The beauty in exile

" You'll never guess what happened to me today!!", He exclaimed dashing through the door. I was like... "what?" Get off the phone first and then I'll tell you". I’ve never seen him so happy. "Ok hold on.. Hello, I gotta go, I’ll call u back later , sure, bye. Ok so what's up..?" He was gone. " What was that all about ... , is he ok?" I asked my friend who came over for a pig out after having an sms fight with one of our friends. My brother was already in the shower. " You don't think he just ..?" I gave my friend a suspicious look giggling and cross at the same time. " He seemed excited" She said.

"Ok spill the beans" I demanded as he was getting out of the shower. " Relax ok?" I rolled my eyes at the lame attempt to infuriate me. " Ok ok.. let me ask you this, when was the last time do you think that I actually met a real Arab?"

"Huh?" my friend and I looked at each other. "What are you saying?". He went on and on about how he was hailing a cab in front of his school when he noticed a group of people who were arguing in a loud voice in a familiar language ( guess that's says it all ). Poor guy, he’s been out of touch for so long it was mana from heaven that he finally met people of his kind. He went on and on about how they looked, what they wore, how they talked, what they talked about , where they were from and how they got here in the middle of nowhere. “ We thought we were the only ones, they kept on saying that” He said. “ I was the only one for a long long time” He kept on telling them . I felt crushed. sorry for him, mad at myself , mad at my folks, wondering where they went wrong.

Then I thought about the beauty of it.

It didn’t matter whether they were Egyptians, Kuwaitis, Jordanians, Sunnis, Shiiets, Christians , all that mattered to him was that they were just… Arabs.

My brother is living proof that “ Arab Oness” is a reality . It exists somewhere after all, even if that somewhere is in a little place called the human heart.