Ten days in Ain Qassis the Evangelist, by: Raja Al-Bu'ali

It was neither a calculated nor an expected matter. I suffered from a high fever from the first day. I am not sure of the cause, but I attribute it to three factors that worked against me: my sadness during travel, the cold weather in the town, and the cultural shock that revealed nothing of my open and outspoken social personality; rather, it showed a quiet young woman to the point of silence. No one hears the inner voices that have been devouring my mind since I set foot on this place. All my previous travels have burned out, and my positions in study, work, and travel have faded away, as if it was the first time I traveled and saw different people. But my mind kept thinking about how I feel. All the confusion I experience is due to the difference in impact, as tourist travel is completely different from cultural travel, which does not hesitate to slap the skull with strange and different ideas, whatever they may be; this makes me swallow my voice many times. This trip took me ten days to an exceptional experience, which is full coexistence. With every strange scene, I smile outwardly, while inside I invoke concepts of cultural diversity and try to understand. These are multiple cultures from around the world, and I am among them like an explorer whose amazement prompts him to seek a way to interpret them in hopes of understanding and reconciling with them. Number of pages: 160