Today we were reading a children's book together about a Pakistani boy named Iqbal who is enslaved to a carpet maker to pay off a family debt. There were a couple of words like dim and gloomy that took a while to translate which led us to talk about darkness. To tell me he understood what the words meant, A said that "many of the leaders in the Middle East have left their countries in darkness."
I suggested that the light had come and though there is darkness, in the end the darkness will not be able overcome the light. Even in the worst situations, the darkest of times, there is a crack. A agreed that this was the case. As Leonard Cohen puts it, 'There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.” After each of our conversation times together, we leave humbled. To come from a place of such darkness and to hold on to the hope that the light will get in. It inspires us.