The Lady with the Raven

In the corner of my living room, I have a small altar. On it is an icon of Christ and another of Mary, along with numerous medallions, pictures and other reminders of pilgrimages I’ve undertaken over the years, a sort of spiritual biography of my life. Every morning, I light incense, five sticks: three for Christ to represent the Trinity, one for Mary to represent the feminine side of the Divine and one for a random victim of the Holocaust who symbolises all those who have been lost due to man’s indifference to man.

Or at least, I did light five sticks. Recently though, a new picture has been added to the altar. It lies on the shelf next to St. Charbal of Lebanon and it is notable for being the only non-religious item there. The picture shows a young lady, dressed in black, her wild ebony mane being blown by the wind and a raven perched on her head. It is pure Gothic. She sits in a mist-shrouded land with the ruins of an abbey in the distance. It is night, a large full moon hovers overhead, and she gazes up at the sky. She is a creature of the night, solitary, mysterious, a dreamer. And now, every morning as I wake and every evening before I sleep, she gets a stick of incense too and a message.

Remember you’re worthwhile. Remember you’re special. Remember people care.

Just over twenty-two years ago, I went through a very difficult period in my life. I was young, in my early twenties and in my final year at university. My dad was in a car accident. By the time I got to the hospital he was dead.

I managed to cope, and thrive, through the love of the woman I lived with. We spoke, perhaps, of marriage. But then, several days before Christmas, to have been our first together, she disappeared. She later called me. She’d moved in with an old boyfriend; she was going to wed him.

I plunged into the depths of despair, spending days sitting staring into space, unable to think, feel, be. I did not seek support because, well, I never even realised that was an option. But slowly, I started to pull myself out from the abyss. And I did so primarily, through writing. As a child, I dreamt of being an author, so now I became one and, as the pen flowed across the page, I found release, healing, hope.

I recovered. I moved abroad, married, had a child. But one thing stayed with me from those dark months: trust. I couldn’t trust anyway; you can only rely on yourself. After all, dad had loved me, but still left, and the girl, well, she had lied and deceived me and disappeared too.

Then, in 2018, I began to walk the Camino. On the very first day, on that hellish slope between Huntto and Orisson, I was on the verge of giving up. Out-of-shape, unaccustomed to exercise, I could stagger no further than twenty metres before having to stop, gasping for air. No, the dream of walking all the way cross Spain had been but that, a dream. I hadn’t even made it to the border.

But then, on the path, someone stopped. A stranger, a woman. She took me by the hand and helped me go forward. I tried to push her away; I didn’t want to be dependent on her because, well, in the end the other person always leaves you. But she would hear none of it. By the time we reached Orisson I felt reborn.

Over the days that followed, she helped me immeasurably, but the relationship was not one-way. She shared great sorrow and moments of agony from her life, and I managed to comfort her in return. Camino had taught me a great lesson: open yourself up to the stranger, particularly the other sex, for you both have something to give each other. As the miles passed by, I met more pilgrims, mostly women. I listened and comforted, guided and helped them smile. One Dutch lady burst into tears when I explained to her one truth and told me that I should become a vicar on the Camino. “I don’t think that is a job that actually exists,” I told her. “Do it anyway!” she replied.

So, I have. Ever since then, away from the Camino de Santiago, on the Camino of Life, I have made myself alert to the stranger on the way, opened up to them and both listened and spoken. And then, this year, I met S.

I met her because I read one of her pieces of creative writing on the internet. The writing was excellent and the story — her story — was both harrowing and inspirational. I reached out, told her she was a good writer and that she should do more. She responded.

S comes from a very conservative Muslim background and lives an extremely controlled life. We could never meet on the gravel path because she is forbidden from walking it. But she is a pilgrim nonetheless and, like with the stranger on the hill, I believe God through us together for a purpose. Years earlier I’d started to write a book about a conservative Muslim girl in a northern English town. It had started well, but then the ideas ran dry. I mentioned it to S, and she said send it over. I did.

Her response overwhelmed me. “So, I read your story, and WOW! Honestly, I was blown away, I think it’s fascinating. I just wanted to read more and more.” What is more, she went on, “You know, I can do SO relate to Badriya, it felt like I was almost reading about myself. The restrictions, the living in a bubble, the difficulty of getting out to even do the simplest things that most people take for granted, it all totally resonated with me.” She told me that I must finish it, but how? I had no ideas. So, we brainstormed, co-wrote, and, after a week of writing frenzy, it was accomplished. Never before have I experienced such a writing high. And our relationship continued.

