From the Library of Amanda Stillman

Northern Sudanese me

Anytime you look at someone’s library, you learn something about who they are. Whenever I’m at someone’s house or office, I look at their bookshelves. It’s always interesting to me.  My family is pretty bookish, and we all have some sort of book collection.  Joanna and Benji’s library is full of books about parenting and being godly people and getting the Gospel out into the world. Marian and Josh’s library is full of military books, young adult fantasy, anything by L.M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, or a plethora of other sophisticated female writers, and of course, parenting books, and books about being godly people. Marian and Josh have a ridiculously large library filled with a variety of books (some stolen from good people who happen to live out of the country and some borrowed from that same good person, but many purchased legitimately). You can tell things about their lives and personalities from their books. Joanna and Benji have a small library since they

Sudanese sisters in Yemen!

don’t have a lot of room to keep lots of books, and they care about being parents and being godly people. Marian and Josh have posh military housing, so they have lots of books, and they care about being good parents and being godly people and knowing about the military. Also, Marian just loves books. As for me, surprisingly, I own no parenting books. My books about being godly are all on my kindle because you can often get those books for free online, and I am always looking for discounted godliness. The few that I do have actual copies of were given to me by my concerned parents. My mom once gave me the same book two years in a row at Christmas because she’s getting old and so is her memory. It worked out well, though, because I hadn’t read it the first time, and I did read it the second time. And it was actually a good book.

Some of my early Sudanese friends

I was thinking about this because I just bought a new language book. When I committed to buying it—clicking the ‘confirm’ button on Amazon, I realized something: I committed to buying this book because I’ve accepted that I’m moving to this new country. It is not unusual for me to be looking at language books. The Foreign Language Section is my favorite of any bookstore. I can spend hours checking out obscure dictionaries, phrase books, and grammar texts for various languages that I’ll probably never take the time to learn—from Xhosa to Khmer to Quechua or Kurdish. I am just fascinated by the sounds and letters and meanings.  But I rarely buy them, for the same reason that I rarely buy anything: I never have enough room in my life for more stuff beyond the essentials. I really hate having stuff—I love getting rid of excess crap I’ve accumulated, but books are an exception. So if I buy a book, I have to really like it. Or I would have to be enrolled in a class that required it.  But I’m done with school now, hopefully forever, so the books I buy have to be useful to me. The books that I keep now are all re-readers for me. So there are a few books by a Canadian author dear to my heart—Gordon Korman. I was taught by Canadians until grade 6 (see how I did that, eh?), and they shaped my young reading interests. Gordon Korman makes me laugh, and I love laughing. His book about kids who hate camp and try to escape is written for junior high boys, and I love it so much I have it memorized. And I still read it again every time I’m back with it.  And then there are books about relief and development, which is my chosen field, and occasionally I want to go back and get ideas and refresh my memory on certain concepts.  But the largest category of books in my small library are the language books. If you look through those books, you can see a bit of my story—where I’ve been, the people I’ve met and loved, the languages and cultures that have shaped my own thoughts and ideas, the millions of words crowded in my mind that I’m constantly translating from the word that BEST fits to the word that the person I’m speaking with will actually understand. I don’t speak all of those languages fluently, but I can at least carry on a basic conversation in all of them. And I’ve known and cared about someone who speaks each of those languages. If I haven’t been to a homeland of that language, at least I plan to go someday (Yes, I’m talking about you, Afghanistan and/or Iran).

Indian babies=I like them

So the book I just bought is a Juba-Arabic phrase book. It is scheduled to arrive at Joanna and Benji’s house about a month or so before I make my next move to the next country that will be my home for however long the Lord allows. I’ve loved Sudanese people from my college days when I worked with precious refugee kids from there. Then I lived with a lovely Northern Sudanese lady for a year in Yemen, even celebrating a big holiday with her family. I’ve never lived in Africa before, though I’ve traveled there. I’m looking forward to spending time in a place I already feel connected to.  I’m glad I’m not saying goodbye to India forever, though. I’ll be back and forth for the rest of this year at least. It’s a new transition for me, but I’m pretty good at transitions. I’m good at change and moving on and trying new things, but I’m bad at goodbyes. I always have the urge to sneak away without telling anyone. I never do that, but I always wish I could. I don’t like to make people sad. I know how much it hurts to be left behind. It is really hard to balance the goodbyes between all the friends from different places.  I know I’ll be eating 5 or 6 dinners every day for that last week….it’s fun at first, but it gets challenging towards the end. I hate those prolonged goodbyes—come back to my house one more time, eat dinner with us for the last time, one more time, one last time…That mantra will be going through my head too. Last time to watch for mongooses while I run…last time to sleep in this bed, cook in this kitchen, shop at this store, pay my electricity bill at the ATM…

Sudanese babies=I like them (I was so young and innocent!)

