Women from a Kingdom Far Far Away - Part 1

(Mis amigos de habla española: no me hago la sofisticada... es que hay gente que no entiende español y me lo pidió! No me censuren!)

My bags are ready; I have just handed them at the reception for safekeeping until my final departure, and I'm in the lounge beside the entrance door facing Abdulhakhamit street, which appears quite tranquil for what the rest of Istanbul is like at noon. I realize that this is the time that I have been waiting for since I heard that my University had financed the trip to this conference in Turkey: my return. I generally do not like travelling, I do not like leaving the children outside the aegis of my control, I dislike to overwhelm my husband with long lists of activities and recommendations. But this time it was a little worse. Not only because I'd never made a trip to such a distant place, but because my mother-in-law died in the middle of my stay. I still remember the shock the word provoked in me -"died"- when I read the email he sent me, entitled "Kurosawa." He wanted to comfort himself by referring to the movie "Dreams" of Japanese director Kurosawa, which we had seen together. Never will I forget the last part of the film, where a funeral is manifested in the form of a celebration of gratitude for the long and fruitful life of the deceased. That was what my husband meant in his message: not taking his mother's death as a tragedy, but as a reminder that she had had a precious life. To me, accustomed to receiving messages where small daily problems arose, easily solved through little pieces of advice, the word "died" flooded my entire head and chest, as if my lungs had been filled with a sense of inevitability, which I had experienced few times in my life. Used to answer, as I was, "it will certainly be solved", the word "died" did not leave any room for the design of solutions. My mother-in-law, her soft voice and sweet patience, now belonged to another jurisdiction, forever."

But it was not until I sat down, three days later, in the lobby of the hotel, my luggage already handed in custody and three hours to go before leaving for Ataturk International Airport, that I went back to thinking of the turbidity of the word "died" and cried quietly, hiding my face behind a newspaper written in a language that never in this life will I get to decipher. Moments later, a girl came to sit on a chair next to me. She could not be much older than twenty something. She was Muslim, I thought. I know little about religions, but judging by the part of the world where we were, her Arabic features and a long embroidered grey dress she wore, so I thought. A few minutes later I discovered that I was right. She was dragging a couple of suitcases, and sat next to them on a chair that was part of the same lounge where I was. She smiled at me with an unusual sweetness, barely separating her lips, stretching her almond eyes in a kind gesture. When asked if she departed from Istanbul that day, she said yes; she was from Pakistan, returning to her country that day, just like me. She had also been part of the same conference, and we had stayed in the same hotel but had not had the chance to meet each other. The conference had received about two thousand people from all over the world, so the chances of two strangers choosing to attend the same talk, catching each other’s eye and starting a conversation was minimal. It was only then, when the two of us were waiting for the time to leave for the airport on the bus we had been allotted, that we got to see each other from behind our mutual friendly looks.