the **tea house** has moved!

Dearest **tea guests** and **tea mates**!

As you may have noticed, I have been quite neglectful of this **Tea House**. I was initially considering completely giving up on it, but I kept having this nagging feeling that I need to start it from scratch all over again.

I have therefore decided to move my blog to a Wordpress platform. Things will work a tad bit differently there and I will try to keep topics more focused on spirituality, art, and reflections on day to day life...while sipping tea together of course!

 If you are interested, please follow me here: http://teatimereflections.wordpress.com it is still being developed, but at least the first post can keep you busy!

From your **Tea Hostess**
Reema

sunday disasters at my kitchen

TEA TIME!!!

**Tea** I'm now indulging in: earl gray with condensed milk, saffron, rose water, & cinnamon powder (a.k.a: AMAZING! If you've never had anything like this before, you better try it or else I'll serve you plain black coffee instead of **tea** in my future posts!). What **tea** do you want me to serve you today?

Speaking of **tea**, I bumped into a recipe today from The Daily Meal which involves cooking shrimps with jasmine green tea. I had never in my life heard about the concept of using tea leaves for cooking lol but I'd love to experiment with making this! Have any of you ever cooked with **tea**? If so, what kinds of **tea** have you used and with what dishes? If not, is it something you'd like to try out?

I know I have promised to post reflections about Zeenat's article in my last blog post, but I decided to instead tell you about a recent idea I began implementing last week (in fact, it is a more suitable topic to transition to from the previous paragraph).

As some of you may know, I have been putting off teaching myself to cook proper dishes for quite a while and every time I make a commitment to cook at home more often, I just do it for a week or two and then stop. Aside from the few friends who are great cooks (in fact, one of them tends to post pictures of her, her friends, and/or her brother's cooking on Facebook that make me fume with envy and hunger! >,< (You know who you are!!)) or those who cook occasionally, many of my friends face similar dilemmas...that is why I decided to create a weekly event called "Sunday Disasters @ Reema's Kitchen" in which I invite my friends to cook at my place every Sunday.


Why are such days called "disasters"? That is because the challenge for those who come over to cook is to make something they've never done in their lives (that was the reason why I was browsing The Daily Meal to begin with...). In this way, not only are we each motivated to cook by doing it in a fun environment together, but we'll each learn something new in the process. Neither me nor the guests need to plan what we want to make beforehand; we could browse the online magazines and podcasts I have here from my laptop on the day of each event and whatever we don't have we can get from a large supermarket right across the street from my building. Furthermore, whatever tools I'm lacking to make a particular dish, we can get from another store that is also right across the street from my building (this was all meant to be! :-D).

Why Sundays? I thought that since Mondays are the first day of school and work in America, whatever food that doesn't get eaten from our event we can have for lunch on either Monday or Tuesday (it's typically best not to keep leftover meals for longer than 2 or 3 days) instead of eating out (most of my friends don't live on campus so they don't use the dining hall too often). Also, since I have told too many people (as in 23...my brother who lives with me freaked out when I told him!) about this weekly event and I don't want too many to come over in each day (*Sigh* the cost of having many friends...) I thought that making this happen on Sundays, the day when college students get homework and studies done or rest up before beginning work/school on Mondays (and even if they do go out, they don't typically do so to party and get drunk...), is a good solution.

Last week, while I was looking for recipes for the First Disaster, I bumped into an article in Endless Simmer about progressive dinners. As great an idea this sounds, most of my friends don't live near me and even if they did, it gets very cold in Boston's winters (though this winter had its unusually warm days). I shared this here as I thought that perhaps one of you **tea mates** and **tea guests** may consider doing something like this if you haven't ;-) .

Below are pictures of what we ended up making for the 1st Disaster last week in which only 3 people showed up although on Facebook 7 claimed to be attending and 4 more said that they may attend (see? Inviting 23 college students to my place on Sundays wasn't too bad an idea!). Regardless of the limited amount of people who made it, it was still so much fun! It was so fun that I even enjoyed washing the dishes (one of my most detested household chores) and cleaning the kitchen counter afterwards both of which made me reflect on all the effort we exerted and joy we shared to make and consume each dish!

Before sharing the pictures, I forgot to mention that two of my friends who made the appetizers broke the rule and made dishes they were familiar with. It was me and the third guest who made dishes completely foreign to us, both of which were part of the main course (as you will see, her dish ended in a slight "disaster" but we still enjoyed the end result!). For dessert, we just had tea and cookies. Oh and by the way, the picture at the top of this blog post is us 4 cooking together (I'm the one with the blue jallabiyya!). My brother took the pictures (with his new Canon EOS Rebel T3i) and helped a little.

