A Night to Remember

A Travel Love Story

A young wanderer from a foreign land walked into an open-air restaurant with a fellow vagabond he had just met. They sat with a group of travelers, sharing travel tales.

"Where is my friend?" the wanderer asked.

Just then, as he searched for him across the room, his eyes fixed on the most remarkable, beautiful woman he had ever seen. It was as if the whole room and all its noise disappeared.

As he peered at her, she looked back directly at him. Their eyes locked from across the courtyard.

The wanderer then noticed that the vagabond was sitting directly next to her, talking to a couple from his land.

The wanderer approached. He stood above the most remarkable, beautiful woman he had ever seen and asked her, "Where are you from?"

She answered him, then she asked, "Where are you from?"

They spent the whole night talking.

"It is time to leave," complained the woman's friend, sitting by her side.

But the wanderer grasped the woman's shoulders and implored her to stay longer.

"Let's drop your friend at your lodging," he suggested. "Then we can take a stroll on the bridge."

And so they did.

As they entered the gateway to the bridge, the wanderer asked if he could carry the woman's backpack. She smiled as she handed it to him.

They approached an ancient statue and sat beneath it until the morning hours.

"Oh no, my flight," exclaimed the woman. "I have a flight this morning."

The wanderer escorted the remarkable, beautiful woman back to her lodging. She dashed off to the airport, leaving half of her belongings in the closet without realizing it.

The wanderer wandered around in a daze for the rest of the day.

"What just happened? Where am I?" he thought to himself.

The world took on a different shape and altered complexion—one that he had never known before.

He found a street seller offering photographs of the bridge.

"I'll never see that remarkable, beautiful woman again," he thought, "but I will buy two of the same photographs of the bridge—one to send to her, to adorn her walls and remind her of the special night that we shared, and the other to adorn mine."

Years later, the two photographs sat together on the same small table —the sun casting rays upon them.

A story by Pemba Umoja