Have you guys watched that movie? It's really good one, innit? However this is not about made up stuff but based on true story…  On this day, nothing was different: just finished the work and I had an appointment at the salon (Friday night).. It was my first time with this particular master.. Struggle is real.. (Girls understand me well..) so anyways this is completely different story, but this master made me wait like more than half an hour.. and by the time she's done it was all dark and late.. In the subway.. on my way back to home.. Suddenly someone calls me: “Sista..” in uzbek.. I look at back.. Young girl in her 20's… She asks me where P station is.. 🥷🏽: I can show you where it is, I'm going to the same direction.. We started a conservation.. She was slightly taller than me.. young pretty lady with a type jawline any model would desire, long dyed hair (damaged from bleach), light sport outwear (it reminded me of my outfits from 2000's) and some sorta pants? (I don't remember exactly why)..  She would act very confident but something was off about her.. Was she anxious? .. not sure.. She also mentioned that she has 2 kids and just came back from Russia.. and asked if I'm married.. (Of coz 🤓sodda bo'miy o'liy, I told her I'm divorced).. Our train comes.. we hop in.. she sat next to me.. 🤵🏼‍♀️: You know.. I'm going to one place.. (babir chirip ketadi ishlatish kere, which means it's gonna rot anyways you gotta use it).. 🥷🏽: (Whaat?!, at this point I'm doing my best to hide my shocked face..doesn't say a thing to her.. ) 🤵🏼‍♀️: He's very nice guy, he'll give us 400,000 sum (which is roughly $35), we're gonna split.. you get 200,000 for an hour.. He's not gonna torture you…don't worry.. 🥷🏽: (What the actual F*# is happening here… pretending I'm interested in this ‘deal' and letting her talk…) 🤵🏼‍♀️: I need to go back to Russia anyways, you're gonna stay, he has 2 houses, car.. he will provide you anything you want.. 🥷🏽:(My sweetheart.. if you only knew… I had better ‘deal' than this.. when I was 20, I had a potential being one of #topGeisha in Ginza lol, totally different story based on true events.. but we will talk about it later.. I actually didn't say this to her, it's only my inner thoughts..) 🤵🏼‍♀️:Yurin… yurin… she would try to convince me to go with her…She takes out a chocolate from her bag and tries to give it to me.. 🥷🏽:No thanks.. (luckily my grandpa taught me not to drink and take anything edible from strangers since I was a kid) You need to take off in this station..now.. 🤵🏼‍♀️:Yurin…yurin (Let's go)… 🥷🏽: Next time.. She walks away..   I was thinking who was she? What was her story? Did she had someone who cared about her? What made her to choose this lifestyle? Why didn't I stop her? What could I have done differently to prevent her going there? $20? Why didn't I give it to her? Of coz, I'm not rich and etc.. but Why didn't I try to change her mind?  And most importantly why these thoughts didn't come to me at that moment when I had a chance to change something? I know maybe I couldn't able to change anything.. at least I could've tried.. But what was omens telling me? Why did I need to meet her that night? According to my classmate, I needed to ‘experience' this in order not to go out after shom.. I can clearly remember her face.. I think she was high.. she didn't had that inner peace.. would talk from ‘bog'dan.. tog'dan..) But the most saddest part is her 2 kids.. I don't wanna judge anyone.. but where are they now? Which kinda individuals they would become without mothers love? I felt bad for not being Sandra Bullock's character from “The Blind side”.. I hope I'll get to that point one day.. ✨ And to that stranger girl, who I've met that night.. I hope you'll find your inner peace soon.. until than.. I'll see you next time…

A stranger I did meet, Our world joined at my feet. Gifts he brought to bear, Although I did not care. He did not ask for pay Not on that dreary day Pass it on he said, Help someone instead. His kindness touched my heart, I placed the food in my cart. A blanket went in as well, Although I knew I'd sell. You can work for me, I understand you see. I was once l like you, Not knowing what to do. A hand reached out to help, I could only yelp. He pointed to the church, I rose, my feet did lurch. My soul fluttered in my chest, This man spoke not in jest. He left me there on the street, To think how chance did meet. A perfect gesture divine, Hope fluttered free, fine. Now I sing his praise, Each time a life I raise. A moment etched in time, Despite stench and grime. This stranger I did meet, He brought salvation to my feet. He gave my life back to me, I love him so you see. In awe I can relate, An ode which changed my fate.