We talked every evening, deep into the night. She shared her experiences, her reality, and I shared mine. But it also went deeper, darker. Like Cathie Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights, she was like two separate people: during the day caged, living a lie, slowly suffocating in Lowood Grange; at night wild, passionate, empowered and soaring like a bird on the windswept moor. Things got mixed up and tangled. Her lack of self-confidence cut my heart, the fact that she did not even fathom how inspirational and spiritually beautiful she was. And the things I heard, of the life she’d lived and is still immersed in, tore at my soul. I began losing sleep. Then one dark night, at three in the morning, I felt that I had to act. I called the police, told them the situation. They sounded concerned and said they would deal with it professionally and in a way that kept her safe.

For three days nothing happened. We continued to talk, and she shared a picture with me of a gothic lady with a raven on her head. “This is how I see myself; what do you read in it?” I told her and she replied, “That is me, that is exactly me!” I was overjoyed. Every day I told her she was an inspiration, that she had worth. Slowly, her confidence was building.

But the following next morning, I went to my computer to wish her a good morning and a day full of smiles when she started typing. “I received an email from the police. Was that you?”

An email! A fucking email! Of all the ways to deal with it, so impersonally, so unprofessionally! It was the worst approach they could have taken! Even a message to her Twitter feed saying that they’d read her articles and were concerned would have been better. But an email!

I did not lie to her. She was furious. Why do people always think I need rescuing? Why do you have to meddle in people’s lives? The trust, confidence, and openness that we’d built so patiently and carefully disappeared in an instant. “I don’t think I can talk to you again,” she said. I replied:

I understand if you wish to say goodbye, but please don’t. I’ll leave you alone. If you feel you can talk and can reach out, I will be here. I also promise never to do that again. Sorry.

And, if you choose not to contact me again, please try and remember and retain something positive from our friendship rather than just this mistake that I made. Goodbye, and thank you for changing my life for the better.

That was our final contact.

Camino makes us open up, and that is good, but it is also dangerous. An open door allows friends and angels through, but it also lets in thieves and demons. We become vulnerable and when vulnerable, we can get hurt.

I know that I was never going to have a regular face-to-face relationship with S; we live in different worlds, but I could have been a friend, a confidante, a fellow pilgrim on life’s path. However, unlike on the gravel path, the digital one is much harder to tread. There is no person before you to read and very little can be expressed in a series of emojis — fire, lol, surprised, crying, heart, fire, thumbs up or down — what is the person actually trying to say with these? The silences, shrugs or “Hmm”, with no ear to listening to their breathing or eyes to see a tear or a smile, it is as if you’re kissing through a pain of frosted glass.

I write this piece from the heart, and as a message to all fellow pilgrims. I feel blessed that my Camino opened me up to encounters such as the one on the hill and the friendship with S, but be warned, you make yourself vulnerable. Mental health is precious, and it is easy to become overloaded with pain which there is no way of dealing with. I went about it the wrong way; I tried to rescue her and that is one of the biggest regrets of my life. Don’t you do the same, for people have to make their own choices, you can’t make them for them. Having her life run for her by another man was the last thing S needed; I see that now, but the damage has already been done.

I’ve accepted what’s happened. Good friends, many fellow Camino pilgrims, who have rallied round and supported me. I have a wonderful life with a wonderful family and all the freedoms that are so cruelly denied to others. I will survive and prosper. But I do still light that incense for the girl with the raven every morning and evening, because I know that she needs someone, even if it is not me. Someone to talk to, someone to tell her she’s special and worthwhile.

So, this is my plea. On Camino, we meet a pilgrim on the path and for a while, we walk together. Sometimes though, we may make a mistake and the other moves on. There are always, however, more pilgrims walking the path to pick up the conversation. So, when back in mundane reality away from the gravel path, keep your heart and ears open to strangers. And, if you’ve made it this far, and wish to read S’s story, let me know. But if you do and it touches your heart, leave her a comment. Don’t judge, don’t try to rescue her. Simply tell the lady with a raven that she’s inspirational. Because I can’t and that is hard, so very hard.

24/05/2022