It has been a year and half since I last traveled solo. At my current job I’m living a bit in the middle of the fear of falling behind on projects if I’m away too long and the fear of having an intense existential crisis while I’m away. The latter isn’t hard to deal with, but as I’m nearing 40 I know it will sting differently.
I never knew how to answer whether or not I believed in fate or destiny, but I always loved the word kismet. Maybe because as I grow older I have this increasingly enthusiastic appreciation for the older, profoundly centuries-rich cultures like the Arab moors or Turkey. My limited exposure always finds me intersecting with their artistic sides often poetic in approach.
While in Sevilla back in 2018, I learned of Al-Mu’tamid ibn Abbad, a poet who once ruled Seville, and the great lengths at which he expressed his love to his wife, E’etemad al-Rumaikiyya. It took a bit for me to recall their names, but knowing only a few story details helped me to reconnect with their story:
“It happened that one day, in Córdoba in the month of February, snow fell and when Al-Rumaikiyya saw snow, she began to mourn. The king asked why she was crying, and she told him she was crying because he never let her go to the places where it snowed. The king, to please her, because Córdoba is a city of warm temperature and there is rarely snow, planted almond trees sent from the mountains above Córdoba so that when they bloomed in February, they appeared to be covered with snow and the queen saw her desire fulfilled.”
Don Juan Manuel (2006). El Conde Lucanor. Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores.
(Thanks, Wikipedia 🙏🏼)
At this point of the trip I had been looking for something to take my mind off something else. When I heard that story on a walking tour I was already living in the high of an extremely low probability encounter. I ran into a girl I had met one year prior at a hostel in Barcelona at the Alhambra in Granada. She was not living or attending school in Spain. She was on holiday in Spain again.
This girl is Australian. The year prior she was traveling alone but this time she had separated from her family’s holiday trip to have time traveling alone before going back to Oz.
While roaming the Alhambra property I was quick to spot another Asian (naturally I do that wherever I am). Once I caught a look at her face I immediately recognized her. I tried my hardest not to be awkward. Inside I was ready to say something but she made the first move asking me to take her photo.
After I returned her phone she walked off. Struggling with how I should engage in conversation I remembered she was in some photos of mine from a year ago. I skimmed through my cloud storage to find them.
“Hey, this is going to sound super weird, but were you staying at Hostel One in Barcelona this time a year ago?”
Zina acknowledged. I showed her a few photos, she confirmed that it was her and then we re-introduced each other. We reminisced about the people we met that year (the Argentinians, the Canadian girl) and then compared the rest of our travel itineraries. We would eventually meet a week later in Sevilla.
I had “forgotten” to reach out to her when I touched down in Sevilla. But at the second hostel I stayed I saw her name on the previous nights dinner sign up. By that time I had already been in the city a few days. She was checking out and moving to a new hostel, the one I just left, eventually leaving for Madrid before flying home.
There are some risks trying to combine a trip with someone you meet along the way but when it’s someone familiar it could prove helpful especially when the native language is not your own. I didn’t forget to contact her; I thought I would be intruding on her trip.
As we caught each other up on our travels since Granada, I volunteered to walk her to her new place since I knew the way. She hinted to me that since arriving in Sevilla she barely found two people (Kelley and Christian) to hang with but they were nearly on their way out of Sevilla. I should have contacted her sooner.
We hung out a few times that week with Christian. Once at Las Setas for sunset, another time wandering around the Cathedral then ending the night at Plaza España to enjoy churros with chocolate and wine. The last night we agreed to have one non-Spanish meal. Mediterranean food was good enough.
Zina posed the question to me and Christian of whether or not we believed in fate or destiny atop Las Setas. I think at that point I did. We all answered yes in varying capacity. For me, I think Zina and Christian were people I needed to meet at that particular time in my life. Christian had just completed the Camino de Santiago spending a month away from family and friends but would be returning home to start a new career. Zina was indecisive about grad school. I had been in a loop of wanting to quit my job for years at that point. I needed to be grounded.
I don’t know how else to finish out this post, but I have been meaning to write this all down before I forgot. Until then I’m going to continue to think about how crazy it was to run into Zina for the second time. I can add to this later.
graveyard shiftin 