AND FINALLY

The blessing that made my week...

IT WAS just another cold day, reading letters, writing my column — when a single email made me happy.

It sped across continents from Ayesha S — ‘a Pakistani woman who is fast approaching the ripe age of 40.’

Her glorious letter reminded me how words can reach out to different cultures — shared human emotions unrestricted by boundaries of race and religion that are sadly (often destructively) put up between people.

Ayesha just loves this column — and let’s pause right there to celebrate the internet that can bring us together. ‘One day my son came home brandishing his class 1 English textbook and while glancing through, my eye suddenly fell upon one of your short stories and the squeal of excited joy I gave made me realise that I had started thinking of you as a friend!’

Ayesha tells me how she loves people, how an elderly man told her about ‘his two brilliant, successful and accomplished sons who live abroad and all he wanted was for one of them to return to their home country because he missed them so much.’

She describes a wedding where a neighbour described her husband as ‘sooo handsome.’ When Ayesha finally met the ordinary older man she found it ‘so sweet how his wife felt he was George Clooney and Cary Grant all rolled into one!’

Mourning her beloved cousin (Covid, of course), she says we must all tell people how we feel.

‘So Bel — thank you for every well modulated, carefully chosen word you write in your column since it gives me — sitting in my breezy, beach-side vibrant city of Karachi — such pleasure.

‘I wish you and your family the very best of health, happiness and love always. To paraphrase an Irish blessing: may the road rise up to meet you, may the sun shine golden upon your fields, may your hearth always be lit and your home always ring with the laughter of family and friends.’

Ayesha’s Irish-Pakistani blessing from Karachi made my week.