the baptist church: MONSIEUR WILL SMITH

My life here in Paris is one big Tango dance. I keep getting one unexpected experience after the other and I 'try' to dance with it. One of those unexpected things was that on Sunday I needn't go to the baptist church. The baptist church came to me, in the form of Monsieur Will Smith.
Late at night a knock on our hostel door: a few young French men and with them the new and honored guest Will Smith who had nothing with him except dirty clothes and terribly smelly shoes. He had come from the hospital and due to administrative problems they threw him out on the street. Will was the sole survivor of his family after a terrible car accident. He had nowhere to go to except his second home: the baptist church.

I have to be honest here. Since childhood I have hygiene issues. I can't stand dirtiness, especially dirty feet and foul smell. After a second the whole hostel room smelled like a thousand dead rats. God was putting me though a very very big test now. The young men who were sent by the church wanted to sneak out and leave Will with us, but not like this!
I yelled that this is Basta. I wanted to help but Will needed to go to the shower immediately to wash those feet! And they must get a towel for him a.s.a.p! An american girl who was also sleeping in the room offered to pay for his towel. The young men went downstairs to get the towel. I took off my long pajama, my favorite one, and offered it to Will. Under no circumstance would he be putting on those foul clothes on again! The Mexican guest offered his aftershave. Will took a shower. We put on the ventilation and opened the Window. Will would be sleeping under my bed. When he came out of the shower with my pajama on, he looked much nicer, but he had put on his foul shoes on again!
We put the shoes in a closet far away from our beds. Will spritzed with his Mexican aftershave and dived into bed while leaving the shower lights on!  I yelled he must put the lights off! He directly got up to put the lights off. Will was a kindhearted spirit. My nose was hurting. I never smelled anything as bad as that. I wished I had a gas mask. Monsieur Smith was snoring. The other guests felt like we accomplished a mission impossible. The room lost the worst smell, we could now more or less sleep, but not for long, because the American girl had to get up at 4:00 so she could catch her plane.

Will wearing my favorite Spanish pajama  

 The next morning the shower smelled and looked like a sewer!
The towels on the floor were smeared with dirt, the stinky feet smell was everywhere. Nobody dared to use the shower again. The other guest changed their room. I decided to stay, against my own better judgement, because I started to really like Will. He made jokes, and his vocabulary seemed to be made of the bible, money and the church. He needed the money to buy a place to sleep, food and clothes and new shoes. God and the church were the other essentials of his life. God was his only true friend and he seemed to have a deeper trust in God then anyone I know of. I kept on sms-ing with the men from the church. I didn't like the idea of leaving Will alone. So I made it my job to take care of him while he was in the hostel. I sneaked the foul shoes out of the room by giving them to the cleaner. Then I went out to buy new ones, while I left my phone-number at the reception so they could call me in case of an emergency with Will.
The fresh air outside did me good. I now knew the value of it. A woman walked by and her perfume was like breathing the air of paradise. It was healing for me after all that stank. I had to ask the name of the perfume! "Madame! Le nom de votre parfum s'il te plait?" "La Reine de Saba." -she answered. "The Queen of Sheba."
The name "Queen of Sheba" evokes memories of the mysterious Oriental queen, reputed to hail from Ethiopia. Laden with treasures of gold and fragrant spices she came to ancient Jerusalem to test the wisdom of King Solomon. She vanished from history, but her memory remains, lingering in an exotic perfume that is "fit for a queen!" The queen of Sheba.

I walked further while deciphering the notes of the exquisite perfume. I could smell the peach & incense, which reminded me of the incense and peaches from the Song of Songs; A love song inside the Torah that is considered to be a lovers' song between Solomon and Sheba.

Window on the road to Will's new shoes shop

At night it was just me and Will Smith in the room. The other guests went to other rooms and the hostel made sure nobody booked in our room. Monsieur Smith was quite entertaining. And despite his special needs had a keen eye for observation and he often said things that seemed out of the blue that later turned out to be true. Will Smith was a man of God. I became friends with him and it hurted my mother's heart when I later found out that he ran away from the family that offered him a temporarily stay. Will was a free spirit, who ideally wanted to sleep in hostels in the company of his sister Imam Salima el Musalima. We were a special team. I passed a very difficult test. The friendship was stronger then the smell...