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| Green and Gold: The splendid flowers of the Acacia picnantha are a welcome sign of the soon-to-arrive springtime. |
Hebbat had returned from work and was already busy in the kitchen so upon opening the door, I was struck once again with a dose of delicious odours that shocked my mouth into salivation.
While Hebbat put the final touches on the evening meal, I got to work on the bed. Hurriedly examining the metal plates, I lined them up with the broken frame to see if they would work as intended. Breathing a sigh of relief I gleefully relayed the news to Hebbat: the match looked good! I set about immediately to perform all the drilling, screwing and hammering required to fit them into place, and by the time Hebbat had finished sautéing and simmering, it looked like they would hold. With trepidation I unfolded the bed, put the mattress back, and very gently manoeuvred myself to a lying down position. Prepared for an imminent collapse, I got Hebbat to check if the metal plates were moving at all, but they seemed to be holding everything in place. To really test things, Hebbat tried lying down as well. I braced myself, expecting the worst but the bed held us both without so much as a creak - the repair job was a success!
Over dinner we were overflowing with joy and relief. Not only had we made it through another day's fasting, but we had narrowly escaped a potentially nasty situation. With neither of us having the financial means to replace the bed, we were immensely grateful that it had been repaired for a fraction of the cost and in such a short time. Knowing that we would enjoy a good night's sleep meant that the marathon of Ramadan was back on course. With only a week to go, it looked like we might be in with a chance of completing it.
It was afterward looking back that the full appreciation of this moment really hit me. When the bed broke, I could have easily lost my temper, shouted at Hebbat and blamed her for everything, but in hindsight I'm sure this would have damaged our friendship or possibly even destroyed it. Luckily though, Hebbat had remained calm and instinctively kept a hold on life's more fundamental priorities: rest and nourishment. We got some sleep and the next day I was able to see the problem from a different perspective. The end result being that we had overcome this difficulty by helping each other instead of by blaming each other.
Nowadays when Hebbat and I think back to the "bed crisis" we both laugh. It seemed so serious at the time, but now we see how trivial it was. Because we overcame this shared difficulty via mutual aid, rather than being a sore-point, this 'hard time' has actually become a fond memory.
On the scale of human disasters, a broken bed in a 16m2 studio in Paris is a far cry from being caught in a tsunami or a plane crash, but playing the 'game' of Ramadan reminded us why the way we act in the present is so important. Our actions may not be able to steer us clear of earthquakes, floods or wars, but they can determine whether afterward we live with warm recollections or woeful regrets.
