A Choice You Wouldn’t Want To Make
A big day. A lot of us have those, so we know that they can be different, varying from riding a bike for the first time to a proposal of marriage. Most of us begin these events trembling and end up in euphoria. However, we won’t feel any satisfaction today as less and less is satisfying. The world is becoming sadder and we are becoming more critical and thus perfect pessimists. But you won’t hear anything pessimistic here. The story is about a 19 year old French guy who has just finished school with perfect grades, perfect exam results and even more perfect friends. The facts you will read may not be real but they should sound familiar as anything is possible in today’s world.
It all began in the village of Fyreness (all the names have been changed). At first glance, it was a beautiful place to live in with a church, grocery store, police station, coloured houses and beautiful scenery: trees, newly-built streets, even a fountain! It wasn’t working but, still, a fountain in a village! Trust me, if you came there you would think it miracle, an oasis in the French desert. However, the view is not enough. It was like being on the Moon and seeing the beautiful Earth but not being able to breathe. This village had one tremendous disadvantage: the people living there. We will come back to this later in our story.
Our fresh out of school Rodriguez decided to take his recently bought car for a test ride. Apparently, the test was successful. Rodriguez drove for about 100 miles straight through Brittany, Provence and other areas. He had a reason for refusing to stop or turn back. The hands on the wheel felt good, the blood-red colour of the car stunned the passing cyclists and the view was stunning. Sadly, as nothing good lasts forever, this was doomed to end. Not in a good way, believe me. The car just slowed down and… stopped. Rodriguez was puzzled and wanted to scream. Like he knew we can’t trust German cars…
He sat like this for around an hour, trying to wake up his vehicle. It wouldn’t so our friend jumped out and went to search for a place to stay as it was pretty clear that the day wouldn’t last forever. Our man saw an almost hidden sign of a village… Fyreness. Not the strangest name Rodriguez had heard. Definitely the closest. It took him 15 minutes to reach the first house. The only thing keeping him from a good night’s sleep was a knock on the door. Knock, knock. It was easier than Rodriguez imagined. He could get used to knocking on unknown people’s houses.
Here we have to stop as Rodriguez is about to yell and make us sadder than we want to be at this precise moment. Fyreness is not just another random city in France. It has history, and the people living in it are… a little different.
During the cold war, France lacked hard workers, so the walls came down and the doors opened to illegal immigrants. A huge group of people from Turkey invaded France.
Most of them didn’t even learn the French language, they stayed in groups, did what they were told, but never actually mixed with local residents. Time passed and groups became masses, and the masses needed a place to stay. This is where the French government intervened and built a Turkish village called Fyreness. This was the village Rodriguez arrived in and, as you can imagine, it was neither the ideal place nor the best time. The day was drawing in and the poor guy needed a place to stay. So he needed to make a choice. For one thing, he could have left in his car, but it wasn’t working and he could have frozen to death. The alternative of trying to enter the house of a Turk didn’t sound promising either.
This should be the place that something spectacular happens: the hero dies or survives or it’s all a drug-induced experience and Rodriguez was just standing in his bathroom all the time. However, it is not like this. The story doesn’t end here but it is the conclusion. Neither I nor you would want to make the decision Rodriguez has to make. You may wonder what can be done to make the Turks more hospitable and Rodriguez more courageous. I don’t, or I pretend that I don’t, so the story ends here. You think, I listen.
