Crossing the borders..... by Arabian Oud {R}

CROSSING THE BORDERS

Chapter 1



Introduction- ‘ Queer eyed pair’



It has always been of a great interest to the likes of Hessa Al Rumaithi, a mixed race girl, to help disabled people and the less fortunate wherever she travels, she is keen on helping these suppressed and oppressed individuals. At the age of 25, she is an outgoing, friendly and adventurous individual. Born in UAE, she has been traveling back and forth to Belgium, the UK and UAE. Just over six months ago, she graduated from one of the prestigious university in London; she completed her media studies degree.



A passionate lover of travel, music, poetry, culture, theatre, adventure, photography and working towards charity, these are the different colours that form her personality. For every thread that constitutes Hessa, she is simply exceptional; she is a helpful and down to earth person, who takes criticism as praise. She spends time learning about different cultures and travels to explore how wonderful this world is. Despite everything, she is a lonely person. A smile can trick you into believing a broken heart is simply go lucky, it can certainly be deceiving. Her story shares a similar bond to the many hearts that are broken, only that Hessa has made this as a history page and never ever looked back.



Very different to rest of her siblings, she is known as the ‘ugly duckling of the Rumaithi clan’, because she is a stubborn individual, who wants to experiment and do all the unconventional things. Her thoughts vary, she believes in doing what is correct and not always going to please others. ‘Compromise’ is the word she says is not fit for her personality, she will not unless it complies with her thoughts and principles. Often segregated from her circle out of her choice, Hessa chooses time contemplating the meaning of life, rather than waste time on meaningless things such as: gossiping or plotting evil. Hessa has four sisters and two brothers, she ranks in the fourth position and is very hyper active, as compared to rest of her siblings.



Despite being a chirpy person and being the talk of the town for every event she attends, Hessa has a very low profile and does not have many friends. As she says ‘I can not label every person making an effort to be my friend, as a friend, friend’s are rare and very few people know it’s meaning. I would rather choose the word ‘acquaintance’, because it doesn’t hurt."



Acquaintanceship is something that came into the picture after she was back stabbed by her friends and was cheated immensely. From then on, it was a matter of being very selective of whom to associate herself with. Her biggest support has been her mother, who constantly boosts her confidence, criticizes her to get the best out of her and out of all, she is her best friend.

However, unsocial is not how Hessa can be described, she is simply cautious of her companions, she shares a strong bond with her cousin Manal, who is the same age as her.


Manal is a Belgian national and has recently moved to the UK, she is the total opposite of Hessa and is far calm and not really bothered about breaking traditions. All she ever thinks about is having fun and making every moment a joyful one. Despite the opposite personalities they share, they are close; however, differences would occur from time to time. At 25, her only dream is to get married and share her amazing ideas with her husband to be. So far, there has been no luck in finding the right guy, but she firmly believes, that he is out there and shall soon meet her. Studying childcare has been an all time hobby of hers, she’s worked as a nursery teacher and finds it very amusing to handle children, and she finds them very adorable and looks forward to having her own kids.


Uncanny and spontaneous is how people define the pair of Hessa-Manal. They are notorious for acting crazy and caring least of what others think of their behavior. ‘Wild’ is possibly how they can be best described, however these girls have always made sure they know their limits and have never caused any shame to their families. They both belong to well known families in Qatar. Their fathers have maintained a high standard of education, professional life and giving the best to their children. If it weren’t for them, Manal and Hessa would have never been so outgoing. But is this rebellion revolution the cause of something else and simply not traditions? It would be adequate to understand their hostility if they were suppressed or mistreated by their families, but this wasn’t the case.

In Manal’s family, things were very different to Hessa’s; they never outcaste her as an ugly duckling, her family was very liberal minded, but saying so, they did object her European styled concept of hanging out with male friends, which was totally unacceptable in a society such as Qatar. Because Manal has been so influenced by the Belgian culture, and born into that land, she has considered herself as half Belgian, despite the fact she fluently communicates in Arabic, English and French.



Once Hessa accompanied Manal on a trip to Belgium, it was then they began to suffer miseries together and learnt how to tackle them, recognizing their strongest quality: unity. One of the very episodes, where they realized they needed each other desperately was when both the girls decided to grab a bite from a fast food shop in Brussels, it was a freezing cold January, sharp 7pm, when the girls chucked their overcoats at their accommodation. They hastily wanted to sneak out of their family friend’s accommodation and made an excuse of going out to buy something important. They decided to choose fast food over home cooked food. This is where the real test came in.



As they reached the Chicken Spot fast food shop, they ordered eagerly, delighted to be at the shop Manal gave the widest smile ever. She was known as a ‘foodie’, it wasn’t hard to guess when someone saw her, with her chubby figure and extreme obsession with food; probably she could have put that in a better use as a food connoisseur. Hessa could hardly eat anything more two pieces of chicken and called it a quit; meanwhile Manal was busy tucking into the sumptuous, juicy meal. But Hessa finally convinced her and they left, time just flew by so quickly, it would seem rather odd that they had spent more than an hour outside and told their family friend that they shall be back soon.

After finishing their meal, they headed back to the family house and feared being told off. However, things got tricky, when the host family asked them to join them for dinner, hearing that left a shocking expression on both the girls faces. They felt gutted because they were packed with food and could not think of stuffing their belly with anymore food. But then, they were unable to refuse, because that would be rude and if they told the host family, they had eaten outside, that would further add fuel to the fire which started off from a question raised at them ‘Why were you girls late?, their expressions went from pink due to the cold weather to red, out of nervousness and the ongoing questions they feared being asked. Hessa then quickly thought of accepting the upcoming few morsels and advised Manal to do the same; this was a tactic to save their neck from being cut and reports getting back to their families. They had faced similar problems in the past and even the host families complained.


Quick thinking did finally help but the intake of food was quite painful and hard to digest, especially for Manal, who ate at the restaurant like there was no turning back and that it was the last day to ea and that food was soon to cease to exist from the planet Earth. Hessa smiled at Manal’s expression, she was this close to erupting in laughter and leaking out the secret of their naughty business of bunking. Chewing slowly and trying to chew the pain of a fuller stomach was worth a watch.

Within the next day, the adrenaline rush of viral infections took over the girls, fever, and flu and cold were the order of the day. They were to pay the price for sneaking out like robbers and lying. The girls were suffering horribly, sharing the same bedroom, soaring and moaning in pain, they were taken care of, but soon they realized they should have never left that chilly night without their overcoats, they were punished for they made the host family wait at the dinner table. The infection lasted a couple of days before they returned to their normal life, but they surely did a lesson from this experience, never to lie and make a decision in haste, for it would always make them regret later.

To be continued...