‘Hah, he is pretty weird. My friend said in the café. ‘I heard he bought his girlfriend a book about programming for her birthday. Everyone knows she dislikes informatics! Then, when everyone started laughing at him about this he said “But it’s a special and limited edition” ‘
‘I think it was a great present’, I said.
I liked that boy. I had been on a summer camp with him and his girlfriend.
A month ago I happened to be in a classroom where he had to explain one of his informatics problems. I was the only girl there. The rest of the people were good programmers who knew each other and knew the lecturer. I was very confused to be there, and I was just starting to try to efface myself and to repulse the surprised glances directed to me, when he stopped in the middle of his first word and waved at me. I surreptitiously looked back, and as I saw no one behind me, I smiled and waved back. I was surprised he remembered me. Yes, “we were together 10 days”, as he said later, but he was there with his girlfriend and his best friends, accompanied by what I considered engrossing oblivion.
‘Are you crazy?’ my friend exclaimed. ‘It’s so foolish to buy your girlfriend something she doesn’t like.’
‘Do you prefer to buy your girlfriend a teddy bear?’
‘Yes, it’s definitely better.’
‘And I would like to receive something my boyfriend likes. It would be nice, sweet and romantic. If he gives me what he likes most, he will show me that he wants me to have the best thing, because this is how he rates it. The gift will be part of what he likes, and what he likes will be part of him, so I’d feel as if he gave me part of himself.’
A few weeks after that conversation I received a notification from the post office. ‘It should be a present from my best friend,’ I thought ‘but I’ll take it tomorrow. Today I’d have other presents and I won’t be able to savor the excitement of its presence.’
I got up early next morning and went right to the post office. I got the parcel, and yes, it was a book, just as I had guessed.
When I got back home I unwrapped it. It was “The Zahir” by Paolo Coelho in Bulgarian.
What?! A love story by Paolo Coelho in Bulgarian?! The three things I didn’t want in the newly acquired books.
Then I smiled. The present was what my best friend likes. He had probably heard meny times what I thought of “The Alchemist” and still he had chosen that novel. Maybe he had had a message for me with the book and he wanted me to read the book, or he just wanted me to have something he likes.
I read the novel, and I didn’t like it much, but I like the present I have.
