The Girl

She sat on her seat on the bus. It was dark all around. She let the night take her and bring her to the so waited morning. Tears were flowing on her face, but she did not even know why she was crying. No reason, just like that. She had to stay committed to herself, so she cried, like she always did, every day. It was like a cleaning ritual to her, something that she just had to do. "I am totally crazy, out of my mind, mentally ill, hopeless case." - she thought and behind the tears there was a hidden ironic smile.

Her name was Petra. She was twenty and something and she was a student. She was not beautiful, nor ugly. Just like most of people, but although, special. Just like the rest of the world. She loved her mountains, the local football team, rock music, Arabic language and loved him. She could have been me, or she could have been you. But she was not me, and she was not you either.

She was thinking about what most of the great people in history used to say, that there is a journey in everyone`s life, a journey that changes the existence itself, a journey that has to be done in order to understand things that can be strange or difficult to be understood, a journey when a person should find him/herself, when some of the great questions of the universe find answers, or in the contrary, they do not, but perhaps those questions loose the need to be answered. And she knew that this was her journey.

"The last piece of hay... Those who fall out from reality, hold on to this. Half of my last piece of hay are you. The other half does not exist" - she whispered in the night her favourite quote of her favourite poet, and saw the desired face smiling to her, those eyes looking at her and she felt how a certain hand touched her hand.

The bus stopped somewhere in Bulgaria. Everybody got down, so she did too. It was cold. She saw a little shop and went there . There was a woman wearing hijab. Petra stopped and stared at her for a while, the woman asked her if she wanted something in Bulgarian, but the girl understood her body language, smiled and answered in Arabic. "La, shokran" (No, thank you.) "The first sign that I am so close to the other world..." - she said to herself, then went back on the bus.

The passagers were looking strangely at her, or at least that was her feeling. In fact that was her feeling all the time and everywhere. Except when she was on her mountain, between her rocks. That was the place where she could be truly herself, where she became one with the landscape and nature that was surrounding her. That was her world. And now she was going to mix her well known world with another one, the one she knew only from books, movies and his words.

"Words...how much power they can have" - she thought and in the middle of the night, in a strange bus, a foreign country, 700 kilometers from her mountains she started another journey, but this one was an imaginary one. She built again in her mind all the road that she made from a certain day till the one when she woke up and bought a ticket to Istanbul.

It was a cloudy autumn afternoon. Petra was at school, but was not interested on her law course so she kept looking out. She saw her mountain wearing a very nice dress, in so many colors, some clouds that were floating upon it and caressing it gently, and was thinking that winter was close again, when the mountain would be a bride for a few months... She smiled and thought that if this course would be over, she would go for a walk under her beloved rocks.

But suddenly she had to pay attention to what the teacher was talking about because she heard one word that interested her: Islam. "There have been many cases in the Islamic world when women were beated, jailed, or killed with stones. For example in Iran if a woman sais she was raped, she has to have witnesses to prove that. Now just think about that. And go further and imagine what would happen to this woman if she got pregnant. She would certainly be in prison and give birth to her child there and raise her child there. Just because she was a victim but nobody believed her."

Thousands of thoughts crossed Petra`s mind, she got very confused and she could no longer listen to what the teacher was saying. She was angry and sad in the same time. After school she went immediately to an Internet cafe and searched after the Islamic law system. She wanted to convince herself that what she heard on her course was just what the teacher read in a book published probably in America or what she saw on BBC.

She read a lot of horrible things. Of course she knew some of them from the media, but now that she searched, it was much worse. She signed in on a socialize site and searched for Arab persons. Some of them answered her, some of them did not. But there was one person who answered her with a lot of calm and gave her answers she did not expect. He explained her that all these bad things are totally against Islam and that the Quran does not say that women should be treated badly. They talked for hours and when Petra had to go home, she decided to keep in touch with this boy. If he would agree. And he did.

She walked on the streets of the city for a few hours, stopped from time to time and she was thinking about what this stranger told her about Islam. It was against her thoughts and believes. She did not know what the truth was, so she decided to buy a Quran and compare it with the Bible.

In the night she could not sleep. It was strange how she kept thinking of her conversation. Who was this boy? She only knew his name. She did not ask him anything but questions about Islam, especially women in Islam. "Maybe I will never talk to him again. Maybe he thinks I am crazy. Who knows? Anyway, he is just a boy from the other side of the world and told me things I wanted to hear. He is a nobody. Yes. He is a stranger. But then why am I thinking of him? Off... Thank God most of people use less than 5% of their brain. Because if I would use more, I would have to go in a sanatory first hour tomorrow" - she thought while she watched how the raindrops flew on the window.

She remembered how in high school she won a contest with a writing called "The Greatest Noone". She felt like being the greatest noone sometimes, but not now. She had a great aim, that was why she went to a bookstore and bought a Quran. She had to find out if indeed the holy book of Islam and the Bible are against each other, and if not, where are all these misunderstandings coming from. She finished reading the Quran in a few days and although it was a foggy morning in the city, it was very clear in her mind, because she found out that he was right. "I have to find him and apologize for insulting him and his whole society. I ate so many hamburgers and drank so much cola that I thought what most of western people think, that all Arabs are women beaters and terrorists. I have to apologize for my infantile behaviour. I hope he will forgive me" - she was thinking on her way to the same Internet cafe.

She had a message from him: "Go away, I do not want to see you, I do not want to hear anything from you (I knew. I ruined it all again with my big mouth - she was thinking ) - I shouted to my heart when it told me not to think of you anymore". She was laughing. Her face became bright, her eyes were glittering. Excited as she was and happy as she was, Petra wrote him back. And from that foggy morning on, they talked every day.
The connection between them was amazing. They talked for hours every day, they spent many nights telling each other everything. The months passed and they were happy. Petra`s mountain undressed, then it became a bride, as she used to say. They spent together important days like Christmas, like Eid. They talked about evrything. Movies, books, music. Sometimes they had fights, Petra was angry, but the boy always talked to her with so much calm that after a while they both ended up laughing. The first bahebak (I love you) came in December. And followed a lot of other bahebaks and szeretleks. They had little rituals that they did every day. Message early in the morning, late in the night, so it was like going to bed together and waking up beside each other. Or messages before and after every exam they had. And exam chocolats they both ate before these exams.They both found answers they were searching for. And they both dreamed of the day when they could hold each other for real.

"Prepare the passports. We are at the Turkish border" - the busdriver said. 2 more hours and she would be in Istanbul. Thinking of this made her heart beat faster and faster.