Let There Be Light
By Lilia Mafouz:
In the beginning, I was young. Free. Ready to be blindsided by beauty, by the unknown, and to believe in signs from the universe.
I was wandering, thirsty, around a crowded monument in Mexico City, a tourist running on empty. A white marble staircase led up to a columned gallery topped by a glass dome. That’s where He appeared, at the top of the stairs, bathed in sunbeams streaming through the glass. The sight stopped me dead in my tracks. The crowd and the noise around me vanished. All that remained was His silhouette in white, glowing with light, floating gently down toward me. In that suspended, timeless moment, church bells chimed somewhere in the distance. My throat was bone-dry, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the divine vision. He was looking off into the distance. I didn’t know if I should cross myself, step into His path hoping He’d notice me, or if I was even worthy enough to speak to Him. How do you address a god?
Dehydrated and lightheaded, I waited until he was within reach. Then, in a moment of sheer panic, I asked him for a cigarette, even though I didn't smoke. He stopped. His eyes finally landed on me. He opened His mouth, and just like that, the noise and the tourists rushed back into the room. A camera flash blinded me for a second. Time had resumed. Through the din, I heard Him say:
"I'm not a charity, Miss. Figure it out yourself."
I was mortified. Desperate to prove I wasn't just begging, I stammered, "No, wait! I'm a tourist, I'm traveling alone, I'm from Paris. . . . "
His face lit up, and he held up a hand to stop me. "Where in Paris?"
I gave Ron my address. Then he vanished into the crowd.
Two months later, he wrote to me. So all was not lost. In a long, two-page letter, he told me how thrilled he had been to meet me and how wonderful it would be to see me again. In the final lines, he asked if his brother could crash at my place in Paris for two months.
I drank a big glass of water.
Lilia Mahfouz is a French author based in Paris. A recipient of the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Writing Prize, her work has appeared in numerous French literary journals, including Zone Critique, Marginales, Rue Saint Ambroise, and L’Encrier Renversé, as well as in a range of American and British literary magazines such as Ink In Thirds, Fiction on the Web, Quail Bell Magazine, In Parentheses, The Literary Hatchet, MoonLit Getaway, Hidden Peak Press, Grey Sparrow, Wild Greens, Skipjack Review, Lit Shark Magazine, and Fjords Review, among others.
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