A Cafe Conversation on God

My one month sabbatical is about time and space to think and breathe, slower. To give myself to space to just be without attending to anything or anyone. 

Cafe crawling is central to this. Because I like the surprise of new drinks and can do away with the weight of it needing to be the best, or worth it. It can just be an experience and another one is around the corner. 

So another day, another cafe in Hoi An, Vietnam. I have plans to meet my embroidery teacher at a new cafe.  She told me a young girl who saw her painting at the cafe one day, might join us. She’s now her painting teacher. 

When I arrive, they’re painting with watercolours.  They share a paper with me and I start painting. I can’t remember the last time I painted anything. So I reverted back to sketching the trees I drew as a child. Light on the ‘sketching’

My teacher eventually has to leave, and the girl and I remain. She tells me she’s ten. From Scandinavia. Her family travels around the world with a group of other families. I ask her about what she remembers most from all the traveling she’s done. She tells me a story about a “villainous cat” in Istanbul. Her dog from back home. A monkey from another city. Every story centres around an animal. She’s also painting different animals.

And then, out of nowhere, she asks me: “Do you believe in God?”

I tell her I’m Muslim. So yes, believing in God is part of that . Then she surprises me by saying: I think I’m starting to believe in God too. I pause. I look over my shoulder. I’m thinking her parents are probably atheists. I’m a stranger. I definitely don’t want them to think I’m preaching to their child. But I’m too curious to change the subject.

So I ask her why she thinks this. “Because of things like thunder. And lightning. And how beautiful everything is. Someone had to make all that,” she says.

I smile to myself. Just yesterday I had been driving over a long bridge, no buildings blocking the skyline, bodies of water and swathes of green beneath an expansive blue sky, with clouds that look unreal. And I held back tears of joy and whispered, SubhanaAllah. 

“Yeah,” I say. “I think that too,” I add with a smile.

We continue painting, heads down, dipping into the colour squares. When we finish, I tell her she should sign the back of her painting so that when she becomes an artist one day, I’ll know it’s her if I ever see her work somewhere. She laughs and signs her name with a flourish. We pack up our things. I walk her to the gate of her building just as her father is coming out. We make plans to meet again the next day before I travel. 

Her words stay with me for the rest of the day. Thunder. Lightning. The beauty of everything. Sometimes belief can begin with noticing.