Safiya Hussain - Three Thousand Miles for a Wish : the true story of a young womans quest to find happiness

THE BABY IN THE aisle next to me began to wail. I longed to hold it. Not because it was crying. But because of the deceit it was about to live. The pain of life it would suffer.

It was at your age that my pursuit for happiness began . Is that not what we all do? Pursue happiness as soon as we are dragged out of our mothers wombs? We come out kicking and screaming so I am unsure that the pursuit is one that we look forward to. Nevertheless, irrespective of desire or reluctance, the chase begins, as it began for me.

***

There are hardly any dolls, toys or hide-and-seek games of childhood. The pencils, the books and my fathers three words education, education, education, is all I seem to know. My childhood and youth is swallowed by the labour of learning. School, college and university that is all.

Why do my parents push me to bury my head in books? I guess, as immigrants from a third-world country, it is because they did not have the freedoms of learning to read and write. Having lived a life of difficulties, they have this ideal that in a well-paid and respected profession lies the key to happiness. I suppose they know best.

I take the aspiration to become a lawyer; a well-paid and respected lawyer. I see in this ambition, my passport to success; passport to happiness.

I clamber through the thorns and over the pits of an unprivileged life. It is slow. It is painstaking. I hate it most of the time. I just want to play. Have fun. I wish I could be happy now. But my mother said I have to work for happiness.

So I do.

My young, yet mature, eyes do not take themselves off that single vision that I have the moment when I would graduate and be handed my passport to success; passport to happiness.

Twenty-two years old. The moment finally arrives. I throw my black graduation hat in the air. I throw it as high as my hopes. I laugh like the child I never was. With my passport in my hands, I lunge into the career I have always set my eyes on. I have crossed the finishing line and made it to my key destination. I brace myself for the promised fireworks.

Only a week into my life as a trainee lawyer and my parallel dream is awakened. A romantic dreamer, I often gaze at the sky not wanting to miss the moment when my Prince Charming would drop down from the heavens and land on one knee at my feet.

Hello.

That is all he has to say. My doors of paradise fly open. Clichd as it is, he has me at hello. He does not drop down from the sky but rather steps out of the office of a law firm near mine. Prince, or no prince, like a burning meteorite shooting into the cool Atlantic Ocean, I fall in love for the first time.

Zameer.

A true artist of romance; he skilfully captures my heart in his hands and blows into it promises of everlasting love and laughs. He blows into it with such power that I am convinced it will soon burst like a star and release a thousand exotic butterflies.

It is wonderful.

A love that elevates me to another Universe. A love that makes me sing and dance under the roof of my house. A love that makes me shower every baffled stranger I pass with the cheesiest of smiles.

Intense. Passionate. Out-of-this-world. It is the epitome of love.

My passport to success is gripped in my hands. Love is gripped in my heart.

Life is amazing.

***

The ticking man stirred and I was thrown out of my thoughts. Shooting my bulging eyes at him I saw that he had quietened to an odd murmur. But his lips still moved. I did not quite know what to make of it. I did not quite know what to make of anyone on the plane; including my mother and father.

Unlike me, most of the women wore head scarves and most of the men wore beards. The look of unease on their faces whilst they clutched guide books on Hajj made my stomach turn.

What has driven these people to embark on this voyage? Do they carry the remains of a broken heart, broken dreams like me? Are they travelling in desperation? Or am I the most sorrowful of them all?