Being an 11-year-old was sort of an unsung milestone. Caught between single digits and teen years, eleven is usually regarded as a bothersome transition period. But in school, 11-year-olds were in the 6th grade. Sixth graders had earned a degree of trust and responsibility: perhaps carrying housekeys or getting to and from school alone. And at some point, being put on notice that it was time to pay closer attention to the rest of the world. You'd gotten this message during a 6th grade class period devoted to the dangers of train tracks. The school chose a day for everyone to hear and read about a collection of young people close to your own age, who'd each found themselves in harm's way after making some extremely poor decisions around train tracks. But you already knew that subway tracks were not toys, and you had become an expert in not looking for trouble. Your walk home from school was usually peaceful, which is why the loud, insistent honking of a car horn caught you off-guard on this particular day. When you turned around to look, you saw a man sitting in a boxy little navy-blue car. He was on your side of the road, a little ways behind. The honking horn belonged to the car behind him. You had no idea why he was being honked at, but he was looking at you as if he knew you'd understood the situation completely. This guy, close to your parents' age, with pale skin, black curly hair stuffed under a newsboy cap, and pudgy face clean-shaven except for a bushy mustache, held your gaze for a moment. Then he raised his hands and shoulders together in an exaggerated shrug and quickly drove off. The sight of him with that mustache, shrugging off the honking motorist behind him, looked like some comedy you might have seen on tv, so you were certain it was supposed to be funny. Reflexively, you laughed out loud. It had been a joke and you were in on it, for once. It felt great, even though you weren't exactly sure what the joke was. A cluster of tiny bubbles was forming inside your chest – a feeling you couldn't describe. Was it the fact that the guy wasn't behaving like any other adult you'd known? He had looked you in the eye, hard. He shared his joke, as if you were equals. He wasn't being mean – that manner you could easily identify. But this was harder to figure out. You didn't know what to make of this strange behavior. But you were just a few minutes from home, at the foot of the very steep road you climbed each day; your house waited at the other end. After about 12 steps up the hill, you heard another horn honking. The boxy blue car was stopped several feet back, with the pudgy guy sitting inside. He motioned you toward the car. This was even farther outside the norm for you, but you complied. It's at this point when you're usually called upon to explain what you'd been thinking when you made the choice to move towards your own third rail. An 11-year-old girl walking to the car of a total stranger. You'd had lessons and warnings that bad things could happen. But like the kids on the tracks, you simply believed that they wouldn't. The guy invited you to get in his car; he was going to take you for an ice cream. When you asked him why he wanted to do this, he responded with another shrug. “I like you,” he offered with a smirk. That answer had been enough for you. In disgust, you turned away from the car and resumed your march up the hill, toward home. Once again, you'd misunderstood everything. He was not a hapless driver looking to you for understanding. He was just a creep. Finally at the top of the hill, you were surrounded by the 3-story homes that made up your neighborhood. Your hand had located the house-keys in your pocket before you'd even reached the front door of your home. Safely inside, you dropped your heavy bookbag on the dining room table and went to the living room to switch on the tv for company. Your older brother had not gotten home yet, and your parents were not due from work for another 4 hours. You returned to the living room with snacks and settled in front of the tv. Remote in hand, you began to flip through the channels for anything to erase the thought of the pudgy guy, and the uneasy feelings he'd left you with. You felt exposed, confused. It hadn't yet occurred to you to feel angry. That would come years later when you'd left childhood completely and understood that sometimes trouble didn't wait to be found. Sometimes it showed up uninvited and tied up traffic just to get your attention. You finally found something funny to watch and felt the tension in your shoulders begin to ease. On the screen was a program your brother liked to watch: an older show with three guys, friends or brothers, who always found reasons to hit each other. It wasn't your kind of humor, but you left it on anyway. It couldn't hurt to stare at these guys for a while. At least they did not stare back.

