One door closes, another 10 doors opens.
I took the entrance exam for engineering when I was 19. I knew immediately that I had failed. When I got my score, I had an anxiety attack and lost control. I began screaming and beating my head against the wall. It got so bad that they took me to the hospital and injected me. When I came home, I just laid in my bedroom for days. One night my father came in to say ‘hello,’ and when he left, I heard him crying in the hallway. He was a driver for foreign tourists, and the next day he invited me to ride along with him. He was picking up a Swiss woman at the airport. Her name was Joanna. When she arrived, we realized that her travel agency had made a mistake. There was nobody to guide her. Joanna mentioned that she wanted to go to the archaeological museum in the morning. So I woke up at 6 AM, and got to the museum as soon as it opened so I could memorize as much information as I could. When Joanna arrived, I did my best to guide her with my limited English. But she was a very smart lady, and she knew that I wasn’t prepared. But she told me: ‘Mohammed, if you improve your English, you can be an amazing tour leader. And I’m going to support you.
