Marco

The meeting and the outcomes here were ambiguous. Marco was happy to have met the rich and good-looking Omar a week before his Home Office interview. What was he angling for? I live in an Arab country and I know that requests and desires are often expressed obliquely. Was he hoping for help, money, influence being used? Whatever it was, Omar wasn't interested and sought to get rid of him by doubling the fee and foregoing the "massage".

Yet Marco left his mark. His soliloquy about his perilous trip and his parents led Omar to re-evaluate his own rocky relationship with his own Mum and Dad.

It was so nice to hear the two boys' Arabic! And the dialect they were speaking too, so different from the one in the country I live in. I needed the (excellent) subtitles nonetheless.

This was a good 23 minutes and I took away good feelings despite the "huluw wa mara" ending.