She was very suspicious and a young man on a train proposed "crazy": when love is born in an unexpected place

Mariana lived alone in an apartment in Congress when she was given the news that upset her: she had been suspended without pay , her job as a call center supervisor had been left in limbo. It was her brother, who had emigrated to Spain some time ago, who gave her an idea to get out of trouble: travel to Madrid for a few months and look for a summer job , at least to raise some money and resist returning. And for that, it is supposed, she Mariana traveled.

17 years have passed since that trip that changed everyone's plans and, on the other side of the camera, Mariana Bolzi laughs at “it's supposed to be”. "It's that I had no intention of staying in Spain or meeting anyone, I wasn't looking for a boyfriend, a husband, children, nothing." she swears. She was 32 years old and she was, in Creole, fed up:

“I came from a time of pecking in Argentina and you know how it is, a touch and nothing. So she was very scared of chamuyo and why they wouldn't call you later. So she didn't want any roll with anyone."

As she did not have European citizenship, all Mariana got was a temporary job as a lifeguard in a private pool in Madrid. She was June 2005, she worked from Monday to Monday so, in September, exhausted, she asked for a few days of vacation. Her plan was to get on a train and visit two friends, one who lived in Barcelona and another who lived just before, in Tarragona.

Mariana got on the night train. She looked for her compartment, arranged her handbag and without much to do, she stood watching the rest of the passengers. "That's where I saw it for the first time. He was sitting in front of me next to a very young girl and, typical, I thought: 'This boy is with this girl, obviously'”.

It wasn't love at first sight , far from it, so Mariana got distracted and lost sight of him. "After a while I got up, I wanted to find the cafeteria to buy some water and find a place to smoke," she continues. At the door of the car she crossed paths with that young man and, since it was already dawn, she asked him in Spanish if the cafeteria was open.

The young man answered no in English and she, again in Spanish, asked him if she knew where she could buy some water. "He didn't understand anything," smiles Mariana. And she says that she repeated “water” with a strange sign, like “who has drunk all the wine, oh, oh, oh”. The young man showed her the palm of his hand, as a sign of "wait", she went to the car and came back with a can of Fanta.

It was 2005, she could still smoke on trains, and somehow he made himself understood by her: if she offered him a cigarette, he would give her the can. They had just been through Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, when they went to smoke between two wagons. "We started talking, there were about 4 hours of travel ahead."

Mehdi Djebari, that's his name, began to speak to him in French because he realized that Mariana, more or less, was following him. But he didn't know any Spanish so they used a foggy window to try to make himself understood . On the glass they wrote everything they couldn't explain: “21 km”, she wrote with the tip of her finger to tell him the distance between the Federal Capital and Quilmes, where she was born.

Mehdi was a telecommunications technician and worked for a hydrocarbon company in the Sahara desert. His plan - which no one knew yet that he was not going to materialize - was to get off in Barcelona and then travel to Nice, France, to visit relatives.

The young man was three years younger than her, he spoke French and English but his mother tongue was Arabic because he was from Algeria , a fact that by no means went unnoticed in the Spain of 2005, which a year ago had suffered a series of terrorist attacks on four trains, with 191 dead .

"I did not have that prejudice, I think that in Argentina it was not so strong but yes, at that time in Europe you said 'Arab' and you said 'terrorist'", Mariana tells.

They spent the four hours of travel together and when they were about to arrive in Tarragona she warned him that she had to go get her things to get off. "Then he told me to stay calm, that he would bring my bag." When Mariana turned her attention back she saw that Mehdi came with her bag in one hand and his in the other.

"I was frozen, we did not understand each other well but I was quite clear that he was not going to the same place as me," she says. Mariana looked at him with an uncertain face and he answered what she hadn't been able to ask him: "I'm going to get off with you, I want to meet you."

"But he didn't scare you?", Is the question that everyone asked him and continues to ask him. “In general, I am super suspicious, to the maximum,” she confesses. “But at no time did I consider 'this guy is going to do something to me. He goes to me, I don't know… to rape, to hit, he's going to rob me, nothing, nothing, nothing”.

They got off the train at 5 in the morning and, although a friend was waiting for Mariana, they looked for a taxi and a hotel where they could spend the night together.

