Chapter3 "The meeting"
Two days passed since that awkward moment. My life started to go back to its routine. I remember that day, the weather was cloudy and the air breeze was cool. I went to work taking the car for a change; I knew that if I didn’t move it, the tires would go flat. Whenever I start the engine I can feel the sound of the exhaust running in the whole car and into my brain. I entered the office after parking the car in front of the building gate. As I walked through the steps and into the door I could smell a female fragrance in the air. The smell of a French fragrance mixed with jasmine smell, it reminded me of one of my friends, Marwa. As I opened the door, my secretary looked at me in anxiousness. I told her "What is wrong Samantha?" she replied, "one of your customers is waiting inside your office, she insisted sir, she said that she has some important papers and couldn't wait outside the room. I didn’t reply at her and walked straight to my offices door. Samantha always does stupid things! I don’t know why I am not replacing this dump British lady! She doesn’t even dress nicely! Baggy pants and baggy shirt! So style less! Why blame her? She is British after all. My god! Didn’t she learn anything from the Italians! Thanks god she is finishing her college course soon, so I can look for a replacement. Maybe a Japanese one, they are far more organized and work by the rules. That’s what I thought.
I opened the door imagining my new Japanese secretary when I came back to reality seeing a lady standing in front of my office, holding my picture with Andrea Agnelli and the late player Allesandro Del Piero. Grey ballerina, a pair of jeans, and a white top which was blocked by the long dark brown wavy hair. The moment she turned facing me I said "Signora, che cosa fa qui?" (Miss, what are you doing here?). "STOP THE CRAP!" she replied in a hard tone. "Signora, ma…" (miss, but…). "Cut it, Khalid, cut it! I know it's you! You can't fool me! I saw it in your eyes! You might have changed and you might have tried to lie to me. But guess what? Your eyes didn’t lie!". Still trying to escape this situation I started mumbling more in Italian until she came forward to me holding my shoulders. She shaked my shoulders hard and said "10 years! 10 years of running away! Didn’t you even think of Ali! You left him alone in this world! In a world where he could used a help of an uncle raising him up!" I turned around, walked through the black leather sofa and threw myself on it, facing the floor and holding my head. I felt her approaching me, sitting on the small table in front of the sofa and saying with a soft voice "Where have you been? What have happened to you? Some people think that you are dead already. Some people think that you are dead! Basma always remembers you with a tear, as well as Hanan" She kept talking and talking and talking. I was just facing the floor. She stopped talking after a long time of throwing words and sentences. And after a while of silence, I raised my head and said "Samar, lovely kid! When did you get married?" and I raised my head to the back of the sofa and faced the ceiling. "Samar, Samar, Samar, it is not the time to talk about anything, I don’t want to express, I don’t want to share, I don’t want anything. Please leave and please don’t tell anyone about this you seeing me". "Stop this new personality Khalid! Since when you started acting this way?" I stood up in anger and said "Who are you anyways to come and throw all this on me now? Who are you to find out where I work and come asking me these questions? You weren’t even a friend Samar! We barely knew each other" She stood up and said "Yes, we barely knew each other. But Khalid, I knew that you always treated me nicer than many of your friends! Well I am not looking for any answers or anything. I just had to come and talk to you! You are Khalid after all, one of the most respected men I've ever knew in my life! So please stop doing this, and stop blaming yourself for what have happened. Because what happened to your family was not your fault! You are a faithful man Khalid, everything happens for a reason, and god had a reason behind all this". I replied sarcastically "yeah yeah, blame it on God; we tend to blame all bad circumstances on God! Gods will! Gods will! Please Samar, I don’t need this! Please go and live your life with your husband and kid and stop worrying about me!". Samar went to the table, took her torques Channel bag and said "All right Khalid, live your life! Enjoy your wealthiness ALONE! Live pathetically and die pathetically! Keep blaming yourself and leave Ali alone! Oh wait… you are already doing that!" She left in anger.
The first thing I did was calling Samantha in my office, yelled at her and asked her to leave the office and take a one month non pay leave. Then I looked into the window and saw Samar walking outside the building talking in the phone. I just wished that she was not telling anyone that she saw me. I just wished that none of this happened. But you never get what you want.
(( I wrote this chapter in Fukuoka, Japan, 16th January 2011))
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