Combinations of 240 : Endless Stories

Combinations of 240 : Endless Stories

There are 240 countries and nations in the world, plus or minus some islands and remote places that contain their own sub-cultures.

It occurred to me that it would be interesting to capture an encounter or story about two people, respectively, from every place on the planet.

This would add up to 57,600 stories.

An Indian and a Nepalese.

A Bhutanian and a Falkland Islander (Malvino, I guess, in Spanish).

And another fifty-seven thousand, five hundred and ninety eight encounters more.

Like an American and a Welsh. Er ... Welshman... Welsh lady?

On a on. What would your match up be?

Christian Boys Lost in the Islands: 2018

   

     Yusuf Ibrahim Messihi was very alone, yet he was grateful that he was alive. He had survived. Unlike the rest of his family.

   

    When the Arab Spring of 2011 turned into the awful Arab Winter, extended members of his family were either fleeing their homes to safer climes or abandoning the country altogether. But his immediate family stayed in Idlib, believing they could weather fate. They had seen progress toward a new nation, a new world. Ominously, three cousins, of whom there were many others, were killed in the successive years of 2013, 2014, 2015. No one expected the Russians to step in and bolster Assad's regime in 2015. They had hoped so much that things would end for him, this despot son of the same. And even Daesh, the newly declared extremist jihadi Caliphate to the east, surrounding the moderate Muslims and Christians like his family were being pushed back into oblivion.

   2016 was a blessed year, when no one died; however, 2017 ended all hope for his proud Christian family.  Perhaps it ended Yusuf's hope in God at all. All of them, parents, siblings, brother-in-law, nephews and nieces, were killed in a huge explosion that crushed their apartment.  Yusuf was out watching some sheep on the edge of the city when it happened. It was right after sunset, the dutiful Muslims were saying their evening prayers. His parents had told him that his foray was unnecessarily dangerous and not to go. Yusuf replied," It is as dangerous in town and anywhere in Syria as it is in the meadows observing the sheep." 

   

   It was bitter--heart-wrenching-- for Yusuf to consider that his last words to his parents were so ironically fateful.  He could not be sure if the desire to watch the sheep saved him or not. What was God's will? Did it exist?

     As the Muslims always say," Allahu elm". God knows. Surely this was true.

    Again, his faith in everything was shaken. The only faith he could muster was that he had all his limbs, all his faculties, and he knew his parents, his beloved grandparents and uncles and aunts, all his community like the priest and the nuns, would urge him to move forward.  Most of them were now fled, the rest of them dead, in Paradise. Surely they looked to him to carry forward and leave a legacy. Surely they could sense, or even see somehow, that he still clung to life on this earth.

    And he did.  Yusuf managed to make his way to Istanbul. With money that he salvaged from his smoldering apartment, he planned a flight from the international airport. But he needed a plan. How to go? Where to go?

    At an internet cafe, a young Turkish man who seemed used to providing advice to his brethren from the blighted south recommended that he look online for the thing that Yusuf thought he could dedicate his life to: the care of sheep.

   

    A couple clicks later Yusuf found an answer: a place called Falkland Islands was looking for young, strong hands who would be devoted to caring for sheep. The requirement was that the employee would stay under contract for an entire year, and then be evaluated to see about continuing.

  They would even start out the new hire with a 1,000 pound bonus, in order to arrange their living conditions. Nothing else seemed to make any sense. In truth, there was no other option. He had cousins in refugee camps or maybe somewhere in Lebanon, but that was not the solution to his life or dreams. He needed a place to be free, and free of the threat of constant war.

  

   So 17 year-old Yusuf, (19 on paper to avoid legal issues or other complications), found himself in Port Stanley.  In Spanish this was called Las Malvinas, claimed by distant Argentina but held tightly as British by the locals.  They would not sell the islands nor their allegiance to the giant Latin American country for a million dollars each, literally.  They were a hardy and resolute lot. The spring was well on its way, and the rains were less than what the local townfolk had complained of over the winter. He had been there now for two weeks. Life was strange, sure, but it was peaceful.

   The noisiest sounds were the noon bell marking lunch, and the occasional shot gun blast on assorted farms and glades on the edge of town.  And maybe a baby wailing, just proving that life was still hard for ones who knew nothing worse. This baby, nor its townsmen, knew no hunger, nor unceasing genocide.

   

   Yusuf had become somewhat friends of local boy Jim, who he appreciated because of his patience with his language. Yusuf knew English since childhood, but Falklanders were assuredly different in how they spoke.

   " You know, I am not much different than ye. Here I am in a off-worldly island, surrounded by British loyalists in the middle of no where. I am sort of a guy without a country. Am I English? British? South American? I am not sure.  When I'm older maybe I'll be Australian."

   "Yes, "replied Yusuf," it is different being so far from the real concentrations of people. But you must know that you are very blessed."

   "Yeah, I get that, I do. But I think I am a bit like you. I don't rightly know where I belong. My folks says I am an Englishman. But in my heart I cannot tell. I see the Argentine and Brazilian TV and I kinda like them a bit more than what I see elsewhere. And my life is not here, that I am pretty sure of."

   "But you know, you are blessed by God. You have everything here you need. Your family loves and supports you."

   Yusuf had a lump in his throat. His heart fell pressured, heavy. Yet empty. It was almost a year since it had happened. The end of his old world, the end of any pretense of innocence.

   And yet, he was grateful. Jim was another sign of God's goodness. Of hope.

   As a child Yusuf had learned of the "sun never setting on the English empire". He was living it now. His native Syria was ceded to the French because of a line marked on a map known as Sikes-Picot, when his great-grandparents lived. Now, the distant memory of his siblings and parents and cousins and so many others of his native land were tucked away in his brain, in his soul.

God keep them and cherish them! Let me find a way to bring them honor. 

I will. I can.

If you are, and you will it, I will make it happen. I will bring honor and respect to my name.

I am a Messihi. I am Christian. I am not defeated. 

Someday the tears may dry, the heart may overcome this incredible anguish.

But: there is good in the world. There is hope.

"Jim, I must tell you something. Yes, we come from different worlds. And yes, you are right. We are alike. I understand your sense of not belonging. But really, truly, we do belong. We belong to something bigger, that is hard to see, that is hard to comprehend. No matter how far you go from home, no matter how many people try to crush your dreams: you do belong. God knows."

"You still believe in God after all that you have gone through?"

"How can I not? I continue to breathe. I can work with the sheep, the same beasts that Jesus said to care for. I will do it. I will be happy."

" I admire you, Yusuf."

"What is this word? Admar?"

"It means I respect you."

"Thank you. I respect you, too."

Yusuf and Jim went to bed that night knowing they held a secret that they were fortunate to share. 

They were not lost. No, in the middle of the vast southern ocean, under an immense sky full of lonely stars and howling winds, they had found where they belonged.

Life was in their hands. They were free.