Raffi was used to the bazaar, its environment and the characters inhabiting it, some who were helpful and some who were dangerous. He’d sat in the family shop selling wares daily since a child, except on Eid, Shura and the other festivals. He’d gone firstly with his father and later after his father died, he followed his Uncle Hussein.
There came an evening at home over a family dinner, when Uncle Hussein told him that he may not be able to follow Raffi to the bazaar if certain things worked out. He did not explain but Raffi knew that his cousin, Uncle Hussein’s oldest boy, was employed by an American company. There was a possibility that he would have his visa approved to visit the United States. Raffi decided that he was old enough to run the business himself instead of depending on his elderly uncle and began running the business likewise. Time passed slowly until Uncle Hussein told Raffi one day that he would be away for six months, visiting his son in New York. He left shortly after.
There was a certain girl in the bazaar. She was very intelligent in Raffi’s opinion because she liked quoting Rumi and other poets he’d read about. He would have said that she was beautiful – she was most definitely that as well – but the bazaar had many stalls with pretty girls. He’d found time – he’d made time – to speak with her. She liked him, he could tell, because she didn’t waste time talking with any of the other fellows who worked in the bazaar. There were many young guys – selling carpets, jewelry, spices, vegetables and fruits, meat – all either helping their family or working as apprentices with dreams on one day owning their own shop who possessed the typical charm and flowery languages that older boys had taught them and which they tried on girls. The girls were not stupid either. They teased the fellows they liked, were cold to those they didn’t and had an opinion on everyone who plied their trade in the bazaar.
This girl, whom Raffi had fallen for, was different – to him at least – because she did not speak of how big a home she wanted or the number of children she planned to have. Instead, she spoke of degrees and PhDs, foreign universities and travel. Raffi often listened to her, mesmerized. He could see how such a life would bring unimagined possibilities. But he believed that he had one limitation, having walked away from school at age twelve. Now at sixteen, he’d always felt that the knowledge and street-savvy he’d picked up working in the bazaar that kept him out of trouble and allowed him to turn a profit and bring it home safely, was enough to make him a successful man eventually. He could see how one day, he’d own a string of shops in the bazaar, hire people to work for him and have traders come from all over Egypt bringing things for him to sell on their behalf. He’d never felt inadequate or diminished by his choices and his station in life, until he met her. As he listened to her, he was torn – between the life he led and the good things he could reasonably be expected to achieve, and a world far beyond his familiar surroundings. The world she spoke of sounded exotic, exciting and honestly, more than a little intimidating too. But she would be a part of this world and that made him consider it.
He wondered if he could go back to school and pick up from where he’d left off. He dug up the courage to visit and speak with an old teacher. He actually attended a class to get a feel for attending classes again. He would need for several years to spend half his time in school and the other half in the bazaar. It would be tough. Then an acquaintance made a chance remark -whether Raffi took the challenge or not, where would the girl be in a few years?
She came and told him, seeing as he seemed to be sincere in his feelings for her, that she was willing to hold back her studies, to slow down, to allow Raffi to catch up with her. So they could travel together into their imagined future.
It seemed a welcome compromise but it didn’t pan out that way. Her parent’s saw things differently. They were wealthy traders, and they saw her qualifying in a profession that would give her the opportunity to move overseas and leave the family business completely. They did not agree to her seeing a trader boy who’d dropped out of school and who would only slow her down in life at worst and at best, keep her tied up to his family business.
Raffi’s family had their own objections. They preferred he marry a girl who stayed home and looked after him and their future children. How would she be a good wife and mother if she was outside with other men for work, travelling and dealing in foreign matters?
Raffi and his girl met in a street stall and sat dejectedly with their respective drinks amid the tumult of the nearby bazaar on a Friday afternoon. They thought, Do we have only one choice or the other? Give up my dreams or give up your family? Run away together? And live in poverty, without the means to higher education? Or walk away from each other?
Uncle Hussein came back from the States and hearing of Raffi’s romance, visited him. Raffi emptied his heart to his Uncle. His Uncle took him walking in the desert and quoted Rumi:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
What does that mean? asked Raffi. But he considered the words carefully.
He went and met the girl and told her not to give up on her dreams. He told her to walk her path and he would walk his, and they’d meet if they are meant to.
When he repeated the quote by Rumi, she understood. He asked her to continue with her studies and that he would try to catch up if he could. He went to school the next day.
Photo by Omid Armin from Unsplash.com