photo credit - nationalgeographic.com
Dear sisterpants,
You know how one single moment in your life can strike the very core of your being and influence you forever in a certain way? I forgot to tell you, but when I was on my way to Shutka (Shuto Orizari, the largest Roma community in all of Europe), I was on bus number twenty and I happened to sit across the way from the tiniest little Roma girl…she must have barely been three years old, she was a tiny thing. She was sitting on her grandmother’s lap, a sun-wrinkled woman with pewter strands of hair, tired but piercing cinnamon colored eyes, and a dry, raspy voice. She seemed full of passion, a worn passion, but she possessed passion (the blood of life) nonetheless. The little girl just sat there on her grandmother’s lap, turning her little hands in the sunlight and gazing proudly at the bright orange marker staining her bronzed skin and creating the illusion of a henna tattoo. I will never forget the look on that little girls face…it was so familiar to me. You see, little girls everywhere dream. Even an environment full of poverty and racism can give birth to a dream. The harsher the circumstances, the more we need to dream. I have always been a dreamer, it is both my blessing and my curse. I hope that all that little girls dreams come true, I sincerely do. I hope that every day she feels like the Bollywood princess that she dreams to be and never lets anyone tell her she can’t be something or someone. The day I saw her I saw a little glimpse of me…the childlike wonder leaves us all too soon. Before I got off the bus she looked at me with her big brown eyes, smiled the most adorable toothy grin, and waved at me with her little brown hands… and she looked like a princess. It made my heart melt.
- Cat
