A Land of Milk and Honey
Ali shrugged his shoulders. Her reasoning was logical; he couldn’t say otherwise. “Easy, Miss, easy. Very well. We shall do as you say.”
Ali finished washing the windshield and then got back behind the wheel. A silence prevailed between the two for a minute. Ali was looking at the fields. Finally, he spoke. “Kelly, there is one thing that I have been thinking of saying to you. I have traveled everywhere but never have I seen such abundance. Everything that I heard of your country is true. It is a land of milk and honey. Your great rivers, your fields… You people have so much.”
“Yes,” replied Kelly. “It’s a pity that people here don’t seem to appreciate all that we have. We are so busy in fighting for what we do not have that we tend to ignore what we already have. I’ve found that travel always broadens one’s horizons and allows you to see your homeland for what it truly is. It helps you to see a different world altogether.”
“Still the dreamy, romantic poet. Yet, I see the truth in your words. Wasn’t there a British poet who wrote something about that?”
“T.S. Eliot, and he was born in America!”
“Oh, let me think,” said Ali. “It goes something like, ‘We shall never cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.’” Ali’s knowledge of T.S. Elliot was not a surprise for Kelly. She was already aware that he had gone to college and was interested in poetry.
Ali took a deep breath and said, “Perhaps I shall return home after this and truly know the place.” For a minute, Kelly felt that Ali would invite her to see his country with him.