I Met Someone New Again Today

I mentioned in the last edition of “I Met Someone New Today” that there was the occasional person about whom it was controversial to talk. One day I met an Iranian painter, and he is one of the many random people I have met who looked like he was from an Arab country. His wife, who wore a burka that did not cover her face, stood next to him when I said hello one night. That night, he told me that he is one of the artists to decorate the Iranian pavilion (which is beautiful!). Over the past few weeks we have seen each other several times, which is strange because there are so many people here and I leave my apartment at such random times of the day. I offered to help him skip the line at my pavilion, and he reciprocated by inviting me to his and giving me a folder full of his beautiful prints! I have seen him a few times since then, and one day he broke it to me that his wife was going to leave soon and not long after, he would too.

The reason that blogging about this is controversial is that the US government does not have diplomatic ties to that of Iran (which this painter does not like, by the way), so either I am forbidden to become his friend or at the very least blog about it. I would hereby like to encourage all of my peers to make friends with people from these types of countries! One of the points of this whole thing is to develop relations with other countries, and working solely with countries we already get along with seems rather pointless. This is the time when we can rise above disagreements and say to the people who don’t like the bickering that separates our governments, “This is the time! This is the place! This is the opportunity to join hands and set aside our quarrels for 6 months.” When I meet people who agree, it lightens my heart.

Update: I saw this man on the way back home today and he told me that his government does not want us to be friends either! I asked him “Why do our governments believe we cannot be friends when we obviously can? If we can tell that someone is worth our time, make use of our judgment.

As a side note, this is the 5^th time I have randomly seen this man around our village, which is extremely odd because we live with so many different people! It is statistically impossible for us to see each other at such a high frequency, and yet it is so. It takes a greater intellect than I possess to explain why we have met so many times. I don’t see my own roommates that often!