fellow travellers

This conversation really did take place at a party I was at last night.

NEW ACQUAINTANCE AT PARTY Good evening, so you're Grace? How do you do? Pleased to meet you!

GRACE (slightly taken aback by NAAP's formality) Hi, yes. And how do you know [name of party host omitted for confidentiality] ?

NAAP We're at church together. And I'm a surgeon like her.

GRACE (noting that NAAP appears of an ethnicity not usually indigenous to the region) So have you come over here for a job with [party host]?

NAAP No, it's a long story. But what do you do for a living?

GRACE [description of job omitted for confidentiality]

NAAP Ah Praise the Lord! Now I will indeed tell you. I have come here for a year out, seeking a Road to Damascus experience!

GRACE (thinking "why would anyone want to come here from halfway across the world to do that?!") Now this isn't a place many choose for that...

NAAP At home, in London even, my family is such that, within my community, I've got so much wealth, status... I'm treated as royalty, I am royalty. I chose here because nobody would know my background, I'd not be treated as special...

GRACE makes impressed and admiring noises. HUSSEIN [that's not his real name, obviously] enters. He is also a surgeon and was granted refugee status from an not-to-be-named Middle Eastern country three years ago.

HUSSEIN Sorry to interrupt. But I heard you were talking about the road to Damascus?

NAAP Yes, I was explaining to Grace that it is something I long to travel, that I'm desperately seeking an encounter with Christ...

HUSSEIN So, er, which road to Damascus would that be? And at which point? I mean, where exactly?

NAAP (oblivious to HUSSEIN's lack of understanding of the imagery she is using) All I want is to meet with God. To have an experience of Christ more personal than I have yet found living in such a privileged faith-filled community as I grew up in.

GRACE Er, perhaps it would be helpful if Hussein explained to you where he's from...

HUSSEIN [specifies country of origin] and after I left there my brother and I spent a few months in hiding in a village just off one of the main roads into Damascus. He was killed there, one night. We still don't know who did it, or why.

GRACE (cringeing heavily) Oh er um, God, I didn't know that (slowly sinks through [party host]'s laminate flooring in embarrassment to reprimand self for insensitivity)