A long time ago in a faraway tropical land in Africa, a young girl, not yet in puberty, had visions of miles and miles of golden sand. Stories like ‘The Little Mermaid,’ exotic Arabian tales and African stories like ‘Anansi and the Spider’ read aloud by older cousins during the evenings set her imagination on fire. She had daydreams about a knight in shining armour whisking her off into the desert sunset on his stallion.
While she was in her early teens, her maternal grandmother (on her deathbed) told her she would be going off to England for further education, and for a very long time – that she would leave the land of her birth to join her dad who was in the UK at the time.
Several years later she took the big step continue her education in the UK. She had always known in her heart that her knight was not in the town she was leaving behind. Was the UK the land of the ‘forever sands’ she had always seen in her mind’s eye? Far from it! Dressed in her tropical clothes, she tried in vain to look for the familiar. Her first encounter with the unpredictable British weather was frozen raindrops -hail stones- bigger than grains of rice! Luckily for her, the all-female hostel she was staying at was at the city centre, close to her place of study.
Did she finally meet her knight of the desert? Only when their paths crossed at the university they were both studying. Was it an arranged marriage? Yes, but not by their parents. You see their first encounter was a backward glance as they walked past each other in the corridor leading to the balcony of the college refractory. Little did she know that the invitation to visit a young couple, that she had accepted to visit, was from his cousin. Introductions were made at the event, and it could have ended there, but God had bigger plans. During the next summer break, the young lady was shopping with her mother in Oxford Street when they bumped into the young man. She introduced him to her mother. It turned out that his dad was a long lost friend of both her parents. Coincidence? Divine intervention?
Today, the couple calls Abu Dhabi home. You will see her sitting sometimes on the Corniche sipping a drink with a book in hand waiting for her knight to take her home.
By Samara MW Larday
