Breathless, Layla got into the taxi.
“Charles-de-Gaulle,” she rasped with a touch of guilt. The driver nodded his understanding and Layla buckled herself in, trying to slow her rapidly beating heart. Carrying her small suitcase, she had run to catch this ride—there were so few taxis available with the Paris Metro closed due to the protests.
The run had left her flushed, and the cab’s blasting heat brought on a sheen of sweat. Contorting herself in the confined space, she struggled to pull off her blue-checkered wool coat. When she finally did, her eyes found the tear in the back of it and she froze.
Layla was back underground, the car around her disappearing as the fear that she had been evading flooded her system. She struggled to breath as images flashed through her mind. The ATM, the bearded man, the knife.
Give me the money she heard repeated over and over.
“Hey, hey!” the driver’s voice brought her back. Still hyperventilating, Layla looked around with wild eyes. It was a moment before she realized that she wasn’t in an abandoned metro. Nobody was attacking her.
“Lady, are you alright?” he asked in thickly accented English. He didn’t sound French. His olive skin and the Arabic music he was playing suggested he was from somewhere in the Middle East. A foreigner here, like her. Somehow that made Layla feel as though she could trust the man—as if she were safe and finally free from Parisians. A tear slid down her cheek, quickly followed by another, and before she knew it she was full-on sobbing in the back of a taxi.
The driver kept his attention on the road, but every now and then she’d notice him glancing back at her through the rearview mirror. When her tears subsided, he gently asked, “Would you like to talk about it?”
Layla shook her head, she didn’t want to relive the day, but then found her mouth opening and words spilling out anyway.
“I’m going to miss my flight,” she started.
“That’s ok,” the man said, “the protests have everything delayed. The plane might be late, too.”
Layla smiled, grateful for that small favor, at least.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Youssef,” he answered.
“Youssef,” Layla repeated. “Nice to meet you. I’m Layla.”
“So, Layla. All these tears just for a missed flight?”
“No,” she started. “There’s a whole story.”
The protests had shut down the train. Of course they had, it was Paris. It was almost more common to see protests than to not. But Layla had a plane to catch and did not have any cash to pay a taxi. Inconvenience after inconvenience.
So many thought she was lucky to have the ability to travel here, such a romantic city. But to Layla, it was nothing more than a stop on her way to something better. The only people who really liked Paris were the people who had never been or the Parisians—and even half of them hated the city. They hated everything. It was the fashionable thing to do.
Ignoring the closed signs, Layla descended the stairs to the metro. She’d need to find an ATM. Without the crush of people carrying the stench of B.O. with them, the entire place reeked of urine. So romantic. Moving quickly, Layla stuck her card in the machine. Someone walked up behind her, and she felt anxious to finish so they wouldn’t have to wait. She punched in her PIN, ignoring the grimy state of the plastic numbers, and reminding herself that she had sanitizer in her bag, when she felt something press into her back. Something sharp.
The person behind her was much closer than she had realized. She could feel his breath in her ear as he mumbled something in French.
“I’m sorry?” Her voice came out as nothing more than a squeak.
“American,” the man behind her spat. “Give me the money.”
Layla’s heart raced. She was being mugged? In all her time traveling, this had never happened to her. Some detached part of her thought that statistically, it was bound to happen eventually. Just a shame that it had to be while she was late to the airport.
“The money!” the man behind her whispered, pushing the object into her back for emphasis. He pressed enough to hurt, even through her coat. A knife, probably.
Layla found her terror as her body began to tremble.
“I don’t have any money,” she insisted, holding up her empty wallet. A finger came up from behind her to point at the ATM screen. Oh. That money.
Layla punched in more numbers, going to withdraw half. She had almost nothing left and she needed to get home.
“Non,” the man barked, no longer trying to keep his voice quiet. “Tout.”
Visions of her body on the ground, blood eking out of it in this filthy, empty place had her complying. There was a pause while the machine processed her request—always a delay with these machines. She supposed it made sense, her bank was on another continent and used a different language and currency.
“Give me the money,” the man behind her repeated.
Layla tried to calm her trembling so it wouldn’t show up in her voice. “The machine is—”
“Give me the money!”
