(submitted by Julie)
One of my best Muslim friends helped me out in a major way when my family was experiencing a crisis in Cairo. We were preparing to leave the country after living there almost a decade and I had more tasks to complete than I could handle. And then I found out that I needed to get special documents proving that our kids attended local schools. This could be a nightmare. I immediately thought of my friend, Sue, to help me. This woman does not like certain things about her own country, traffic, the Metro system and crowds of people...among them. And yet, what I needed from her, was to use her day off, to take the metro downtown and go to several different government buildings, walking and taking the metro in between these places. Once at the building, we would need to wait in line and ask questions to find out what exactly was needed at each place. We left my house around 7am, and visited 4 government buildings, plus two of them twice, Her Fitbit recorded that we covered 3 miles walking and we did not return to my neighborhood until 3pm that day. She had to push through crowds at points and helped demand service at other points. And all of this happened in her least favorite weather...warm and humid. And yet she didn't complain the whole day. Nor would she even let me buy her a drink. She served selflessly and took the dread and questions out of what would have been an impossible task for me.