I’m excited about what’s next—new people, new challenges, new adventures, but I know that it will inevitably be followed by another goodbye and ‘last time for____’.  They say home is where the heart is, and I’ve left pieces of my heart all over the world. Ripping off chunks of your heart and throwing them around is pretty painful, but I’ve certainly made myself a lot of wonderful homes all over the place. I’m not complaining. Most people don’t get much say in their occupation. I did get to choose mine, and I’m acutely aware of what a blessing that is. I know not as many people are as jealous of my life as I think they should be, but I’m thankful for my calling and how much I love doing what I do, even though so often it just hurts. Mostly I’m thankful for the hope that I have that everything is going to be renewed. There will be a new Earth, without pain and sorrow and poverty and evil. And I’m pretty sure that all the people and places and cultures and languages I know and love will be right there with me, perfected in the way He always intended that they would be. I will be out of a job then, of course, so I’ll get to devote myself to lots of new hobbies, like developing my superpowers of flying and teleportation, or maybe joining some new and exciting profession like marine archaeology or sky-diving ballet (it’s not a thing yet, but it will be).

Drawing diagrams of toilets in the dirt--every little girl's dream job! Don't worry, India: this project isn't finished yet. I'll be back! (Probably 3-4 more times this year...)

Scaring People

From childhood it’s been a hobby of mine to scare people—I startle them in guilty moments and play on their phobias…OK, fine. I mostly just did that to Marian because it’s always funny.  One minute she’s up in the schoolroom, thinking she has convinced Mom that she is doing her math when really she is reading Little House on the Prairie for the twentieth time (I’m all for multiple readings of good books, but Laura Ingalls Wilder makes me want to ride a buffalo over a cliff). The next minute she’s jumping up in the air, hitting her head on the ceiling as all tall people do when they exceed the normally accepted boundaries of human height, and grabbing at her math book…one minute she’s confessing to me her deep dark fear of finding a dead body behind a shower curtain and the next minute she’s wrapped in a towel, screaming at my doorway holding a bundle of soggy clothes that looked just like the corpse of someone who had been murdered just before slipping and falling into the bath. 

Scaring people can be wonderfully cathartic and stress-relieving. It also gives one a sense of accomplishment if one has put any kind of careful and/or spontaneous thought into the act of terror. But as I found out this week when I scared two separate groups of people at two different times completely by accident, it can still be funny. And laughing at other people really is a way of bonding across cultures. For example…

I was off for my morning run the other day. Now that it’s getting lighter earlier, I can go running earlier, which is nice because there are less pedestrians (four-legged and two-legged) wandering around in the streets, blocking my tiny paths around mud puddles and pot holes. (I hate having to stop in the middle of a run to wait for a cow to saunter around and give me room to get by.) But I found out that a solitary runner, in a place where morning exercise means standing in a group and clapping together or laughing as loudly (and fake-ly) as possible, can be a suspicious person.  Since I hate running dead ends, I always try to find as many loops as possible—around two blocks or three or even one, it is better than getting to the end of the road and having to turn around.  It always looks like you forgot where you were going. Well, as I was running around one of my little loops, I happened to come up behind two unsuspecting ladies…one lady heard my footsteps behind her and suddenly grabbed the lady with her and yelled, “Run! Hurry!” Then they looked back and saw me, and as I apologized profusely while laughing and continuing to run in place (because I hate stopping), they also laughed (embarrassedly) and we had a quick bonding moment in the street. Later, because it’s India, Karma struck me for my inconsiderate, culturally inappropriate pastime, and a bug got stuck in my eyelashes. That was traumatic, though, so I won’t say anything else about it, except that I did NOT stop running.

Later on that day when I was no longer running, I managed to scare some of my friends when I used the wrong word to tell them that I had a problem. The problem was that our office water filter was not working, but I made it seem like there was a DISASTER happening to me--one could argue with the prevalence of arsenic in the water system of Patna that me potentially contracting cancer could be considered a disaster, but it didn’t necessitate that my friend and his sick wife rush right over (and they did).  We laughed again and then had fun hanging out in the office while we called someone to come fix the filter and had a Hindi lesson. I've got to say, it’s kind of annoying learning languages from books. The expression I used is translated in every book as “I have a problem,” but the connotation is that impending doom is coming, apparently.  Like the word “dhobi” which is in every single Hindi book I have ever seen and always used in sentence examples (The dhobi is washing the clothes. The dhobi was washing the clothes. The dhobi had washed the clothes. The dhobi is about to have been wishing that he had been almost having been washing the clothes.). Then I use the word to suggest that we hire a washerman (dhobi in case you didn’t figure that out from the context) to wash some bedding we had purchased and the room erupts in laughter.  I learned that calling someone a ‘dhobi’ or especially a ‘son of a dhobi’ is a profound insult and could potentially land me in a fight. So at least that language mistake was totally useful: I now know a great and devastating insult to throw at people who annoy me.

