Hi. Right now I´m in Malaga, Spain and I just had a whole week to draw and write while my travelling buddy recovered from Pneumonia. We didn´t get out much, and she said a lot of interesting things when the fever took over her brain. I wrote down some things she said, and I also wrote down this story and made some pictures for it so you would know that it´s real.
In mid September I took a boat from Ireland to France with my friend Steph.
I saw every side of the seas holding in Ireland; Rosslare was the last edge. I waved goodbye with thought bubbles of when I would be back, and breathed in the wind messing up my hair. I thought about how the wind blows between borders and belongs to no certain nation, and also how hard it would be to untangle my hair since I forgot my hairbrush.
We hopped trains above and below ground until we hit Paris, stumbling out of the station into the road blocks for construction and a huge scenery change from Ireland´s 47 shades of green.
Steph and I then had to figure out how to navigate the beehive subway system below the city in order to get to the apartment where we were staying that night. We weren’t sure if it was better to take a bus or what direction we were supposed to be going, we didn’t even have the vague clues written down about how to get to the address. All we could do was feel around the air for free internet. Eventually we found a fast food place we could connect at. We got into our email and made some guesses as to how to get to that night’s home and set off again for more time in transit.
On the train I squeezed myself and my big backpack as pragmatically close as I could to a man with a muzzled German Shepherd. In looking down at the dog I noticed that there was something missing from the floor.
“Steph where’s the guitar?”
My mind flew back to the fast food place, where I put it down last. We used curse words and jumped off the train as soon as it stopped to head back the opposite way, but I doubted the guitar would still be there with so many people passing through.
I got around the corner and talked to the cashiers with hand signals and air-guitar gestures, but they never saw my Taylor and didn’t want to talk to me. Men were selling flowers outside, I thought about asking them, but I was pretty deflated. No one saw anything and it would be pointless to report to police. Again we found our way through the maze of tunnels, got lost, got rained on, got help and were lead to our home street by a lady from a laundry mat.
The next day we saw fantastic things and ate amazing food, but I was feeling quiet. My mom gave me that guitar when I was 11. It wasn’t for my birthday or any occasion, but I clearly remember the day I was pretending to know how to play my brother’s ukulele, and my mom just looked at me and said, “Hmm.” And then she brought home a little Taylor acoustic that smelled amazing. It’s weird when I think about it now. I think the only song I learned was leaving on a jetplane for years, I wasn’t interested in music until after my mom passed away, and didn’t play much at all until university.
I had hoped to do some song writing on this trip and so I was pretty bummed about not doing that, along with the sentimental loss of one of the few gifts I have from my mom still. This just sucked all around, so I asked God to pry it out of the hands of whoever had it and bring it back, and in exchange He could have all the credit for the story. I felt enough faith that if God is as awesome as I think He is then this shouldn’t be hard for him, but I didn’t expect anything to happen.
The next day passed and I kept looking out at crowds imagining the thief and how I’d tackle them to the ground.
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My room mates were getting into bed that night and I decided to check facebook quickly because it had been a while. The usual social banter popped up and some guy sent me a friend request. I was going to just ignore it but I saw he was from Paris and I wondered if I forgot meeting him, so I sent him a message asking how he knew me. It was after midnight and I got a message back right away.
“Vouz avez perdu une guitare ressament? Oui ou non?”
I threw up my hands in shock and asked our french-speaking host to translate. This guy found my guitar and took it home because he knew someone else would steal it right away. He said he has two guitars of his own and that he would hate to lose them, and gave his number so we could figure out when to meet. I briefly talked to him (with the hope that he wouldn’t ask for a ransom fee) and we set a meeting time for the next day. Obviously, I was thrilled and so surprised that this would happen to me.
The next day we met Anas Nazareth, who happens to be a magician. He came to Paris years ago from Morocco to get a degree in engineering, but now enjoys working with magic much more than computers. I tried to buy him a coffee but he insisted on paying for us instead (which seemed to me to be the opposite to what should be happening). We all got along right away and laughed a lot, and I offered to sing him a song as it was the least I could do to show my gratitude.
We waited for the rain to let up and I was curious if he actually knew any good magic tricks, so I asked him to show us something, and he didn’t mind. He pulled out a coin that disappeared and reappeared all over the place, and also did some ridiculous card tricks that Steph and I were confused by.
We had planned to pack in the sightseeing that day but we ended up hanging out all afternoon with Anas because it felt more important. He showed us his favourite shisha cafe by the Moulin Rouge where we sat and shared hookah and more stories, and it was one of my favourite days of this trip.
Eventually it was time to say goodbye after talking about a ton of things deep and shallow. Anas Nazareth is one of multiple beautiful, generous, intriguing and unlikely people I´ve met on this trip who I feel so privileged to have any time with at all. As he walked us to the bus stop he said he doesn’t believe in coincidence but that certain people are put in our path for a reason, and we need to be open to whatever those reasons could be. I agree, and want to try to live a life that´s hospitable and attentive to these sorts of chance/not chance meetings.
Another small detail of this story: the red airplane tag with my name and address I had put on my guitar case had ripped off in Ireland and the only reason Anas could find me on facebook was because I absent-mindedly slapped on a small luggage sticker that I didn´t know what to do with. It was half peeled off and just had my first and last name, clinging on to the case for dear life.
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If you´re curious what Anas looks like or where he´s performing these days, you can find out here.