understanding

I met someone from Turkey some time ago.
Someone from Istanbul, someone who belonged to the place where I had had such a wonderful time in my life. There was this moment where all my learning of different cultures, different peoples and different places came together in a freeze of observation. I saw, in that little time, the beauty of meeting someone from a a different place in a wholly new light. One that gave the conversation the glow of satisfaction, the warmth of joy, the happiness of strangeness and familiarity.
I had to stop myself from sounding foolish, when I tried to make him understand what my visit to his country meant to me. How the country that he was trying, already, to justify and defend, had given to me such a special period of my life. How his country was such a deeply wonderful part of my recent past.
And when he told me he was going to visit India soon, I was overjoyed with the prospect; with the possibility of helping him have anywhere near as wonderful a time in my country as I did in his.