Every story begins with Once upon a time,
and ends with Happily ever after. This story, however, somehow does have the
same beginning but may lead us down the path to a different ending. 99.0% of
every romance story, has a Romeo that marries off a Juliette in a sensationally
magical way that makes every girl dream of. Well maybe not 99.0% of the
stories, that’s way too large, let’s reduce it to 96%? Before we delve into the
details, let’s just compare and contrast the differences between this story and
the other stories – just to make us feel a tad bit better.
Main character falls in love? รพ
Main character is beautiful? That’s for you
to decide
Prince charming is extraordinarily
handsome? Maybe
They live happily ever after? Uncertain
There’s an evil witch or evil character
that poisons the main character? Umm… That’s just too much
Well, I can’t think of anything else to
add, but if you have any suggestions please do comment down below.
So what really is this story about? Well,
we just spoon fed you the introduction, maybe it doesn’t have a lot of flavor
to it, that’s because we want you to savor every tang, every smell, every
everything! We just want to spice things up and add excitement!
So, here it goes.
Once
upon a time, there was a girl called Shamsa. An Emirati, living in Dubai, in
one of the most exquisite wealthiest districts, the Beverly hills of Dubai
known as Jumeirah. Now you may link the title to Shamsa’s residence and say oh
yeah, she must be some rich snob and the story revolves around her spending
millions on a whim. Wrong. You just got an X, for making a wrong judgment. Shamsa
comes from a very middle-class type family; she looks like the ‘typical
Emirati’ but is not so typical. In fact, the only typical thing that her and
the rest of the Emirati female population share is the Arabic name. Perhaps her
features would give her that extra oomph for being an Emirati. You know, the
jet-black hair thats long and thick, the strong arched bold eyebrows that don’t
need to be filled in. Her nose is strangely small and feminine, not so Arab
like long and thin. But she has those abnormally full quite large pouty lips,
the kind that makes boys crazy and girls jealous.
Shamsa
being an only daughter, not an only child, made her somehow different from the
rest of the girls. She did enjoy girly stuff, a lot, but not as much as cars. You might say yeah, well there are
some girls out there who are car gurus well she’s one of them. But there was
something in Shamsa that made her so rare, it was her eyes… She has
heterochromia. One eye that’s brown and blue- a clash of earthy colours, and the other one had quite a
large spec of brown/hazel. Her eyes literally changed colour, which made her
stand out amongst the rest of the girls.
Some
of you may find this extremely odd. But there’s so much beauty to it that not
everyone seems to understand. Unfortunately, the majority of the students that
were in Shamsa’s school bullied her for it. Calling her names like alien or
weirdo. She stuck out so much that everyone was pushing her away, like she was
some kind of infectious disease or so… The more she tried to hide it with
contact lenses the more they bullied her; she didn’t know what to do.
Especially when she was in primary school, the children couldn’t completely
accept her for who she was. Plus she was that ugly duckling as a child, which
made rejection so much easier for everyone. But as the years passed, her mother
taught her a set of skills. No one really got to Shamsa to a human level, you
know, being personally close to her, other than her family and an Emirati
family that lived in their neighborhood. Her mother took extra care of her looks;
this long thick hair she had couldn’t go to waste so she did all kinds of
treatment that made them lushly big and thick. She took so much care of her
skin and body that it naturally glowed. Shamsa grew into that swan that every
girl feared of, and got bitterly jealous of. She was so organized that you
might mistakably judge her with OCD. She was athletic too but her favorite
sport was swimming. Every lunch break she would spend 45 minutes in the pool,
swimming her heart out. The boys enjoyed watching her whenever they got a
glimpse. From all that constant swimming, she became tanned.
By the tenth grade, Shamsa became the ‘it’
girl. Her group was the elite group in school. Her parents worked so hard for
her to enter the best school in Dubai, and she did. She was smart. Very smart.
You think Shamsa is almost perfect. Almost,
but not quiet. Being labeled as a child for her discoloration in her eyes, she
grew up with some issues. And the girls would always tell her, boys didn’t like
tanned girls. They preferred girls with milky white smooth skin. You would
never even think she was instable. But she was, and it never showed.
The years passed
by and by the time she was in her last year of school, the girls eventually got
fed up from listening to all the compliments Shamsa got. Revenge was their only
justice. But how could you break someone who was so naturally confident? She wasn’t
plastic, nor fake which made it so hard for them to dig deep within to find out
something about her. The more they tried to destroy her, the more they failed.
You can’t overpower her, not when you don’t know anything about her. A little
secret her mother taught her was to give people enough information to keep them
curious, and when is it enough? When they beg for more. Her mother taught her
to read people and to understand them, and she did so fluently. So the girls
pretty much crushed her reputation by marking her as ‘Easy access’ which only
made the boys yearn for her even more.
Coming
from Shamsa’s household, you could pretty much tell that Shamsa’s parents were
not even close to being strict with her. They knew her inside out. The more
rumors they heard about her, the more they trusted their daughter, which was
strange because parents tend to do the opposite. But with Shamsa they know
exactly what she does, about her whereabouts about everything. Shamsa barely
goes out, the only outings she ever has is going to school and coming back
home. She knew that the outside world was no good for her, that all people ever
enjoyed doing is gossiping. So she was wise enough to spend her time studying,
working out, or with her brothers (she had 2 of them).
As
it was getting closer to her graduation day, Shamsa got all kinds of
scholarships. To study abroad or to study in the top universities in Dubai for
free! She explained the fact that studying abroad was one of the best options,
where people would judge her for who she is and not what she looks like could accept her. After
a long course of thinking, arguing, discussing and crying, they agreed. But
they couldn’t agree to send their daughter to the States because 1. It was too
expensive for them to fly out to her whenever they could and 2. It was so far
away that in case of any emergency they’d have to travel 14+ hours to reach her
and another 14+ hours to come back, which was a lot. So they agreed that she
could study somewhere in Europe, specializing in fine arts. She wanted to go to London so badly, after all it is her dream city, knowing that that option was the best option. But her parents knew no one in London. She had the option of going to
Germany or Italy. And surely, she picked the latter.
The
first time Shamsa has ever been outside Dubai, outside her usual parameter that
she restricted herself to. The first time she’s ever been on a plane, was to
Italy. And as she sat nervously down on her seat, she quietly gave a toast to
herself, on the bottle of water she held so tight. ‘To new beginnings’ she
whispered. So Italia, are you ready to welcome Shamsa? Because this is going to
be one hell of a ride! Cabin crew, please fasten your seatbelts. Be prepared
for takeoff.
