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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
The Profile Zanzibar Age. 39 Gender. Female Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him Location Altadena, CA School. Other » More info. The Weather The World The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into: Samarinda Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is. The Phases of the Moon Module CURRENT MOON Writings
Poetry The Tree and the Telephone Pole The Spider I Do Not Know Their Names The Mouse Blindness La Plante The Moon Today I am Young A Night Poem Celestial Wandering Siren of the Sea If I Were a Dragon To the Dreamers Leave the Sky The Honor of the Oyster Return From San Diego War My Study Defeat A Late Summer's Night Of Dragons and Men Erebus The Edge of the World The Race Dragon's Spirit The Snake's Terror Spirit Island Metaphysics Metaphysica Transponderae Metaphysics and the Middaymoon Of Adventures in Foreign Lands The Rogue Wave: The Unedited Version Adventures in the PRC Voyage of Discovery Drinking the Blood of Goats Ticket for a Phantom Bus Os peixes nadam o mar Three Villages Far Away The River Weser Children I Should Have Kidnapped, Part I Let's Get You Out of Those Clothes Radishes Three-Piece-Lawsuit If Underwear Could Speak Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s) Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee. The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration T: Cook a nice dinner W: PARKOUR! Th: Parties, movies, dinners F: Picnics, the Louvre S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR Su: Philosophy, Religion The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006 A Crocodile on the Sandbank Looking Backwards Wild Swans Exodus 1984 Tales of the Alhambra (in progress) Dark Lord of Derkholm Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The Lost Years of Merlin Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress) Atlas Shrugged (in progress) Uglies Pretties Specials A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!) The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time From Magma to Tephra (in progress) Lady Chatterley's Lover Harry Potter 7 The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency Introduction to Planetary Volcanism A Child Called "It" Pompeii Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women? Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress) What's So Great About Christianity? Aeolian Geomorphology Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits The City of Ember The People of Sparks Cube Route When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard Bound The Golden Compass Clan of the Cave Bear The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip) The Incredible Shrinking Man Twilight Eclipse New Moon Breaking Dawn Armageddon's Children The Elves of Cintra The Gypsy Morph Animorphs #23: The Pretender Animorphs #25: The Extreme Animorphs #26: The Attack Crucial Conversations A Journey to the Center of the Earth A Great and Terrible Beauty The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Dandelion Wine To Sir, With Love London Calling Watership Down The Invisible Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea The Host The Hunger Games Catching Fire Shadows and Strongholds The Jungle Book Beatrice and Virgil Infidel Neuromancer The Help Flip Zion Andrews The Unit Princess Quantum Brain The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated Delirium Memento Nora Robopocalypse The Name of the Wind The Terror Sister Tao Te Ching What Paul Meant Lao Tzu and Taoism Libyan Sands Sand and Sandstones Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew The Science of God Calculating God Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill City of Bones Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne Divergent Stranger in a Strange Land The Old Man and the Sea Flowers for Algernon Au Bonheur des Ogres The Martian The Road to Serfdom De La Terre � la Lune (ip) In the Light of What We Know Devil in the White City 2312 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August Red Mars How to Be a Good Wife A Mote in God's Eye A Gentleman in Russia The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism Seneca: Letters from a Stoic | Ouaeda Tuesday. 2.15.11 8:15 am I met a woman on the plane. She didn't speak English, and she asked me for help on her customs form. She had a bunch of information written on a form in Arabic, and she wanted me to transfer the relevant information into the right boxes on the customs form. Her form also had a french translation of everything, so I moved all of the information into the right boxes and asked her all of the questions on the customs form in the best french I could manage. Was she traveling with family? Was she bringing anything valuable? Did she live on a farm? Did she have more than $10,000 in monetary instruments? The answers were no and no and no and no. She looked to be right around my age, and she was from Morocco, where they speak a mix of French and Arabic. She was wearing a muslim head-scarf. I recalled that during the whole flight I hadn't seen her take any of the free alcohol, and she never once watched the little TV set into the back of the seat in front of her. Our first interaction had been when she asked me how to buckle the seat belt on the airplane. We got to talking. She was moving to Boston to be with her husband. They had been married for two years but he had lived in Boston for three years. It was a familiar story in muslim countries. The marriage would be arranged by her father through a series of contacts. The man often lived overseas and he would send for her when he felt like he was established or whenever he decided he wanted her to come. The first time they would meet might be their wedding day. She had never lived with him before, she said. "That will be different," I said, my