My Memories about the Bad Incident - Essay Example

For a long time, neither of my parents wanted to talk about the incident, I had the impression that something terrible had happened and that it was too terrible for a child to know. Afterwards, my family had a difficult time in Australia and we lost trust in people since we felt betrayed and humiliated by those we had trusted. It was like our collective hearts had been pierced with something sharp leaving an ugly gash that nothing seemed capable of curing. I was in a new country and I had lost my two best friends almost as soon as I had found them and I felt alienated and Isolated. It all begun with a disagreement on matters of tribe and religion between my father a friend he had made soon after we had moved in to Australia. They had become easy friends especially in view of the fact that both of them and their families were Muslims in a predominantly Christian country. On that fateful day, the man invited my family to visit him and my father was glad to accept, my sister and I were ecstatic about the prospect of meeting other children since we had been told he had other girls with whom we could play with. The home was tastefully furnished and the decor bespoke a moderate but style conscious lifestyle, there were several Muslim texts displayed on a glass display giving the impression that the man was deeply religious like my father. The kitchen was beautifully decorated and from the excitement my mother showed as she examined the furnishings I could tell it was everything she had ever dreamt of in her ideal kitchen. After refreshments, my sister and I went upstairs to play with the little girls as the grownups talked in the living room. While the room was not decorated it looked just like as small looking box with two pink beds it had hundreds of toys. I had more fun than we could remember playing dress up with them especially when they gave us dresses to match theirs. I was given an elegant blue dress adorned with beautiful pink flowers, and it looked and felt so fantastic I could not find words to describe the feeling, I felt like a princess. We also played with their doll house which was full of tiny plates and chairs and for four hours, we forgot that there was a world outside our secluded heaven of fun and games just like Alice in wonderland. Although my family relatively close, I never really felt a very close connection with them, my father was a workaholic and he spent most of his time working or studying to be a doctor. My mother rarely had time for me since she was too busy being a health freak and monitoring our diet and making us eat “healthy,” while my sister was close to my age I did not find her very good since she seemed to only copy what I did. My two brothers are the last people I would play with since they are not only serious but very reserved and we almost never notice them since they seem lost each in their own world. Therefore, these two girls were the best thing to happen to me and we got along beautifully coming up with different games and I was sure they would be my friends forever. This is what made the events that followed so painful, I had convinced myself I had found my true best friends and I was to spend the rest of my childhood pinning for them knowing I would never have another chance to play with them. Abruptly, we were jerked back into the harsh realities of the outside world, strange noises were coming from the living room and there was shouting and banging of tables. The door to the bedroom was opened and my mother quickly dragged us from our new playmates were silent with bewilderment just as we were. The girl’s mother was calm, mine looked terrified but their father and mine were each livid, I had never seen my father as angry as he was on that night, his pulsating veins seemed to push through his skin threatening to bust through and he looked as if he was on the edge of saying something but didn’t say a word. The girl’s father was equally angry and as they stood across from each other in the sitting room looking like gladiators about to engage each other in a death match, the tension between them was so thick; I visualized it as a scary black aura. My father matched us to the door in anger and we followed meekly, we were still not sure what had taken place but I realized our friendship with the family was over when the father said we should never visit him again “I don’t want your views to change my family” and he slammed the door with a crash. As we walked home my father kept ahead of us muttering angrily to himself and we followed close behind with mother too scared to ask anything, my face was streaming with tears and they flowed on to the dress the girls had given me. The dress my father later made me throws away although it was the first present I had ever received from a friend. Later I came to learn that they had a disagreement about the prayer; as they were praying in the house, like other Shia Muslims my father put lifted his hands instead of putting the on his stomach and instead of prostrating on the mat he simply added a piece of clay. The argument started on which the right way between the Shia or Sunni styles and soon degenerated into a shouting match almost turning into a fight. As a result of a minor disagreement on religious technicalities, we had to suffer the consequences which were more severe for us as children both socially and psychologically. I could not understand why the age old dispute based on tribalism and religious issues that commenced before we were born should affect us while we did not even understand them. I have always asked myself why our budding friendship had to be torn apart. What did I or the little girls do to deserve the humiliation and alienation? I guess I will never know. For a long time I wished I could go back to play with the girls but I never got the courage to ask my parents because I feared my father’s anger. I knew I would probably never see them again, consequently, even as I grew up and I was never able to have very many strong friendships since the pain of the separation always made me stopped me from investing too much in friendship. Read More