A relative and close friend of mine was on his honeymoon for 2 weeks across Europe. On his last night in Paris I was talking to him over Gmail. He was talking to me about Euro Disney and how marvellous it was. He was taking the train next day to Barcelona. He said it’s more cost effective, but hard with the large amount of baggage they are carrying.

Two days later I heard his baggage, wife’s laptop (with all their honeymoon pictures), money, credit cards, and passports were all stolen at the train. How hard can it be? Their honeymoon ruined, photos lost, money and cards stolen, and no passport to go back home. New passport can also take up to one year.

Now, to get papers for traveling back home, he has to reach Kuwait Embassy in Madrid. Unfortunately, the office was closed for summer vacation, and now he has to reach Malaga. No passport so no air travel, no train tickets available, and Taxi would take 12 hours. I tried to search for available transporations, sent him an email thinking how would I even start my email after what happened. I figured this would be the best thing:


“Salam ***,

I heard about what happened to you. Really sorry to hear that, must be real bad. Nevertheless, you are all safe and have each other, and that’s what matters.”

As much as it’s hard for someone to accept it, even me who was saying it, it remains true for observer. All is lost can be overcome, as long as you are still alive. Two days later I heard he managed to DHL his documents and just needs to wait for his papers now. OK, I said. What’s happened is history, let them go out and enjoy their day. They got their papers and are on the way back right now to Kuwait.

Oh and by the way, without passports, they couldn’t continue their honeymoon as planned to Canary Islands and had to stay in Barcelona. They missed their flight!

Crashed Spanair airplane from Real Madrid to Canary Islands

So now somehow they owe their lives to the guy who stole their baggage, and their mistake of keeping passports in their baggage rather than next to them. A friend of mine was asking me few weeks back how could a bad thing be good in other way, arguing why we should be thankful to God in all matters. I was trying to bring him good examples, and this one is the best one I can remember right now.

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