Appetizers

Bruschetta

French Onion Soup

Main Course

My mussels! This was the first time I've ever cooked any form of shellfish in my life! It was surprisingly easy. I'm very proud of how this one turned out though I wish I added less water while steaming the mussels and allowed the chickpeas to soak and boil longer. Here is the recipe I used (the cook in the video claims this is a Moroccan dish...can anyone confirm?). Instead of white wine, I used water, freshly squeezed lemon juice, & olive oil. For spices, I used thyme, garlic, oregano, coriander, cinnamon, chilli powder, & saffron. In boiling the chickpeas, I did it alongside two or three of the spices mentioned. Afterwards, when I mixed it with the mussels, I added more of the same along with the rest of the other spices.  Here is an article and a video about cooking and storing mussels in general.

Now this was meant to be an onion and spinach quiche....unfortunately though, my friend spilled the egg and cream mix on the counter and floor...so she ended up making what is more like a spinach and onion pizza!

I shared all these pictures in my Facebook and those who couldn't attend were envious and asked if I was doing another disaster the upcoming week or the week after! In this week (as in tomorrow), only two or three people responded to the Facebook invite as most of them are having very busy semesters or have had other plans in place before....so I'm not sure how many of them will truly attend! Regardless of whether anyone ends up actually coming or not, I will still cook tomorrow. In fact, I plan to make this except with walnuts instead of pumpkin seeds. To conclude, I hope that this entry will inspire those of you who, like me, are either too lazy to cook or just have no time to do so but plenty of time to hang out with friends to do weekly disasters in your kitchens!

From your Tea Mate,
Reema B. :-)

happy new year!

From dreamstime.com

TEA TIME!!!

Tea I'm sipping now: chai karak (yup, I am currently at home for my winter vacation for those who are wondering!). What **tea** would you like to be served?

I'd like to wish all you **tea mates** and **guests** a very happy new year! In the spirit of this special day, I'd like to share with you one of my favorite motivational articles titled Refresh Renew Rebirth from the Positive Provocations blog authored by a lovely **tea mate** and a beautiful soul called Zeenat <3 Hopefully, reading it will make you feel rejuvenated and ready to tackle this year head on! In my next post, which I may post either this week or the next, I plan to share my reflections on the ideas discussed in Zeenat's article and how it has been inspiring and motivating me since the time it was first posted.

As you may have noticed, I completely changed the **Tea House**'s playlist whereby each song represents a distinct region around the world (namely: Middle East, South Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas). I have also shifted the ipod gadget to the very top so that you may more easily change the music and/or mute it. 

Anyway...what have you all done to celebrate new years? Last night, I had dinner with my cousin and parents at a Lebanese restaurant (aside from the joy of eating home made Khaleeji food everyday, I'm so happy to be having authentic Lebanese food compared to what I get in Boston!). After dinner, we headed to a beach where we had a great view of the fireworks from Burj Khalifa, Burj al Arab, and Atlantis the Palm and munched on pistachios and chocolate.

All I had last night was my phone so I couldn't take good pictures worth posting here, so if you're interested, here are the links to videos of those fireworks (really sorry that I couldn't find a good video for Atlantis the Palm...if you know of any yourself, please do share!):

1) Burj Khalifa (though I still think the Opening of the Burj was WAY more impressive; I was personally at the VIP seating that night!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9CfvGu8sjU&feature=related

2) Burj Al Arab (certainly not as exciting as Burj Khalifa. On a random note, this video will give you a taste for Khaleeji music ;-) ): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB4dV48XhUU

Hopefully you enjoy the refreshing article and the videos as you await a more reflective post :-)

From your Tea Mate,
Reema B. :-)

on vulnerability

TEA TIME!!


**Tea** for this post: pineapple and papaya herbal tea from Tealuxe. This is my first time visiting Tealuxe thanks to a good friend of mine (and a **tea mate**) who got me a gift card from there for my 21st birthday. Some of you may already know that I do not drink alcohol, so, for those of you who come from cultures in which 21 is a big deal (it honestly doesn't mean much to me), you may be wondering what did I do to celebrate? Don't be silly, I did NOT binge on **tea** at a tea house/bar/cafe (seriously, your guesses need to be a bit more creative than that!)...