She moved her body to show him the screen, the little dots that kept running in their circles while Transaction Pending flashed behind them. He shoved her out of the way and waited by the ATM, staring hungrily at the screen in front of him.
And that’s where she ended her story, too afraid to continue.
“So he took your money?” Youssef asked.
Layla gulped. “Yes,” she said, and the tears that had dried up while she was talking began to fall once more. Youssef waited a moment, giving her time to compose herself.
“I have learned something over the years. Are you ready to hear it?”
Layla paused at the odd phrasing, but nodded. The entire point of being abroad, afterall, was to learn.
“Good,” Youssef said. “Money will come and money will go. It is important, I would not be driving if it were not, but it is not the most important thing. You are young, you have life, you have health. That is what matters. You are lucky in all of the ways that count. You will get your money back.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks freely while the man in front of her spoke, but they were different now. Her body needed to release them, needed to release itself, so she could eventually move past this. Move past what had happened to her and what she was about to do to this man, this kind and gentle man, who surely did not deserve this. She was surprised that he hadn’t seen the problem when she had stopped speaking, but glad that she at least hadn’t finished her story.
When they arrived at the airport, Youssef got out to help her with her luggage. Layla took it from him, thanked him, and then gave him her card. She didn’t tell him that it was a grocery store membership card and therefore would definitely not work. He ran it, and the error popped up onto the screen.
“It isn’t working, do you have another?”
“Oh, no, the other is empty.”
Youssef’s eyes tightened as he remembered.
“Is there an ATM around? I can try that, they’ll take American cards that the readers often won’t.”
She must have sold it, because relief played across his face. The total was a large one and with traffic he had spent almost 2 hours driving her here—a large chunk of his working day.
“Of course,” he said, and pointed towards a kiosk just through the doors.
Layla nodded and took her luggage. It was nothing more than a single carry-on suitcase, able to be worn as a backpack thanks to the straps attached. She was relieved that she had packed so light as she walked through the doors, whispering a brief, “You will get your money back.” She knew Youssef couldn’t hear her, but hopefully the universe would recognize it for the prayer that it was.
Remembering all of the worry from earlier, and letting it play on her face, Layla walked up to the woman working at the kiosk. Hopefully the loose strands of hair, tears staining her face, and dirt smudged on her clothes only added to the appearance. Using the most pathetic voice she could muster, Layla said, “please help me.”
The woman turned to glance at her, and then her eyebrows raised as she took her hands off of her keyboard and gave Layla her undivided attention.
“There’s a man following me, I don’t know who he is, but I’m so afraid. He held a knife up to me and took all of my money, I only barely escaped.” She held up her coat with the slash through it as proof.
The woman asked for his description and Layla pointed to Youssef, who was thankfully looking away.
“Go, go inside, I will alert security if he follows you.”
“Thank you.” Layla let the relief flood into her voice before she picked up her suitcase and walked around the corner until the woman from the kiosk couldn’t see her. Then she turned around and, making sure nobody was watching, slipped into the women’s restroom—one of the only places Youssef would not be able to follow her.
She waited in the stall closest to the entrance, the door shut and her feet up on the toilet, quiet as she could be. Two minutes passed, then five, and she was sure she would be found out. Youssef would come in and explain that she had stolen from him and somebody would find her hiding in here. But nobody came in.
After a little over 8 minutes, she heard shouting. It sounded like the woman from the kiosk, and she was calling out “Sécurité!” Then there was nothing but a blur of French male voices shouting back and forth, too quickly for Layla to make anything out with her very limited knowledge of the language.
Ten minutes after the noise had settled down and with a quick change of clothes, Layla exited the bathroom and went to check in for her flight. At least that was already paid for. Her empty card was still stuck in the ATM, of no use to her. She could figure everything else out when she got home.
The relief warred with her guilt over what she had done to Youssef. He hadn’t deserved any of this. Desperate people did desperate things. And it was desperation that had fueled her actions, just as it had for the man in the metro, and maybe now would for Youssef as well. How many people had been hurt by the actions of another in pain?
Layla made a vow right then that going forward in her life, she would help when she could. It wouldn’t right the wrongs of today, but it might ease somebody else’s desperation in the future. Maybe she could use her life to prevent some harm from cascading down the line. Maybe that would have to be enough.
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