Semi-Close Encounters With Snakes

The simple known fact is that snakes are dangerous, but moreover I knew two persons, one of them was my aunt, who could not bring themselves to even look at snakes’ pictures. My mother told me when her sister was a teenager, she once fell asleep under a vine in the family’s house, and when she felt like someone tickling her she found out it was a snake. She screamed for help and from that day even looking at a photo of snake terrorized her.

In May 2008, I visited a beautiful city on the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula called Salalah. The city is unique in many ways. It is the only spot in the region touched by the Indian monsoon every July and August of the year and that leads to continuous drizzle in that very arid area and makes the temperature dramatically drop to 27 C, where the mercury gets easily stretched beyond 45 C. in the rest of the peninsula. The city becomes lushly green, and the abundant coconut palms give it a Caribbean or Southeast Asian flavor. Besides, it is also one of the cities that claim to have the tomb of the Biblical and Qur'anic figure Job.

In one of the sightseeing tours we visited a natural site of heavy trees and bushes and a waterfall, although the latter was almost dry because the monsoon season hasn't had started yet. I moved away from the group to enjoy a moment of silence, and got closer to big rocks with many cracks that formed beautiful shapes. So close to the rocks that I found out one of the cracks was actually a light brown almost-one-meter long snake. I was startled and immediately stepped back as it moved smoothly back to enter into the crack.

The same day we had a free evening. I preferred to stay at the hotel, work out at the gym and order dinner from room service. The gym was a spacious room on the ground floor overlooking the garden. There were very few persons working out on the cycles. After I warmed up I went for chest workout on the flat bench in a corner of the hall. Weights were placed on the stand and some heavy weights were left on the floor next to jump ropes. When I picked up the dumbbells from the floor, I noticed one of the ropes moved and I thought it was tangled with the weights, but with a closer look I could not believe it was a snake that crawled quickly towards the weights stand.

When I told the trainer, he gave me a doubtful look. Actually I was not even 100% certain of what I saw. To prove I was mistaken he moved all the weights from the stand and there was nothing. He lifted up the stand, and right there we saw a snake in a spiral pose beneath the leg of the stand. It moved quickly to enter a tiny hole in the floor/wall junction.

The whole atmosphere changed and we were ordered immediately to evacuate the room. A snake in a five-star hotel was not an everyday challenge. The feeling that I could have touched it thinking it was a jump rope was repugnant.

The following day when I asked what happened, I felt the management did not want the news to spread in the hotel. They searched the gym and the garden and found nothing, so they just filled up and closed all the holes and cracks.

Two situations involved snakes in the same day for someone who had no close contact with snakes before, and in a city known as a tourist destination but unknown for its wondering snakes was something difficult to forget.

For few weeks later, I would wake up suddenly during the night at the slightest feeling that there was something unusual. It could only be a pillow falling down, a blanket pulled away or a sheet got messed up, but to me it only meant there might have been a snake in my bed.

From The Diary

We were four. Three guys: A, K and myself, and S. S was not really our friend or a pleasant person to be with, but we could not avoid her accompanying us as she and k were roommates and she requested to go with us. Upon an invitation extended by H in Brussels, we decided to spend the week-end with him.

K, who was always excellent at organizing a trip, was the one in charge. He rented the car and drove us the almost 300 kilometers, followed the guide map in the city and just parked the car in front of H's house in the neighborhood of Ixelles. It is wonderful to have someone in charge, in so perfect charge that all you need to do is just to relax and enjoy.

It was my second visit to Brussels and fortunately it did not rain or snow the whole weekend.

At H’s home, the four guys of us crammed in one bedroom and left the other one solely to S.

Everything went well until Saturday evening when we started to hear sounds of beats coming from upstairs. H told us that that was the neighbor signaling that we were making noise. We were surprised because we really did not make any unusual noise, but according to H, the problem was with the neighbor himself who was very old and a difficult person to deal with. He would also use racial slurs at the slightest provocation or sometimes with no provocation. H added that the old man's wife apologized few times for her husband's behavior and attributed it to his senility. I could not believe how my friend H, or anyone, could tolerate this attitude, but H said he had no other option but to leave the apartment which was not an easy decision. Besides, the police when contacted, did not take any serious action against the neighbor, so he had to live with it.

We were supposed to leave back to Paris on Sunday afternoon. S went in the morning to meet a friend of hers whom we knew too. That friend was a very decent young lady. We agreed with S to pick her up around 3 PM in front of her friend's house. 

Sunday morning I went with A to buy chocolate as presents to our friends back home and then we met with K and H  for lunch before we went back to the apartment to collect our stuff. We said goodbye to H and left.

We put our belongings in the trunk of the car that parked across the street and took our seats. K in the driver's seat, A in the passenger's and me in the backseat. K drove in reverse a bit to get the car out when he unintentionally hit another parked car. We went out to see if there was any damage but there was nothing. 

At this exact moment, and in the very calm empty street in that Sunday afternoon, a very old man appeared out of nowhere and started to shout hysterically at us. It turned out he was the old neighbor. Every attempt to let him understand that there was no damage done failed. He did not give us one second to explain or give himself one second to listen. So, we just left him barking alone on the sidewalk and drove away. We really pitied H for having such a neighbor and thought what a continous headache he must be having. 

A commented jokingly that as if the deep racist attitudes of this man were not enough for him, he now witnessed those foreigners committing a "crime" before they ran away.

We were already late for S when K realized that we had to fill up the tank, but since it was Sunday many stations were closed. Moreover, our meeting point was not easy to reach. Finally it was almost 4 o'clock when we arrived. S was just furious and I definitely understood. A quietly left the passenger's seat for her and moved to the backseat. 

In these situations I would apologize and explain what happened and give the angry person time to calm down, but that was in no way A's tactics. He apologized, and that was fine. He explained in details and exaggerated about the reasons behind the delay, and that in my book was not bad. But then he kept asking her every 3 minutes if she was still mad and saying that she should not get mad. And obviously that only resulted in doubling her fury.

The tense atmosphere lasted for two hours until we decided to stop at a gas station to buy something to drink and to make a visit to the toilet.  I got into the small toilet cabin first and a drawing on the wall of a huge organ drew my attention. For the last hour until we arrived Paris, S' attitude changed and she became almost normal. A whispered to me that undoubtedly what she saw on the wall of the toilet cabin has improved her mood.

Two days later I took the flight from Paris back to where I was living, A also left back for his home of residence, and K and S continued their student life and remained the foe roommates they have always been.

Paris - Brussels

December 1993

Dream (May 17, 2013)

I rode the car with my maternal uncle whom I haven't seen for ages. He looked as young as he did the last time I saw him. The street was empty although we were in the city center. I asked myself if it was appropriate to tell him I had intention to rent an apartment in the same neighborhood where he lived, but then I decided not to.

We arrived at his home and I did not see neither his wife nor his sons. There was only a nice-looking young woman whom he introduced as the maid. He talked in a serious way and asked her to bring the file.

I was a bit surprised that he lived with such a young woman alone in the house, and wondered if what they had went beyond what was supposed to be between a man and a maid. I guessed people and neighbors must be talking about them.

She brought the file and he showed me some papers and said he had plans to travel abroad either to France or Turkey, and he decided to choose the latter because it was cheaper. He wanted to know my opinion concerning the arrangements of the travel because as he said I had experience in traveling abroad. The paper had the number 2372. I did not know what this number stood for, but I guessed it might be the price he should pay.

I felt at a loss and did not know exactly what to say or how to help him.