...but I did binge on chocolate on the day of my birthday and on ice cream and home-made desserts 9 days later! :-P

Clubbing isn't really my thing though I used to go to a lot of parties in my Freshman and Sophomore years just to socialize. My new off-campus apartment is a bit small to have a decent dance party or at least it is small to me...I mean I prefer to have ample space when I dance which is one reason why I don't like clubs! I also don't like the idea of anyone getting drunk at my place especially if they're not familiar with the area. My birthday was on a weekday anyway, who would've come?

For these reasons, we had quite a cooking spree during the weekend that passed (or rather my mom, who's visiting us from Dubai, did...) and we had more sweets than actual food...shame on you for missing it all! Not receiving an invitation is no excuse, you could've just walked in! Ugh...why do we need to be so formal and uptight??!!


Alright, I'll stop with this nonsense now and serve you all **tea**, so choose your **tea** or I will not be happy! >,<


Anyway...below are some updates and thoughts with a slightly more serious tone compared to the absurdity above...

From Gregory Colbert's Ashes & Snow

Aside from finally (I mean FINALLY) getting an off-campus apartment (i.e. no more nomadic living for me), I have recently started my second internship which involves two unpaid positions (unfortunately for psychology majors, it is difficult to find a paid internship). One of these positions is a women's residential substance abuse rehab center that follows the therapeutic community (TC) model of intervention. This is in great contrast to my first internship which was in a research setting.


It is a very stressful job to the extent that there are times when I worry of burning out especially as my other job involves dealing with families of hospitalized children plus I am still currently volunteering at a rape crisis center hotline. On top of all that, I'm looking up graduate schools as my university doesn't offer degrees in clinical psychology, preparing for my GRE which I'll be taking at the end of September, and working on my undergraduate research study (I've honestly been slacking on this one the most, so I'm not sure if I'm even qualified to say that I'm actually "working" on it lol). 

Despite whatever complaints I may have, my internship at the rehab center has still proven to be extremely rewarding from day one. The stress itself becomes part of the reward as I contemplate upon my experiences there combined with those at the other internship and the hotline and their implications for my professional, spiritual, and mental growth. I'm also careful about practicing self-care by going out often even if just to relax in the sun and grass, hanging out with my family and friends, watching movies, reading, knitting, writing, avoiding things that I know will trigger me...and, of course, sipping **tea** ;-)

*Sigh* I need to be having **tea time** a bit more often with you all :-(



Anyway...the work at the rehab center is challenging and many times I'm left with little to no guidance. Though it can get unnerving, it is understandable in an understaffed non-profit residential setting where staff need to constantly be on their feet and where conflict among both staff and clients commonly ensues.

God...you should all see me when conflict occurs there (I mean *conflict*)...I just stare silently, dumbfounded, as everyone is tearing each other's heads with their yelling...! From day one I had to sit through a heated clinical meeting among the counselors and staff. I find it miraculous how both the director of the center and a senior counselor, who typically moderate the clinical meetings, can remain so calm (almost zen like) and be able to ground the staff back to objectives of the meeting rather than getting too caught up in the arguments.

Then again, despite whatever fight that happens, whether between staff, clients, or clients and staff, what amazes me most is how eventually, whether during the fight itself or at the end of the day, they seek to explore the roots of the other person's outbursts rather than continue reacting to the outburst itself. They also try to support and validate one another's experiences, while acknowledging that though their actions may not have necessarily been the "right thing to do" but that was simply where they were at in that state.

This may not always go so smoothly, but the fact that an attempt is made makes a difference in enhancing self-knowledge and reflection and in striving to develop understanding, trust, and openness among the staff and residents of the house. These are especially needed in a therapeutic community (TC) approach where everyone is involved in the other's treatment (I hope you already reviewed the link about TC that I shared earlier to see what it's all about) and with clients of substance abuse treatment in general who tend to have issues with trusting others and lack a healthy way to channel their negative emotions.

I wish that society was more like that--I wish that we can find in every interaction, whether it be in a fight, a normal conversation, or while keeping each other company in silence, an opportunity to explore and understand ourselves and each other at a deep level. In this way we live more deeply by expanding ourselves and going beyond our ego that wants to bother with petty things like showing off "who's boss".  I wish that people could more openly and honestly express themselves without allowing what is expressed to be the only thing that defines and controls them.  I wish that this self-expression will encourage self-reflection and encourage deeper listening to other beings rather than emphasizing self-importance and ignoring others'.

