Upon facing a life-threatening situation due to an armed conflict and upon witnessing

their precious house collapsing in front of their eyes, a poor non-Christian family requested
asylum in one of Europes countries. With great hope and relief in their hearts, they managed
to move into a small town in the South of England.
Not long after arriving to their new home, the three members of the family found
themselves in a new environment completely different to that of the one they have been
accustomed to. Having had no possibility of going to school, the family struggled with
speaking English and naturally become isolated from the community. Not only was the
language barrier making their living difficult, but also being of a different religion than the
Christian faith made things more complicated. In a country which was claiming to promote
unity in diversity, they soon realised that this was not the case.
Even though the family was willing to start anew and embrace the countrys official
language, their mistakes while speaking in a foreign language were laughed at by the native
speakers. With every day that passed, the family had to restrain more and more from
expressing their religious faith to the world.
When their beloved daughter Arshi grew up and went to school, she encountered
many obstacles in adapting to the unfamiliar rules imposed by society. The children would
often laugh at her because she was proudly wearing her hijab and was conducting herself by
another set of moral and cultural values. Throughout her period of studies, Arshi was teased a
lot, but she never gave up on her faith. Consequently, she learned that being different is not a
bad thing but, on the contrary, something to be proud of.
Despite having a couple of friends whom she could rely on, Arshi had never truly felt
close to them. She was always aware of the fact that she did not belong there. At gatherings,

she would constantly be left alone for it was extremely hard to fit in. Soon after her parents
death, at the age of 25, Arshi had no one whom she could feel comfortable around or whom
she could express her thoughts to.
Naturally, Arshi lost contact with her friends and stopped leaving the house. Her
friends did not care enough to try to keep in touch either, so Arshi fell into a severe
depression and decided she would not seek for help. Staying passive about her disorder was
thought to be the easiest solution for her to be reunited with her parents. Arshi spent the last
days of her life in complete solitude, reading fragments from The Quran, the Book she
considered her only friend in this lonely world.

The thing I found most difficult regarding this writing task was choosing the topic.
Even though I had in mind a variety of topics, upon starting writing I realised I could not
develop the plot, so I had to change the topic a couple of times. I finally decided to explore a
problem with which our society is concerned everyday, namely religious and cultural
intolerance.
Having established the theme of the paper, deciding on the characters and the events
portrayed was another difficult challenge. Moreover, finding the right background in order to
convey the internal and external struggle of Arshis family was extremely important. Through
the chronological sequence of events I tried to gradually expose how the despair and the
distress slowly accumulated in the characters heart.
With this in mind, I decided to choose the Islamic beliefs as representative for my
characters background, considering how many preconceptions about Muslim people arise in
the Christian, Western society. Rather than explicitly state Arshis religious faith, I considered
it was better to let the reader discover it by himself. The name Arshi was not randomly
selected, but it holds a key point to the story: Arshi in Arabic means one who lives in the
sky, suggesting the tragic or, from the point of view of the character, rather relieving
predestined fate.
Therefore, this parable was meant to emphasize the judgemental society in which we
all judge the people around us, usually without any real justification, and, at the same time, in
which we are all being judged. It is only natural to perceive the differences between cultures,
but that does not mean we should not learn how to embrace and appreciate diversity.
As far as it concerns the interpretation, this parable could be viewed from multiple
angles. Some readers may want to focus solely on the discrimination and isolation the
Muslim family went through, while other readers may prefer to focus on the slightly positive

side of the story, namely the fact that Arshi chose to stay faithful to her religion and herself.
In a world where she could only feel rejection, she found comfort in the Sacred Book.
The parable may be regarded as a lesson for all of us to stay true to ourselves and to
stop being judgemental towards other heritages.