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« A dignified life | Home | The guardian angel »

The Tourist

Tuesday 27 October 2015 June 2015. At the last day of our holiday we strolled down the centre of a cozy town in the South of the country. We passed a church where someone was playing the organ and we decided to listen to it for a while.

There weren’t a lot of people in the church and I estimated the average age of the audience at about 70 years old. The organ sounded well, but the play was unknown to me and my thoughts were wandering off. The day before there had been attacks in Tunisia, Kuwait and France and I had to think about the innocent victims. “What if”, I thought, “What if it would happen here? A terrorist walking in with a Kalashnikov and starting to shoot?” That thought made me shiver, but fortunately the organ distracted me. The first part of the concert was over and the next part was Händels ‘The cuckoo and the nightingale’. One of my favorite organ works. With closed eyes I was listening, until something made me look back into the entrance. A young man stepped into the church, a tourist. At least, that was how he was dressed. Shorts, sporty shirt, backpack. Dark glasses, dark curls, dark beard. “Appearance doesn’t say anything”, I thought by myself. “Of course he isn’t a terrorist; I don’t even know how a real terrorist looks like.” But because of his somewhat skittish behavior I kept an eye on him when he strolled down the Stations of the Cross and it seemed he looked at the paintings. Nothing indicated some interest in the people in the church benches. Tourist or terrorist? When he disappeared behind a pillar, I grabbed my smart phone. A Kalashnikov he couldn’t hide. But, what if he was hiding a dangerous explosive in his backpack and would let it explode, what if?! For security I made a plan.
1.Yelling that everybody has to run for his life or stay lying down at the ground.
2.Calling the emergency number.
3.I had to stay calm and keep my head clear.

Tensed I listened to the organ music and in the mean time I looked around. Where was this boy? I only spotted him at the final chord of ‘The cuckoo and the nightingale’. He stood at the exit and he clapped his hands, smiling and enthusiastic, just as the rest of the audience. Until the applause ebbed away and he left the church. The last thing I saw of him was his backpack.



Translated from Dutch into English by Astrid Kostelijk


 

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