All in all, I wish that being vulnerable to one another was more valued rather than submitting to our ego to cover up our insecurities by hurting and deceiving one another. We'll eventually hurt and deceive ourselves by submitting to only a part of us rather than being a whole observer of the phenomena of our inner world. Though this applies to everyone in our materialistic societies, I especially feel bad for men who are socialized to believe that masculinity is only about "being tough" and who devalue the worth of other men for being vulnerable.

To me, vulnerability is an act of courage and humility before the Divine that I and many people lack. I may be very sensitive, and I think that is a negative characteristic in making me easily bothered by every little thing but also a positive one in making me notice and learn from simple things that some people may not notice. However, I do not think that that means that I am vulnerable enough; I find that many times my ego does get defensive and wants to show the other person "who's boss" in conflicts and, in ordinary conversations, trying to present myself in a certain image to impress others. I find that the latter prevents me from serving others with all my heart by only having me submit to a part of me or an image of me rather than my wholeness.

 I have only begun to explore these wishes of mine, and I wish that I can practice them more myself. I feel like now a days I've been more quick tempered, but perhaps this internship is the Divine's way to help me tone that down. I'm sure this is a lifelong process and with each time I learn and relearn I hope that I gain a fresh perspective and experience. In the end, it's the journey that matters, not the destination.

Some days the clients in the counseling groups I shadow express hopelessness and, to ground myself, I reflect upon the importance of vulnerability, see their strength in opening up and processing with each other and the counselor how they can respond to the uncontrollable, and try to see what I can learn about them and myself as a fellow human being.  Each client and staff in this center seems to have gone through so much and have stories to tell and wisdom to share. I am honored to have them as my teachers no matter my complaints.

From your Tea Mate,
Reema B. :-)

thoughts with an empty tummy

Arabic calligraphy that reads "Ramadan Kareem" shaped into a woman in supplication. Image from the gallery of Khaleelullah Chemnad

TEA TIME!!!

**Tea** I'm sipping now: Chai from Twinings with Rainbow Evaporated Milk. So far, I couldn't find this milk in the States, so I had my family, who were visiting me this summer, get me some ;-)

What **tea** would you like to be served?

As some of you may know, the holy month of Ramadan started in the first of August this year and, as practicing Muslims, me and some of my family members are fasting from sunrise to sunset until the end of this month. To my Muslim **tea mates** and **tea guests**, I'd like to wish you all a "Ramadan Mubarak" (I don't think it's ever too late to say that :-P).

**The Hostess serves everyone tea and dates** Enjoy :-) For those of you who are not so familiar with Ramadan, please consider taking a look at these and these to get an idea about the diverse cultural manifestations of observing this month though we Muslims share the same faith.

Although Boston currently lacks this "Ramadan feeling", especially with the absence of family members (aside from my brother and my mother who is visiting) and traditional meals to break my fast, I find that fasting here is more rewarding than it is in Dubai. I say this because I can actually feel the challenge of fasting in contrast to my spoiled life back home. The summer days of Boston are much longer plus I tend to walk outdoors more often here as I go through my daily routine (afterall, it is known as the"walking city" among many names). Those of you who've been to the Emirates or anywhere in the Gulf must know that this is all in stark contrast to being smothered by ACs 24/7 and to the shorter work and school days that are meant to accommodate for the fasting during this month.

With a busy schedule and the process of moving into an off-campus apartment with my brother (which I'm almost settled in), I would feel extremely fatigued and starved throughout the day. By the time I break my fast at sun down, all I want to do is SLEEP...

However, there are moments when I remind myself that there's a point to all this fasting and that feeling the drain of energy and the hunger are part of the process. Firstly, I feel like fasting helps me to practice mindfulness over my states and experiences. The hard part, however, is to practice being an observer rather than attaching to these states and experiences.

Aside from practicing such mindfulness and freeing up time to meditate upon oneself and the Divine by abstaining from food and drink, I believe that fasting also helps to show how privilege blinds us from other's experiences. If I feel like my mind has shut down this month because of fasting from sun rise to sun set while running many errands, how is it like for those who are suffering from the recent famine in the Horn of Africa and are traveling great distances to find food? Speaking of which, please consider reviewing this and this for easy ways to help out or to at least spread the word about them. We cannot be sipping **tea** while denying basic necessities from others through our apathy!

 As I think of this famine, I can't help but go back to an a past blog post of mine to ground myself rather than drowning myself in hopelessness and powerlessness because of not being able to help in a major way.

