After a day volunteering at a dance competition, this evening we went to a birthday party for three women, of a certain age. At this party I met a woman. The conversation went:
"Where are you from?" "Guess." "Siberia." (This was a guess based on features.) "No," "Keep talking and I'll guess. I'm good with sounds." "What would you like me to say?" "Turkey." "Too far away." "Iran." "Close. How much more should I say?" "Afghanistan."I must admit that my guessing was wild, and precise at the same time, filling in from very little information. I've never met anyone from Afghanistan but I know what the surrounding countries sound like when speaking English. I, however, am not the point. Now hear her story. An elementary school teacher, this year approaching her twentieth wedding anniversary at age thirty five, with four children, she had left her husband at home to attend the party because one of the women whose birthday it was, had befriended her.
"Where were you," I asked, "when the Taliban rolled in?""I was ready to attend a wedding. I had promised my best friend that I would come. It was sure. And then I heard on the radio, 'no going out without the shadur and women cannot do this' and I so stayed inside. And then they came for my husband, who was a high school teacher. And I waited three days. And I thought he was dead. And a friend told me that you can go to Pakistan. So I took the children. I was pregnant with our fourth child. My husband did not see his fourth child." I decided at this point that I needed to sit down. This was not light party chit chat. Here was a woman, telling me in simple English how she survived and her eyes were telling me I'm not sure what. They weren't seductive eyes. They weren't pleading eyes or pity-me eyes. They were intelligent eyes that said something like, "So? This is. I have lived." "In the refugee camp they said, 'You can go to Australia or Canada or Oregon. Pick.' I thought, 'I don't know anyone in any of these places. I picked Oregon. I don't know why.' And we flew from Pakistan to Holland and then to here. I knew no English." Her husband survived, came to join her, would not come to the party because he has very little English and no work.
She looked happy. People had cared for her. This is good. David Ritchie, Portland, Oregon ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
