Laugh Now Cry Later

Eid Mubarak! Yesterday, the festivities of Eid-Al-Fitr begun. After twenty nine days of fasting and exclusion from wordly affairs, the crescent moon, which signals the end of the Holy month of Ramadan, has finally revealed itself, shedding off the Muslim community's sobre cape and ushering three days of mad and luscious celebration.

Ironically, after an uneventful and miserable day at the office (we were not spare of office though it's holiday), I went home with nothing in mind to do for the rest of the day. I just thought of spending time to give my site a make-over. It would be very timely since its Eid anyway, the Muslim's equivalent of New Year. As I was about to turn my laptop on, my celfone rang. It was an old friend and she was inviting me to go malling. I really felt heavy on my feet cause I know the mall's gonna be crowded to welcome the first day of Eid. But for old time's sake, I decided to meet her up.

It's been three months since we've last seen each other. Oh well, she hasn't changed a bit, physically and I hope, spiritually. She's still locquacious in her loud earthquake triggering voice and reactive in her predominantly "ayaw patalo" attitude. She's still always trying to outshine me in every subject of conversation that pops out of our head. Blame it on her blood, "kapampangan kasi" and she might very well be my last Kapampangan friend here in Dubai "na hindi ko pa inaaway nang tuluyan". "Ewan ko ba?", whenever we have misunderstanding, "nagkakabati rin kami palagi". Maybe because we know it's not easy to just forget "yung pinagsamahan namin kahit papaano", ooopppps without malice, we were really really "good friends dati".

We went to Dubai Festival City and just as I have anticipated, mammoth crowd has made the giant mall seemed like a jam packed arena waiting for a full blast football championship games. There wasn't hardly any space to walk through. Everyone was smiling, screaming, shouting, shopping and dining. During that moment, the place lived up to its name, undoubtedly.

As for myself, I was able to buy two bottles of perfume at a discounted price courtesy of her company ID. Then after that, we had ice cream over another set of gibberish conversations. There were lots of laughs, observing and mocking someone else's dress, fat bellies and oh! those plunging necklines, the skimpy outfits, the boobs, the muscles, the bottocks, etc. We can only laugh in their excesses rather than feel sorry for our deficiencies. Then we watched a boring laser light show and a not-so-impressive fireworks display. At ten p.m., I felt it's time to go home. I had no idea that a spoil was waiting in the taxi stand.

Our number was 200 cars away from being served. While waiting, we played some kind of "name that tune" game. That is, naming the title of he song being played on her Ipod. After roughly getting through all the songs saved on her Ipod, our que number was still a hundred cars away. Time to take a decent seat, a hundred cars could mean another hour of waiting. Then someone, a guy from Uzbekistan sat near me and he opened up a nice conversation. When he saw a child, walking upfront, he said that he also has a son back home in Uzbekistan and he kinda missed him. Then I asked him where was his country located, he said it's in Central Asia previously forming part of the USSR. Then I asked him if it's anywhere near Kazakhtan, he said their share borders. I even asked him if he knew Borat and he said Borat was also quite popular in his country. He did even mention that he almost died laughing when Borat wore that green one piece bikini in his movie. I said that was indeed hilarious. Then he asked me where are we going home and if he could go with us as his que would take him another hour to wait. Since his destination was quite not far from where we were going, i said it's no problem if he went with us. He even volunteered to pay for the taxi just to be able to get home earlier.

All the time that we were talking, my friend was minding her own business, texting. When i told her that he's joining us in the taxi, she said a BIG NO in a firm and uncompromising conviction! I was shocked I thought she was joking. But she wasn't. She threatened to walk out and she said she's gonna take another taxi if he come with us. I asked her what's the big deal and she just insisted that she didn't like it. Plain and simple. Now it was me to feel the dilemma. I have already said yes to the guy, but the girl said no. I paused for a while as I tried hard to hold back my tears.

I turned to the man and told him in a very apologetic manner, "my friend, I am sorry, but my friend doesn't want you to come with us". He understood and said it's okay. I never looked back at him. I was a little embarassed.

We took our taxi and I could barely speak a word. I was trying to figure out what happened and what went wrong. Then she explained her side but I was not listening, I was trying to hold back my tears. Then I told her it wasn't fair. She wasn't fair. Simply because he wasn't a Filipino made him undeserving of any help from us. I felt so much guilt. I told her, it isn't always that I got a chance to do good deeds or something nice to other people. Palagi niya ngang sinasabi na masama daw akong tao. Now, that I got a chance to prove otherwise, out of a clean intention, she herself has screwed it up. She said sorry but still I was deeply hurt. I told her she didn't know how it feels to say yes to someone only to take it back after a moment. It made me look I was half a man and that Filipinos were like that, malicious and selfish

We parted ways without any reconciliatory words. Masama pa rin ang loob ko.