To end this post, I'm wondering if those of you who fast or used to fast can share your experiences with us here. I'm sure that each of us will benefit from immense spiritual treasures through this sharing :-)

From your Tea Mate,
Reema B.

"healing teas"

From: Amazon

TEA TIME!!

Tea I'm now sipping: Chamomile Citrus form Mighty Leaf. What **tea** would you like to be served?

A few months ago when I was doing my first internship, I stopped by Teavana on my way back from work to sip some of their free samples of tea. Although I was initially only there to get my dosage of free stuff (just because, as a college student, it's hard-wired in me to seek every opportunity to consume free products no matter how trifle!), I was too tempted to get a box of cookies infused with one of their popular teas (unfortunately, they do not sell this anymore but they recently started to offer a thinner version of it which I still haven't tried). To further deviate from my initial purpose of visiting the store, a book about medicinal herbal teas caught my eye. This book, which I eventually bought along with the cookies, is called Healing Teas: How to Prepare and Use Teas to Maximize Your Health by Marie Nadine Antol.

Before I say a bit more about the book  (as this entry isn't meant to be a long, exhaustive review about the book itself), I would like to first talk about my interests in medicinal herbs in general.

When I was in high school back in Dubai still trying to decide what I wanted to major in college, I had initially followed my parents' wishes of medicine. At a certain point in my life when I really wanted to manifest more of my autonomy, my interests switched to pharmacology and then herbology! I guess I was always fascinated about natural medicine used by different cultures, especially the sort my grandmother would use (specifically the kinds used in both Gulf Arab states and Southern parts of Iran) and which is hard to find much information about (and it was only recently that I had bumped into something like this which includes how each herb can be used and a brief historical background of each).

As mentioned in one of my older posts in this blog, I connect with tea at a personal level. Therefore, finding a book that combined my interests in both herbal medicine and tea was a blessing. I find that a lot of sources on herbal medicine tend to be very biased and may even employ pseudo-scientific methods to make their exaggerated claims without considering the potential existence of the "placebo effect" (click on the link to be redirected to an interesting video about this phenomenon). However, one thing that I find unique about this book is that, it not only includes the traditional medicinal usage of tea from different parts of the world and how to make your own whether as a drinkable tea or to be used externally, but also a brief info on scientific tests that either confirmed or found mixed results regarding each of these teas' healing properties and potential side-effects of very strong ones.

Do you yourself also use teas medicinally?  Would really appreciate it if anyone chooses to share their experiences and knowledge here!

From your Tea Mate,
Reema B. :-)

cooking blog suggestion: "from the hearth"

From: From the Hearth

TEA TIME!!!

Tea I'm sipping now: Tetley Masala with milk (WHOLE milk of course...no disrespect intended for anyone but I never understood the point behind low-fat or skim...they taste like water!! >,< Haha, as I type this now, I suddenly remembered how an ex-roommate of mine, who was a pro-skim/low-fat milk drinker, told me that whole milk is more disgusting as it tastes like fat!).

No worries **tea mates** and **guests**, I now stop my non-sense ranting about milk and continue among the many ritualistic traditions of this **Tea House**: What **tea** would you like to be served?

Ok, now to the main point of this blog post!

I was just chatting with Azaraksh, a good friend of mine, via Facebook whom I haven't seen for quite some time now. During this conversation, she shared a link to a cooking blog she recently started called From the Hearth. For now, it is a pilot project but she plans to commit to it more fully after she graduates this semester.

The blog mainly specializes on Persian cuisine. Her writing style combined with the images used in each post will certainly guarantee a delightful mouth-watering experience! This is why I decided that I wanted to share this blog with you, my fellow **tea mates** and **tea guests**, in hopes that you may try savoring such dishes as you sip **tea** here in the **Tea House** ;-)

After visiting From the Hearth, please let me know in the comments below about the dishes that you'd like to experiment for yourself or have already experimented and how it all went!

From your Tea Mate,
Reema B. :-)

"mini-poem"

From: link

TEA TIME!!!

Tea for the post: Bigelow Earl Gray Tea flavored with bergamot. One of my favorite teas which I usually sip in between my Monday, Wednesday, & Thursday classes when I have too little time to head back to my dorm and too much time to not do anything. What **tea** would you like to be served?

After a long time of not posting anything here (and still surprisingly gaining new followers!! Would like to welcome all of you to the **Tea House**!), I have a very random question to ask.

