Making Friends

Aaah! The joy of making friends. In fact, the joy of making friends with people who on first impressions you wouldn’t make friends with; the ones that you judge, put up a barrier to and snobbishly ignore or make as little effort to get to know as possible. And then they destroy that barrier and destroy you’re perception of them.
Yesterday I woke up to clattering and doors banging and things being dragged. But it was nothing new (although the halls are still strangely empty–probably people are not going to move in until the weekend). I moved in to the halls on Tuesday and was the one doing all the clattering and banging and dragging, along with several other students who were moving in at the same time. Wednesday it was the turn for others. And yesterday it was Mimi’s turn.
I opened my door in my pjs and ruffled hair and peeped out. I wasn’t noticed by the tall, slim girl who was dragging a box of things along the corridor in the highest stilettos I’ve ever seen. She disappeared into her room. She came back out and breathed out “Ya Allah!” flipped open her phone and started talking rapidly into it in gulfi Arabic as she swayed down the hall in her skinny jeans and “stilts”.
I closed the door and burst into giggles. Don’t ask me why. I’m strange. Had a shower, got dressed and thought it only right since she was technically my neighbor to introduce myself like others had done when I arrived. I listened out for her and then opened my door to find her dragging a YSL suitcase that looked extremely heavy. I couldn’t help but notice all the make up she had on, especially on her eyes which were lined thickly with kohl and fake eye-lashes. And then there was me. The disgraced on of my family because I hate make up and anything being done to my hair except to be hastily brushed and put up in a pony-tail.
She smiled at me and waved as if we were long lost friends while I stood in the doorway looking at the spectacle and lazily lifted my arm up to wave back. She left her suitcase in the middle of the corridor (a safety hazard –thats what ran through my head as she came up to me and put out her hand and introduced herself.) Her name was Mimi –thats what everyone called her. She didn’t wait for me to introduce myself but began telling me her life story. It was only after I found out that she was originally from Saudi Arabia, but had lived between New York and Jeddah for the majority of her life, had four sisters and one brother, had graduated from Columbia (!!!), was now going to study for her masters at SOAS, that she thought living in halls would be best to get to know people and make friends instead of renting an apartment, had never been to London and had only stepped foot in it just this moring after landing at Heathrow from Saudi, and that when she was nervous she became really ditsy and talkative (lol), that she asked me my name.
I helped her with her stuff and then left her to it and retreated back to my room. She appeared a nutter, although a clever one at that having graduated from Columbia! In the afternoon I sneaked passed her room (she had the door open) and went for a walk. I got back just before futoor and the moment I closed the door there was a knock. I opened it. It was Mimi with a plate of dates.
“It’s almost iftar. I thought we could break our fasts together?”
That caught me so off guard that I couldn’t help but smile and beat myself up for being so judgemental. We talked for a while and I decided she was actually pretty cool and so I told her to come along with me and a Malaysian undergraduate student to get a bite to eat. We ended up in Edgware Road. This was Mimi’s first glimpse of not only London but Arab London and she loved it. We got home around elevenish.
See, that cliche of not judging a book by its cover is so true. I told her earlier today when I tugged along with her on her sightseeing tour around London that I had thought she was weird. She laughed and said that means we’ll probably end up good friends because all the people that she is still in contact with and speaks to regularly had thought that of her unlike the ones who thought she was cool. Lol.
Another bonus (although not so much a bonus for her health) is that she smokes — only menthol cigarettes mind you, and so although I have a smoking buddy, she stands well away from me because she can’t stand the smell of normal cigarettes!