Serendipity

Some people say good people will come across others who will help them on their journeys in one way or another. I don't know whether this is true and I'm not sure whether I'm a good person, but a situation happened reminded me of this common belief.

On my return trip from Nuweiba, when I arrived in the Eastern part of Cairo, I took an Uber to Amplifon, a hearing solution store, in Dokki to get my hearing aid. After that, I asked a kiosk seller in front of Amplifon branch how to get to Mall Misr in Sixth of October city. It was where I was going to stay with the female host I found on a hosting app. He had no idea, so he asked someone who was buying cigarettes from him at that moment. The stranger briefly described how I could get there, then he added that he was going the same way and he could drive me half of the distance. In normal situations, I would worry and reject joining someone I don't know but I didn't and I got in the car with him.

We didn't talk a lot but generally, he was respectful. When he learned I was from Luxor, he mentioned how kind, generous and helpful Luxorian people were to him and his family when they had taken a Nile Cruise there a few months earlier. While dropping me off, he wanted to give me some money. He said I could consider it as a return of the help he had received from someone in Luxor where he got a great deal of help. Of course, I didn't take the money. I don't know if this was normal or not but I saw it as a kind hint from him.

If I said no to this stranger and didn't accept his drive, I wouldn't save time, money and I wouldn't come across this interesting coincidence. I think it's good to be careful and cautious but not so careful that you get stuck where you are. Simply, not all people are bad. We just need to give them a chance until they show their true colors.
When I think back about other similar situations when I needed to get help or to get to know new people, I wonder how many opportunities I missed just out of fear!

That's why I'm more than happy that I didn't get cold feet meeting with Naroa in Cairo despite all the worries and hesitancy I had. She sent me a message on the hosting app and offered to meet one day. Her photos didn't show her face and she said she could ask her friend if I could stay with them. I suspected that she was actually an Egyptian guy who was trying to pull wool over my eyes. She later messaged me on WhatsApp and asked if I wanted to join her visiting the Citadel but she needed to make sure that I was the same person who was on the app. I said in my mind; "Yes, I too want to make sure you're not a man or someone else" so I just called her. However, she didn't pick up the video call and said that the internet wasn’t good enough. This made me more worried but later she sent a voice message and a photo of herself and I did the same, which reassured me a bit.

We finally met and went to the citadel and Sultan Hassan mosque. We also walked around the area there, had street food and used public transportation. Later, she invited me to join her and her Spanish friends for dinner at a Lebanese restaurant. This was my first time ever to try any kind of Lebanese food and I loved it. What was like icing on the cake is that one of them paid for all of us. Naroa explained that it was a part of their customs in Spain or something like that. Later, she and her friend helped me to get transportation to my destination.

All in all, I'm grateful for all these experiences, the good and bad ones, which shaped and are still shaping who I am today.