Human beings are interesting creatures. You get to meet one of them, and your brain immediately starts trying to fill in their little pieces out of those very short first encounters, after which you assume you’ve had a very clear picture of who they really are. But when the ice slowly starts to break, and the forced small talk gradually turns into effortless conversations, you get to hear some real life stories and it’s just mind-blowing how each and every person always turns out to have a story that is nowhere near those pictures you might’ve already painted of them inside your head. Very few people have enough patience to reach that level, but once you do, you realize you just can’t get enough.

You start wanting to hear all about that person’s crazy travels, or that other person’s very different family dynamics that leave you baffled at how very little you actually know about the world. You start feeling pain inside your own heart as you listen to someone’s breakup story, after which you keep trying to grasp how a human being can possibly walk around with all those scars while no one has any idea they even exist. You start wanting to literally scream at how someone keeps turning out to be so much like yourself, after you’ve already been convinced it was impossible that the two of you would even be friends.

The thing is, people don’t always realize they have interesting stories until they get to tell them. And right now, I literally want nothing more than to help have them all told.

Basma Zaki