“Don't talk to strangers,” is a sentence that echoes in my head every time I break this golden rule. Quarantine brings out the worst in people. “Don't give out personal information,” is another phrase that bombards my mind whenever I hint at something too close to reality. But now is a time without rules, in which boredom hunts our repeated days and sucks us into a parallel reality. Life in Mexico looks like a faraway dream that was once my life, but after closing some friendship cycles and pouring my feelings onto paper, I realised that there is much more than this bubble-wrapped society. There is a world out there. So. Back to strangers. It all began as a joke. My sister and I found a trending website on TikTok in which you could speak with anyone in the world. England, Australia, Brazil, Spain now all seemed just around the corner, as we spoke to countless people doing the same thing as us: nothing. Some of the friendships we made on this website were as simple as five-minute conversations. Others lasted a few hours. And a tiny bit of conversations lasted a few days. That is where the Stranger comes in. In one of our many adventures surfing on this website, we met them. The Stranger is nineteen years old and lives in Kent, United Kingdom. But that is not even half of why our lives are so different. The Stranger is truly the one that popped my bubble, ripped it apart. The Stranger claims they left school at age sixteen and does not plan on going back. The reason? Drugs. In the enclosed society I live in, in Mexico, it is rare to hear about drug dealers or even about junkies, but for the Stranger, selling drugs is the only thing that keeps their life afloat. To be honest, I was taken aback, I even thought about blocking the Stranger as I saw them write the word Xanax on my screen. I had to re-read the message a couple of times. I knew the next step was to stop talking to someone who had any connection to a drug like that. But I gave the Stranger a chance. I was intrigued to know what went on in the world of drug dealing so unknown to me. Turns out the Stranger's family is a low-income family. Divorced parents. A brother who steals his money. A troubled kid kicked out of High School for selling drugs. What are they doing now? Working a minimum wage job at a mattress factory near their house with a dealing business on the side, to afford living in an expensive country like England. After countless texts, I learned to look past that and get to know the Stranger. They are nerdy and passionate about learning history and reading. Their favorite animal is the black panther and they're obsessed with watching the worst British TV shows ever. They're funny, caring, and also intrigued to know more about a different kind of lifestyle—mine. Of course, there were tense moments. Our worlds collided more than what we imagined. The Stranger sent me a picture of them smoking weed. I looked at it in their hand, so casual, so normal for them, yet so shocking for me. I got these waves of fear, a reality check. I started to look at their image again. Bluntly. Thoughts of blocking them again tortured my mind. Questioning voices traveled through every corner of my head echoing, “What are you doing?” That question still haunts me: “What am I doing?” Why am I talking to someone I don't even know across the globe who's life is nothing like mine? Would they bring positivity to my life? Probably not. But we can't be blind to reality. And that is why I texted back that one time. I see the person the Stranger is, their background does not define them. So, strangers. We are about the same age. In completely different parts of the world, with different cultures and incomes, and yet there we were. Texting with some force, filled with curiosity and of course the fact that for once in a long time, we are all united by something unwanted: quarantine. Might not be as bad to break the golden rule, right?

