Fatima II #TBT #Repost Auspicious viewing #2003

Fatima was looking through the window of the bus. 'Rain, rain, rain and when will it stop,' she thought by herself. It was the middle of January, but as each year, she yearned for the summer during this month. Particularly for the trip she would make with Ahmad to Turkey. She never goes to her home country as a vacation. She goes because she lives her life there with a different kind of coherence, a special intimacy, an almost seamless correspondence between what she thinks and what she feels. Two young girls made her leave her thoughts for what they were and made her listen attentively to their talk. It seemed that they had a discussion at school, earlier in the day, about the suggestion of Patrick Dewael. That the wearing of religious symbols should not be permitted in public schools. For teachers, and for students. The girl, who was standing the closest to Fatima, told her friend that she understood that it was needed to make pictures for a passport without a religious symbol. And that there were some jobs where it could be dangerous to wear one. 'Yes, but what about a girl wearing a veil at school, or another religious symbol,' the other one replied? 'Aren’t schools, places where children should learn how diverse the world and her population can be? Places where every child has the right to have an own identity?' The rest of the conversation disappeared in the wind, because the two girls stepped out at the following bus stop. A man with a cap of his favorite football league took their place.