Do you guys have any idea if there is such a thing called a "mini-poem" (not necessarily a haiku)? I've once heard of "mini-fiction" which I'm interested in experimenting with sometime (please do check out their facebook page here as well).

But then again, I also wonder, what exactly makes a "poem" in general? I feel like now a days there's so much more flexibility in writing one that you could label anything as a "poem". Would you consider the following sentence below a "poem" or simply "poetic"?

"I am a beating heart among other hearts in the concert of life and death"

I made that one up years ago and suddenly remembered it today. I'm just really not sure what would I call it...can I call it a "poem"??

I guess we cannot limit the meaning of this "label", not even in the sphere of literature and creative writing. Personally, I feel like life and death are expressions of the Divine. I feel like "living poetically" means to be conscious of the "poetry" surrounding you.


From your Tea Mate,
Reema B. :-)

P.S. Forgot to mention that I've recently created a Twitter account and I'm such a noob in Twitter! >,< But I'll see how it goes...feel free to follow, I've added a button on the right side of the blog. 

the "trick or treat" of the gulf arabic states

TEA TIME!!!

Just sipping some boring Lipton tea lol, what **tea** would you like to be served now? It better be something more exciting! :-P

Although Halloween has just passed, I have just bumped into a blog post written by one of our fellow **Tea Mates**, sparklydatepalm, where she wrote about trick-or-treat in Halloween and its similar counterpart, minus the "scary" costumes, in Gulf Arabic countries. This celebration is known by many names and in where I come from, which is the Emirates, it is known as "Hag el Leilah" (which is literally translated into: "for the night" or "the right of the night"). Her post really reminded me of home and made me think about why it didn't even occur to me to write about it here when Halloween was just yesterday?

In the Islamic calender, Hag el Leilah tends to be celebrated in the month of Sha'ban right before the holy month in which we Muslims fast called Ramadan. Honestly, as a person who was born in a city (in Dubai), I must admit that there isn't much that I know about this tradition aside from the idea that children wear their traditional clothes and collect sweets from door to door (kinda like trick-or-treat lol) and as they do so, chant a prayer which is more accurately described in the link to the article about Hag el Leilah which just shared above.

Also because I was born in a city and lived most of my life in apartments where our neighbors were primarily expatriates, I didn't quite experience this tradition. If I really could say that I've "experienced" this tradition in any way, it was more in the form of fellow classmates or teachers in our school distributing candy in pouches or creatively designed bags which we'd snack from in our bus trip home.

At the end of this post, I've posted a video of an ad about this celebration which I guess would give you an idea about the kind of ambiance in the traditional manner of celebrating it.  

WARNING: before playing this video, please please pause the background music by scrolling down to find the Ipod gadget on the right hand side of the blog and clicking on the pause button so that you can experience this video to the fullest!! :-P





From your Tea Mate,
Reema B. :-)

"the stranger" unveiled...

TEA TIME!!!

Tea I'm sipping now: jasmine green tea, 'cause I seriously need to chill after a long week! What **tea** would you like to be served this time?

For those of you who've read my short story, When "The Stranger" Barged In... , may recall that I had kept The Stranger's identity open to interpretation. So, as you can guess by now, this post will reveal his identity as I had intended him to be. I will also share what my friends who've read this thought of his identity.


So.....in other words....if you still haven't read the story and/or what had gotten me to write it....click on the link now!!! And then come back continue reading this post....

Image from: United Mask & Party Manufacturing, Inc.

The people who've read this story and who've shared their thoughts with me about it have so far guessed that "The Stranger" is either conscience, a lost opportunity, a demon, a ghost, the angel of death, or death itself. Although I had, as most people may have already guessed, intended that "the stranger" be death itself, I still find the idea of seeing him as either "conscience" or "an opportunity lost" very interesting.

The friend who had identified him as "conscience" justified her point of view by saying that conscience can haunt and kill and we, just like the woman in the story, try in vain to avoid facing our awareness of it's existence until it eventually kills us. As for the friend who had thought of him as "an opportunity lost", he explained his position by saying that the woman, in trying to ignore "stranger", get him out of her house, and finally pointing a gun at him, is trying to deny the reality of his existence and is ignorant of what lies behind the mask. We tend to fear the "unknown" when the "unknown" may contain the keys to bliss or to our enlightenment. When "the stranger" unmasks himself, that is when the woman finally experiences what she had been trying to avoid all along, but by then, it is already too late...

Would now love to hear your input on this ;-)

From your Tea Mate,
Reema B. :-)