Call me Eliana, a medium height, and smart woman. My flawless dark skin has always been a center of attraction wherever I go. Moreover, my smile is radiant, often painting a ray of sunshine all over my face. My character is, however, unpredictable, mostly dependent on the weather or my schedule. Many from my school would say I am a no-nonsense lady. I do not disagree, I mean work is work, and I don't take anything that concerns my future lightly. My close friends would probably describe me as funny and easy-going. My family would go with hardworking and determined, and lastly, my neighbors might be tempted to use the word lazy and unbothered. Again, the impression you get from me will depend on the Eliana you meet. My confidence makes me outstanding. Everyone at school knows the girl who ‘catwalks' to class, speaks up and is ‘perhaps feared by most men,' Some like her and have nicknamed her ‘the Queen'' others have opposing names for her. Nonetheless, she carries all those titles with pride. Many people look up to her, and now she has the sense of ‘entitlement' of getting whatever she wants. She can be polite, but mostly, her straightforwardness makes her appear commanding. Behind all this ‘strength', however, is a normal human being, who cries when hurt or disappointed, and gets depressed over small issues. Being a Kenyan in Rwanda, COVID-19 has introduced myself to me. Okay, I am an ambivert, and I have a long contact list with only three friends. Four months indoors for me was marked with self-discovery and discipline. Because of the language barrier and trust issues, I am rarely friends with random locals though we talk. Somehow after lockdown eases, I realize I might need a ‘close friend' to talk to, perhaps about my unpaid internships, or the uncomfort that comes with wearing masks or maybe social media and how draining it can get. Sunday 5th July 2020, my birthday month! Well, I have just summarized my thorough cleaning, and now it's time to buy some supper. I stay on my phone when I find a group of people having conversations in a language I do not understand. A girl, probably my age enters the shop, goes straight to the shopkeeper, and speaks English. From her accent, I can already tell she is from my country. You might relate if you were ever in a foreign country and met someone from your country. Me: Are you Kenyan? Her: Silence followed by a smirk Me: (Thinking to myself, maybe she hasn't heard me) Are you Kenyan? Her: A smirk followed by silence She is not deaf, I am sure, and I have never been ignored my entire life, at least not in an obvious way. Someone told me to trust my instincts, and sure they have never failed me. Moments after she walks away, I turn to the shopkeeper, and he confirms my claims,' she is a serious Kenyan.' he says. I am kind of disappointed that she did not answer me, yet we share the same Nationality. For a moment, I forget the ordeal and focus on my purchase. Coincidentally, I see her in the next shop and somehow wait for her to come out so that I can introduce myself, something that I am not used to doing. Me: I asked if you were Kenyan and you ignored me Her: Silence (walking towards the opposite direction) Me: Hello, are you Kenyan? Her: Silence ( continues walking) Me: Well, I was just asking because I am Kenyan too Her: (Walking towards me while smiling) Oh, sorry you could have said that as your first statement, can I have your number? At this moment, I try to re-examine my communication skills. I have learned how to communicate, but then how can I do it effectively when not given a chance? Anyway, we talk a little about school, work and being in a foreign country. My last statement to her is,'be nice' while walking laughing. I understand where she is coming from, only four months old in the country, perhaps still struggling with trust issues. While preparing my supper, I think about the pain I felt while being ignored, then I think of the numerous people I have ignored in my life, perhaps having nothing but pure intentions. Not a good feeling, trust me. Now I decide it is time to descend my throne and get to learn and understand people more. What about her? I wonder how many good people she has turned off with her ignorant nature, which is perhaps understandable, at least for now. But we can be better human beings, can't we? There's a message notification on my phone, and she has invited me over to her house. Moreover, there is an apology for the ‘wrong first impression.'' Wow, I have mixed feelings, and I am still figuring out whether ‘it is worth it.''My ego has been crashed because, usually,' I do not beg anyone' I am independent and always survives. I was okay without any close friends during the quarantine anyway, and now I have to sleep and think things over. The energy I put, the effort and time to get to know someone who had ignored me at first, is it really worth it?

This is the Kuqa beacon tower. Not a penis...understand. It was build in the Han dynasty to protect both the Han empire and the travellers. I have a feeling that I may have been a soldier on that tower who was very protective in a past life. For the simple reason I have a cronic obessession with this tower and its landscape. I have always been protective of my family and friend and penpals. This tower reminds me of my new found self protectiveness on line. I am a weeding out the assholes just like the people on that tower just different country and era. I can imagine me be on top of this beacon tower trying to weed up friend from foe.