Baggage carousel and a lesson from Zamzam

A carrousel or merry-go-round is an amusement ride consisting of a rotating circular platform with seats for riders. So your meri was going around another type of carrousels...the baggage ones at the airport of Johannesburg looking for a stranded conference banner suspected to be a weapon. A development aid missile, I thought. Sometimes going around at airports one learns lots. I like to guess nationalities, languages, and destinations. Boyfriend husband and I often compete to know which language the couple sitting in front of us in the plane speaks: Hungarian!?, Finnish!? 

Other than languages and nationalities one can learn a lot on how not to behave at airports. A mix of arrogance and bully attitude often makes me feel some people should really stay at home so I can seat and enjoy the ride.

The conference banner, a.k.a, development weapon, was in carousel #7 so there I headed determined to take it and go to the hotel, when I found myself surrounded by the passengers of an Emirates flight. Carousel 7 seemed mysterious for a while: small, half opened, heavily Arabic-labelled boxes were coming out, hundreds of them. Beautiful women covered in burkas, white jilabas for men, all speaking South African English, waiting for boxes. Meri's head was going around with questions.

- Madame, may I ask you? What are those boxes?
- Pure water, from the Zamzam well in Mecca. Do you know the story of Abraham?

And right there, at the airport of Johannesburg, I learned the story of Abraham, Hagar and Ismail.



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