She lost her shoe - then her life became a fairytale: ‘A real life Cinderella’

‘So this week, I’m going to go pick up my slipper,’ she says

A woman has shared her “real-life Cinderella” story, after a stranger found her lost shoe in Lebanon.

Jess Tawil, shared a video on TikTok earlier this month to describe how she misplaced her slipper, while “two hours away” from her home in Beirut, Lebanon. She also recalled the incident as: “POV: you live a real life Cinderella story in Lebanon,” referring to the classic Disney tale where Prince Charming reconnects with Cinderella after finding her lost shoe at the ball.

In her video, Tawil, who is a paraplegic, specified that she’d lost her shoe while looking at tourist sites in Baalbek.

“I’m paralyzed from the waist down, so I cannot feel my legs. I can’t feel my feet and, most importantly, I cannot feel if my shoes are on. So, while I was there, I lost my slipper,” she said. “Because it’s not the most wheelchair accessible area, I had to be carried everywhere.”

As noted by the Cleveland Clinic, paraplegia is “the symptom of paralysis that mainly affects your legs” and “usually happens because of injuries to your nervous system, like the spinal cord”.

In her video, Tawil noted that while she “was being carried,” she was “so certain” that her shoe “fell in the street somewhere”. According to Tawil, her uncle thought otherwise and told her: “No, it slipped off of your foot when you left the house., you probably dropped it in the elevator on your way out.”

She said she still “swore” to her uncle that her slipper was in Baalbek, as she claimed that he didn’t think this. She explained that when she got home, she was “pissed,” since she realised that her shoe was in fact missing.

“I’m angry at myself because I wasn’t looking down the whole time, and I didn’t realise that I literally had one slipper on my foot,” she said.

Tawil noted that her mother then had an idea: “Posting [the shoe] an Instagram Story,” in order to see if someone “could find it”. The traveller claimed that only “two minutes” after she posted it on her Instagram, she received a message from someone.

“This guy goes, ‘You’re in my hometown, this is where I live. Tell me where you were exactly, and I will go right now,’” she recalled. She said that she then sent him “a small snippet” of a video she took while sightseeing that day.

According to Tawil, the man told her that he knew “exactly where” she was and that he was “on [his] way” to the location. “He sends me a picture of him in his car and going there,” she added.

The traveller went on to share that when she received a video call from the stranger, he had the camera “flipped onto [her] slipper”.

“This guy literally had my slipper in his hand,” she added, before showing a recording of the call she had with the man. The text over this footage read: “No way, he found it for me! Social media is so amazing!”

The recording also showed a video of the man’s face, with the text over the clip noting that he’d asked Tawil “where [he was] supposed to put” the slipper for her.

She concluded her video by calling herself “Cinderella”, after this experience, and acknowledging that she’ll be getting the shoe back.

“There isn’t a single soul on this planet that can tell me that I’m not Cinderella,” she said. “So this week, I’m going to go pick up my slipper.”

Tawil’s video quickly went viral, and has amassed more than 1.4m views. In the comments, many TikTok users went on to praise her story, with jokes that the person who found her slipper is the traveller’s “prince”.

“Girl that’s yo husband go get him,” one wrote, while another added: “Omg!!! CINDERELLA!!!!!!!! He could be your Prince Charming……just sayin.”

“‘And that is how I met your father’ kind of vibes,” a third joked, seemingly referring to the spin-off show of How I Met Your Mother, which is called How I Met Your Father.

Other people applauded the man’s for taking the time to find Tawil’s shoe in Baalbek.

“The way he dropped whatever he was doing to go find your shoe immediately…I love it.” one wrote.

“I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. People going out of their way to help someone they don’t know makes me feel so connected to others,” another wrote.

The Independent has contacted Tawil for comment.