Women from a Kingdom Far Far Away - Final part

If you want to read the whole story, click here and read it from bottom to top (Part 1, Part 2, Final Part).

They are planning to have lunch. As for me, I have nothing in my pocket. The transfer to the airport was paid in advance, and I have only one hundred U.S. dollars, which I have not changed, and not a single Turkish lira. I tell them I have already had something to eat; I am not hungry. It is not completely true, but I'd rather wait a couple of hours for the tray on the airplane. Just around the corner from the hotel, as it is summer in Istanbul, a small bar with its tables displayed on a pedestrian street shows its daily specials on signs hand-written in chalk. My friends order exotic soups served in clay pots which come along with a basket full of pieces of bread, so many that four people could barely finish off. I shyly take one and satisfy my urge. In my backpack I carry a bottle of water. I do not need anything else.

So we started a conversation about many things, all intertwined, all urgently linked; the imaginable kind of conversation between persons who are happy to have met and yet they know they only have a couple of hours between their being total strangers and their plausibly never meeting again. An improbable conversation during a magical moment suspended in time; a moment that is there, but might not have existed ever. The chances of seeing each other again are remote. And yet, there is something floating in the air, an angel of friendship that is taking shape and is whispering in our ears that the one that is there, in front of us, is so different, but is still a woman, an equal, with similar surprises and sorrows. After talking about our children we move on to death ... universal themes. From death, to religion. Uzma, a devoted Muslim, tells me that some parts of the Old Testament are respected by the Muslim religion, and that their Holy Prophet Muhammad respected Christ, not as the Messiah, but as a prophet, like Muhammad Himself was. Now, after the Holy Prophet, they are awaiting the arrival of the Messiah. I say that we Christians are also waiting for the Messiah; not His arrival but His return, because we think He already came in the person of Jesus. Uzma calls my attention to the fact that the Jews, who did not believe in either of these two Prophets, neither Jesus nor Muhammad, are also waiting for the Messiah to come once and for all. Intuition strikes me in the face like a ray of light, and I tell her: "All three monotheistic religions are waiting for the same to happen." Uzma nods and adds: "And all three religions believe in the One and Only God." Until today, this revelation has haunted me like a shadow, or a ghost. I have not stopped reading about Islam, as I have not stopped wondering why there has ever been something called “Holy War”.

Nazia does not participate in the conversation. Her gaze is lost in the street that seems to distill a wet steam at this time of day when the sun is highest. A digital thermometer over the door of a building marks 32 º C. Her thoughts, I think, are in her remote Pakistan, in her mother’s tomb.

It is already time and we are sitting in the mini van to the airport. Nazia is sitting beside me, she rests her head on my shoulder and takes my hand. I am surprised: she starts to cry quietly. "I miss my mother", she says "and you are such a kind lady". I squeeze her hand and I think of my mother-in-law again. Nazia and I are two hearts that share a loss.

At the airport Uzma looks straight at me with her piercing black eyes. There is an interesting light in them. "Let us keep talking about religion by the Internet" and she shakes my hand goodbye. Nazia grabs me in an embrace that seems eternal and does not belong to any tradition, neither Eastern nor Western, just a human being clinging, through an impassable body, to the soul of another. "Write to me, please", she says.

Uruguay is waiting for me with its melancholic streets; with its "patio light”, as Borges once said; with its Christian certainties without conviction; with its Western clothing, which I dare not call “normal” ever again; with my husband, who has lost his mother, broken down into pieces that I will have to try to gather on my return. But I am a new person. And to this day I am still exchanging mail with these women that now seem to me almost unreal. They live in a "Kingdom Far Far Away". Fortunately, the Internet serves as a virtual bridge between our distant worlds.