my curiosity was that this was the debut movie of the Russian model, as mentioned in the film synopsis. A Russian model? I started to Google her up. It was then that I learned that she was Kalmyk.

Throughout my Europe trip, I was constantly bombarded with the question “Where are you from?” From this question, several themes of my story--citizenship, birthplace, place of residence, and ethnicity—were born. To further develop these themes, I created the Kalmyk character.

The sunglasses: This episode was inspired by a couple I saw at the restaurant of my hotel in Istanbul. The first day I saw the boyfriend, he wore sunglasses, like a movie star. The second day and onwards, he didn’t wear sunglasses, and I wondered why. Then my curiosity began to shift to his girlfriend, and noticed that she appeared more like his mother or auntie. Then I became more intrigued by this couple. A certain something about them lingered in my mind, and that’s when I decided to make them come alive in my story.

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Transmigration: I first encountered this concept in New Zealand, when I was introduced to trees brought in from the UK by the British settlers. Then I came across this concept again in a franchise exhibition in SALT Galata, a cultural institution in Istanbul. In that exhibition, comparisons were made between plant and human mobility, showing the use of botanical terminologies in human activities such as “the cross-fertilization of cultures … dispersal of immigrants … germinating refugee crises … weed out refugees.” I find this exhibition very inspiring as it questioned the meaning of identity, belonging, and displacement (of people, of animals, and of plants), all of which are very central themes in this story.

Adonis: I first encountered Elif Shafak, the Turkish female writer, at a shop in Sarajevo International Airport. Subsequently, I listened to two of her audiobooks. From her books, I saw a different side of Istanbul. I began to develop an interest in seeing Istanbul through the eyes of an Istanbulite, hence I went on to explore other Turkish writers, and came across Orhan Pamuk. From Pamuk, I came across Adonis, the avant-garde Syrian poet. Some had speculated that Adonis should have won the Nobel Prize in 2006, instead of Pamuk. Adonis has some very modern thinking, so modern that it is controversial. So controversial that he has received death threats. So threatening that the Syrian film director Eva Daoud said, “The prophet of every age is always crucified at the hands of ignorance and backwardness …

History has never witnessed a philosopher killing a man of God, but to this day intellectuals are being threatened and killed by people who have become religious.”

Zoleikha: I was immediately drawn to this name when I first heard it in the audiobook The Bastard of Istanbul, by Elif Shafak. The narrator made such an effort to emphasize the last syllable that it sounded quite exotic, and reminded me of a joke I had with my Egyptian friend. At the time, I did not know the spelling of that name. Later I watched an Iranian film Café Transit, and the subtitle showed Zoleikha as the main character. It was much later that I came to know the spelling of the name of Elif’s character to be Zeliha. But I had already fallen in love with Zoleikha. I wonder if I would have loved Zeliha more, if that was the spelling I first saw.

Abbas: My friendship with Abbas has been a comical one. The one thing that he always says to me is: “I love your sense of humour!” In the story, there are instances of him teasing me, but in real life, only I am allowed to tease him. When I asked him, “Can I hit you?” He said, “If it makes you happy.” Hence I decided to make this story a happy one by having several mild calamities befell him.

The Maserati: It wasn’t the car that attracted me, but the sound of its Italian name. My Swiss penpal said that it did not make sense to her that I would write when I didn’t read.

Hence, on my trip, I listened to some audiobooks. One of them was Dance Dance Dance, by Murakami, an author I used to like when I was in university. In that book, there was a Maserati. So when I wrote this story, the Maserati reappeared in my mind to become Abbas’ dream car. I surprised myself when Murakami’s Maserati emerged from Murakami’s sea and

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was hospitalized in the intensive care unit of my story. But then that’s the lure of storytelling.

The fire: On my last day in Istanbul, I walked in to a hotel to request help on getting to the airport, when part of the public transportation system was out of service due to the weather.

In the hotel lobby was a French woman, playing with a toddler. I asked her if she was waiting to check in. She replied me in French. The only word I caught was fume, since she kept repeating it. I could not remember what that French word meant. Fatih, a young concierge who normally worked the midnight shift, said he had an “interesting night”, as a fire broke out in a nearby apartment. That’s when I realized that it was the smoke from the fire that forced the occupants out of that building and into this hotel building. The fire was not the only thing that made Fatih’s night interesting. There was also a couple of Germans who came into the hotel. All these unexpected guests, including me, contributed to his interesting night. At the time, I thought I would capitalize on this strange and “interesting” experience by putting it in my story. And what better way to introduce it to my story, than to drive Abbas bonkers?

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Postface I first made the decision to make my stories freely accessible when I was in Melbourne, the first stop of my three-month journey. At that time, I had no idea how I would do that.

Nonetheless, I knew that my path would reveal itself as I approached each milestone.

While I was writing the appendix, I had the urge to talk to the artist who exhibited plant migration (as I felt strongly about the theme). I found her on a publishing website. I tried to leave her a comment. But being a dinosaur in the technology era, I ended up creating an account on that website, after clicking this and that. Instead of leaving a comment, I had unintentionally arrived at a publishing tool, at the point when this novella was substantially complete. The features offered by issuu are exactly what I had in mind. Perhaps this is the universe’s response to my decision made in Melbourne.

Wanchain Leong January 2016

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