A Sleeping Beauty, A Devotee And A Weary Refugee

It is past one o'clock in the morning and I still cannot sleep, probably due to the time difference between France and Malaysia.

While I met a group of Samaritans on my way to Paris, I had totally different experiences on my return.

During my flight from Paris to Bahrain, I was sitting beside an Arabian man. As soon as he had kept his hand luggage in the safe, and had let me pass in front of him, my neighbour lay his clumsy body which occupied more than his whole seat, which limited my space, and fell in a deep sleep, even before the plane took off! With my tired eyes, I already looked like one who had not slept for a hundred years. This man beat me. He was so sound asleep, as if he had not slept for a thousand years! And his sleep was literally "sound", as he was snoring most of the time. During the six-hour flight, he only wake up four times: first time to take a drink for one minute and fell asleep again without taking his snack, second time to take his lunch, third time to go to the toilet (That was only my only time to go to the toilet as well since I had not wanted to disturb him), and the last time to get out from the plane which had just landed. Due to privacy, I held myself back from taking a picture of the sleeping beauty.

Instead, I caught images of the beautiful blue sky from my window near to the right wing of the Airbus.

During the second flight from Bahrain to Kuala Lumpur, my seat was near the corridor. My neighbour was an old man. As it was night, I could not expect him to stay awake for a long time. But when he was not sleeping, he never uttered a word to me except when he wanted me to get up and stand aside so that he could go to the toilet. And like my first neighbour, no "please" nor "thank you" from him when the stewardess served him anything. The longest sentences I heard from him was when he suddenly said his prayer alone in Arabic by reading a small book. He must be thanking his god for the day and asking god for a safe journey...

When we touched down at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, it was barely half past nine in the morning. This time I was not as lucky as when I was going to Besançon. Carrying around thirty kilos baggage, I took the bus to KL Sentral, LRT to Masjid Jamed station, crossed the road to the counter opposite to buy another LRT ticket to Pasar Rakyat station. Next I still had a short walk with stairs to step down to Puduraya bus station before getting my ticket to Batu Pahat. Then I had to bear the noise and heat and smoke for two hours before I could hop into the KKKL bus which was delayed ten minutes to departure due to a seating problem.

When I finally reached Batu Pahat bus station at six o'clock in the evening, Mum, who came with her car to pick her daughter back from the country of perfume and romance, found a weary refugee with oily hair and a sweating body, carrying five bags: a big luggage bag, a sack, a plastic bag, a hand bag and a waist bag!