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Your equivalent of Mecca

12th January 2009 by Helena 14 Comments  

The other night we went to see a lovely film about the Moroccan 14th century explorer Ibn Battuta’s epic journey to Mecca. He risked everything to get to a place he had long dreamed about and which he felt would complete him as a person.

It was not a question of getting on a plane in those days. He had to trek across deserts and mountains on a horse and a camel. It took him several months. En route he was robbed, beaten and almost died.

About half-way through Olivia turned to me. “Why does he want to go to Mecca anyway?” she asked.

I tried to explain, I tried to imagine the Christian equivalent; Lourdes or maybe the Vatican for Catholics? I tried to help her grasp the idea of something being so important, so essential to you that you will risk everything for it.

Then I realised that most of probably don’t have something like that. We might have a person, but not a place. The closest I got to was Top Withins, a derelict farmhouse on the Yorkshire moors which features in the book Wuthering Heights.

emily-bronte-at-haworth.jpg

I have been there several times, but the first time I saw it was almost a religious experience. I had dreamed about seeing it and wondered what it would feel like. It felt like I had arrived somewhere very important to me. I sat at the base of a tree and imagined Emily Bronte walking on the same moor, conjuring up her hero Heathcliff and working on her book.

I’m sure Ibn Battuta was inspired by more than a book, but my point is that maybe even if we don’t have a religious place we yearn to visit, we might all have something that comes close? What’s yours?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009


Filed Under: Life, blog --> Tagged With: equivalent, mecca

14 thoughts on Your equivalent of Mecca

  • mimi says:
    13th January 2009 at 1:22 am

    Don’t think I have one, but my daughter dreams of going to college at Oxford- her Dad brought her to visit at Christmas, and the feeling she described was Mecca-like. She’d absolutely adore that house- “Wuthering Heights” is her all-time favourite book.
    I think it’s a good thing to have something- person, place, whatever- that inspires one, especially in this day and age.
    You’ve put me thinking, Helena, where to? mimi

  • Ghinch says:
    13th January 2009 at 8:41 am

    Nothing at all to do with religion. It would have to be La Mezquita, Cordoba.

    http://www.ghinch.com

  • Jacques says:
    13th January 2009 at 11:15 am

    My Mecca would be the “le Bric Froid”, a 3302m-high summit near Le Roux d’Abriès in the French Hautes-Alpes on the border with Italy. The view over Italy eternally plunged in a sea of clouds while you are sitting under the iron cross basking in the hot sunshine is just unforgettable.
    The problem is: with a 4-hour walk up a very steep rise and a scarcely less exhausting descent, I would need a new pair of thighs, lungs and knees to go back there.
    Jacques

  • helena says:
    13th January 2009 at 4:49 pm

    Jacques
    Helicopter?
    Hx

  • sharyn g says:
    13th January 2009 at 4:59 pm

    Back to my Dad’s farm to walk the fields and relive my childhood memories on the land. IT’s a peaceful place with memories of playing in the woods, sledding down the steep hill in back of the barn and sitting under a tree reading.

  • Jacques says:
    13th January 2009 at 5:53 pm

    A helicopter? Have you forgotten that I have a fear of flying?

  • Miller says:
    24th January 2009 at 1:12 pm

    Don’t drink the Kool-aid.

  • Josephine says:
    25th February 2009 at 3:25 am

    Top Withins was it for me as well. I also loved the Cornish Coast and felt my spirit come alive there. Parts of Edinburgh as well really resonated with me. Not to mention Paris where I cried my way around a lot of the city feeling it was a spiritual home!

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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