"You are crazy"

That September 17, 2005, the Argentine and the Algerian sat in the bar of the hotel in Tarragona and asked for a role. Mehdi drew what his routine was like in the world's largest desert. A month of work in the Sahara, another month off , that was his life for 18 years.

“Then I called my friend and told her 'I'm not going, don't wait for me. I just met a man and I'm going to stay with him' . Imagine her: 'Mariana, you're crazy, you don't know who he is, what are you going to do? It's 5 in the morning.' As she saw that I was not going to give up, he told me 'well, answer the phone, don't turn it off'”. Mariana made him a promise: "If at any time I see something strange, I'll go in a taxi or I'll call you."

They spent the night together in Tarragona and, the next day, Mehdi went to buy an instant camera and change his tickets. He was no longer going to go to Nice on the scheduled day, nor to Algeria. She “called Salvador, the only friend she had in Spain and told him: 'In the end I didn't leave, I'm in Tarragona with my girlfriend'” . His friend did not understand anything: " What girlfriend?".

They stayed together for three days and went to meet Mariana's friend, who had been waiting. Later, he left: "She told me 'it's a love, but what a story, let's see if she calls you again'". Mariana, who had just come from those snacks followed by disappearances in Buenos Aires, thought: "Well, the typical one: everything is very nice but she's done, she doesn't call anymore."

But the Arab called, not one day: all. From Nice first, from the desert later. There were no video calls back then and she still doesn't know how they managed to understand each other. mehdi l And he proposed to return to Madrid in December to see her, just when Mariana had a ticket to return to her real life in Buenos Aires.

“And that's when the uncertainty began a bit, because I talked about it at home or with friends from Argentina and they told me: 'Mariana, you're crazy, you may have thought he was charming, but how are you going to stay if you don't know the guy? You don't know if he will come back. He's Arab, you don't know what he's up to either, if that story about him leaving because he works in a desert is true”.

Mariana, of course, changed her ticket and stayed to wait for him. Mehdi, of course, came back. He first to see her in Madrid, six months later, to Argentina.

an unexpected wedding

Mehdi arrived in Buenos Aires in mid-2006, asked Mariana for a piece of paper, and drew up a plan. If she went back to Europe and he continued to work in the desert, Madrid could continue to be a meeting point to see each other once a month.

“I had not planned to leave the country but she convinced me, and I went crazy to apply for Italian citizenship. I ran out of time because at that time the papers took years. I went to the consulate in La Plata and I was attended by an old man who told me 'you're going to have to wait' and I, crying, but really crying, answered him ' but you never fell in love? Someone is waiting for me, do you know what that means? Do you know what it's like to have someone 12,000 km away waiting for you?

The old man was moved, he sped up the paperwork and two days later he called her on the phone: “I'll call you so you can stay calm. You will receive a letter, as soon as it arrives you come and I will make your passport so that you can go live that love story” .

So Mariana returned to Europe, where Mehdi was waiting for her with tickets to go to Algeria to meet her family.

“There yes, as a precaution, I took a note of where the Argentine consulate was in Algeria. I trusted him but I didn't know those around him, I didn't know where I was going to go, if his family was a religious fanatic or not ", bill. Ignorance, again, did its thing because Mariana slept with him without being married, she wore her hair uncovered, smoked in public, and nothing happened.

They were married in 2007, first in Madrid and then in Algeria, on the condition that “each would respect the other's beliefs and I would not convert to Islam” . One of the memories that Mariana keeps of her Algerian wedding day is a pan: the women in the kitchen, the men on a sofa, her sitting alone and the Imam who approached her and asked her what she wanted her new husband to give her for Wedding.

“The tradition is that the man has to fulfill that wish at all costs. And the usual thing is that you ask for a house, a jewel and a car” . But Mariana and Mehdi were starting a life from scratch, sometimes they ate rice and bread because they didn't have enough, and Mariana answered: "A plant, that's what I want."

The Imam laughed, his mother-in-law said: “How are you going to ask her for that? Do you ask for gold, a car? Nobody could believe it.

The plant - a palm tree - grew with them in their apartment in Madrid, in the life that they did manage to build together. She also grew up with Lucas, the son -a bit Spanish, a bit Argentinian and a bit Algerian- who 11 years ago He put the family stamp on that madness on board a train.

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