vocabulary limited to drastic understatements. Yes, she said nervously. It will be different. She had never traveled outside of Morocco. She told me about her home, filled with her family and parents and cousins, filled with the bright, hot Moroccan sunshine and the brilliant tiled corridors of the Moroccan streets. She loved the heat. She loved the desert. She said living in Morocco was so easy, you had your family, you had everything you needed. How was Boston? She wanted to know. I didn't want to answer. Cold. Frigid. Aggressive people who were always late for something. Neighbors who stayed in their homes. Snow piled up to the height of a man on every street corner. Dirty. Dark. I told her instead that it was lovely in the summer, and that in the spring there would be many flowers, and that there was a beach that was nearby. I didn't know if she could ever expect to make it to the beach, or what she would be allowed to do there if she went. Did she have any family in America? I asked. She didn't. Her husband had a brother in Boston, but that was it. She didn't know her husband's brother. She had a sister in Canada, whom she hadn't really heard from since she was married off to a man in a similar way several years ago. Her husband assured her that the sister wasn't far away. He assured her that he lived in a Moroccan part of Boston, so she would feel right at home. He assured her that English was easier to learn than French. Was English easier to learn than French? She asked. I didn't want to tell her. We talked about how beautiful and regular Arabic verbs were, instead. I am not married, I said, not yet. She told me that I should not hurry myself. "Quand on se marie, on perd sa libert�," she said. When you get married, you lose your freedom. I said that in Boston, it is the same. She said, "No. In Boston it is not the same as in Morocco." She shook her head vehemently. I corrected myself to say that I meant that in Boston, the amount of freedom you had before you got married was pretty much the same as the amount of freedom you had after you got married. Not for her, she implied. Not for moroccan women. The plane landed. Outside the sky was grey and the runways were covered in dirty grey piles of snow. It looks cold, she said. Yes, I said, It is necessary always to have a coat. I impulsively took a piece of paper from my notebook. On it I wrote my name, my phone number, my email address, and my street address. "If you need anything..." I said, "...anything at all. If you have some trouble, and you need some help... please call me." She smiled and took the piece of paper. She held out the piece of paper that had the name and telephone number of her husband. "Here is my husband's number. I think it would be ok to call it," she said. She had me copy down the number. I walked with her to the passport control and stood in line with her until she had to walk through alone. She had a large envelope that contained everything she should need to successfully immigrate. She hadn't been told nice things about the US immigration process. I felt like I should defend my countrymen, but I hadn't heard nice things about the US immigration process, either. We were both a little surprised and relieved to see that they had staffed all of the booths with people who spoke french. They wouldn't let me go through with her, so I had to wait for her in the baggage claim. I ran over as soon as I saw her. She was being escorted to the secondary baggage check. The officer who was with her was incredibly kindly and I asked how long it would take for her papers to be processed. He told me a half an hour to 45 minutes. I had to go, my boss was waiting for me to take me home, having no idea where I had gone. I told her I had to go. I told her that everything would be ok and that it was very easy from here. She said she understood. We embraced tightly and she kissed me on both cheeks. "Thank you." she said, in English. "Bonne Chance," I said. Good Luck. And thus our lives diverged. 9 Comments. :(. If this were a book, I would skip ahead a couple of pages and figure out if everything turned out alright. I hope it does. » jinyu on 2011-02-15 09:53:39 Gosh. You should be on those beer commercials for "Most Interesting Woman in the world." » middaymoon on 2011-02-15 12:50:43 ^^^ HIS COMMENT. YES. That was good of you. Not everyone would have helped (gross understatement). » Unicornasaurus on 2011-02-15 01:03:33 If you ever write a memoir it's going to be the size of War and Peace. » randomjunk on 2011-02-16 12:47:19 Thanks :D Yeah it seems to be working out so far, » AmbyrJayde on 2011-02-16 09:43:56 Gracious... God works in mysterious ways. Even when it comes to seating arrangements on a plane. I'm sure she was thankful that she had you as an escort into our country. I hope you both recieve a friendship out of this. I'll pray for her tonight. » Helena on 2011-02-16 10:26:25 AWWWWW! You're so nice! There should be more of you in this world. That's how it works in the Muslim world, unless your family is Westernised, arranged - forced marriage, losing your freedom, having to leave everything that makes you you behind for some unknown person and expected to love and live with him for the rest of your life. » Nuttz on 2011-02-18 05:07:59 It is remarkable, very valuable idea It is possible to fill a blank? xanax medication What good interlocutors :) how to get xanax prescribed Your answer is matchless... :) order ultram I do not see in it sense. meridia online You, probably, were mistaken? buy xanax online cheap 6e49be » Bill (151.8.65.5) on 2011-06-07 08:33:32 As the expert, I can assist. And still variants? buy synthroid It here if I am not mistaken. buy xenical online Attempt not torture. buy ativan online What phrase... super, remarkable idea buy propecia Very useful phrase prozac online e49bedb » Donnell (110.136.148.199) on 2011-07-09 09:40:21
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