Across Borders and Cultures: Salma and Jan's Tale

This was the first time I ever left the village. My father was a farmer, my mother a seamstress. Both of them had never been outside of this village. I sat on a donkey with my belongings tied to it, looking at the walls of the city. It was huge! There were many people that were shouting and moving about, as if trying to find something. There were also some people that looked like they were sleeping on the ground next to the walls.

I asked the merchant woman sitting next to me "What are all these people doing?"

She laughed, then said "Well they are not sleeping, they are working." She pointed at one of the sleeping people and said "They work very hard and earn money so they can eat and buy things they want."

I didn't understand what she meant by "eat". How do you eat? Do you roll up bread in your hands? If you get enough bread, can you eat it all in one bite? I thought about this for a moment, but then I heard her mention another word that caught my attention - "buy". In our village we barter goods with each other when we want something from someone else. We don't have anything like money. I asked her what this word meant. She told me that if I worked very hard myself, I could earn money and buy whatever I wanted.

"If you want something that is too expensive for you to buy, you could sell something you own, and use the money to buy it."

The idea of being able to work hard to earn money was very exciting to me. I thought about all the things I could do with those coins if they actually existed in our village. But then the woman mentioned another word - "lose". What did she mean by lose? I asked her what losing meant, and she told me that everyone loses at some point in their lives. You might win or lose some money or possessions, but no matter what happens, losing isn't always bad. What if everyone wins all their life? Then there wouldn't be any excitement left! The idea of winning excited me even more than earning money!

When we finally arrived at the city gates, I saw a lot of men standing around wearing an iron helmet on their heads with strange markings on the sides of their faces. They didn't look friendly at all! Even though they wore helmets on their heads, it seemed like nothing could protect them from their greed.

When most of us were passing by their gate without incident, one young man approached them and handed them something that looked like a coin or something similar to it. The soldier took it out of his hand and threw it away behind him into a pile of dirt! The young man began arguing with them while they waved their swords around threateningly! Everyone else immediately turned around and ran back towards town as fast as possible!

Couldn't he see how dangerous those soldiers were?! Didn't he know that he was going to be killed?! Why would he try to argue with them when he couldn't understand each other's language? Were all Germans this stupid? As for me, I grabbed my donkey by its tail and ran away as fast as possible!

He must have been very brave or just extremely stupid!!