I want to write about my first meeting with a foreign person. When I was about 14, I travelled to Yazd city for working. In that time I occasionally used to memorize some English words from a dictionary that I had. Next year, I went to some tourism places like Dolatabad Garden and Zoroastrian Fire Temple in Yazd for watching sightseeing.
One day a saw a Japanese woman. I liked to speak with her, but unfortunately there were some girls and one boy. I got shamed to go ahead and start speaking. So I left the fire temple.
I was on a bench. The Japanese woman asked me the address of DOLAT ABAD garden. She uttered it in a wrong pronunciation “jarden” instead of correct form of “garden”. Although I couldn’t speak English but I made her understand by gesture that I’ll take her there. The bus of Dolatabad garden route arrived and we got on. She sat next to me on a chair of men. All passengers were eyes; they were watching and some of them were laughing. I got ashamed but she was not to turn a hair! Finally one of passengers asked her to move to the women part of the bus.
We took some pictures of each other by her camera when we got off.
I went to the receptionist to issue tickets for us but he refused and asked for the tourist card. By searching in my pockets I pretended that I have forgotten my card.
I made my decision to escape when the receptionist pretended that he will call the office of Cultural Heritage. Thus I gave the camera to the tourist woman and told her I will come back.
I ran away and even never looked back!
By Arash Arbabi