Before I sign off this blog post, which I am writing because I missed my train and now I have lots of extra time with my new beautiful wireless internet, I want to post a beautiful photo of my little sister screaming over the shower corpse…since she posted some photos of some of my earlier hijinks in her usually deep and insightful blog (www.inkblotcoffee.blogspot.com) which you probably all read already because she is so famous.

Faces are blurred to protect the terrorized.

Thoughts on Indian Air Travel

As I sit here in the church guest house in Ranchi, being chewed on by mosquitos, it occurred to me that I haven’t updated the blog in a while. No, this is not surprising, and as usual, I have a million excuses, some of which are actually good. For example: I’m about to move again for the third time in a year, I am doing 2 jobs in addition to the one I signed up for when I came to India, I had to go on a visa-extending trip to Sri Lanka, my internet is not excellent. Some bad excuses may include the following: I don’t feel like being productive when I don’t have to be, my job is really stressful right now and occasionally depressing and no one wants to hear about that, I have too many interesting things popping into my mind and I can’t choose which one to write about, Marian’s blog/s are really good and entertaining and uplifting, so that niche is filled. Also she has cute photos of her kids and, basically, that’s all she needs for a successful blog. Joanna: you should take that into account too. Just pop some more photos of your babies up and voila—you have a blog.

But recently I have had some recurring insights into life in India quirks.  I thought I would share because they amuse me as a foreigner, but no one else here shares that amusement, since I don’t really hang out with foreigners here. Since I have spent the vast majority of my life these past few months traveling, most of my insights are travel-related.  I’m beginning to think that my nephew’s assumption that I live in the airport is not far wrong…

Today as I strode confidently into the airport in Kolkata, I swerved around wide-eyed tourists and chubby old ladies in saris and staked my claim on my space in line to make sure that none of those aforementioned ladies could butt in front of me. It is always the chubby sari-clad ladies who act all innocent like they just want to get close to the sign to see where they are supposed to go and then they will go back to the end of the line. Do not be fooled! Once they’ve wedged themselves in front of you, they won’t go back and then they will take an extra-long time doing whatever you were waiting in line to do because this is the first time in an airport and they have no idea what they are doing. And then when I realize this, it somehow endears them to me again and I forget how annoyed I was before as I kindly show them how to put their bags on the conveyor belt to be scanned…I am an angel…so full of patience…

And speaking of these scanners, Kolkata airport security is very concerned about electric items that might be in your carry-on. Everything that can be connected to an electrical outlet must be removed from the bag. Today, after removing my laptop as I always do, I was stopped and instructed to remove every other electronic item from my bag so that they could re-scan the bag. As a true member of the 21^st century, I had to remove my phone, my kindle, my Zune (OK, I’m not that far in the 21^st century because I got a Zune instead of an ipod, but I mostly did that because I am the middle-child and I have spent my life searching for uniqueness), and an external hard drive. I was then questioned again to make sure that I had NOTHING else with an electric current in it. I showed them the cord to my laptop and they said, “It is electric.” I said, “Not unless it’s plugged into an outlet.” But they ignored me. They proceeded to scan the bag again without the dangerous items. But they didn’t rescan the items themselves. It reminded me of a childhood moment in the Jakarta airport when an over-zealous security guard insisted on looking in my checked suitcase again. He was very concerned about my hairdryer. He looked it over, questioned its use (I also question it—I only use them in the winter to make sure that my hair doesn’t turn into icicles and break off or if I want to make myself feel like I am putting effort into my appearance), and then informed me that I was not allowed to use it on the flight.  Often I have issues with authority and/or people telling me what to do, but in this case I was perfectly willing to acquiesce to his command—since it was in my checked luggage anyway and I have yet to find a way to wash my hair on board an airplane.

Though India and Indonesia may be overly concerned about electronics in bags, India, at least, is very unconcerned about liquids. I could walk through the metal detector with a Big Gulp soda in one hand, and no big deal (that is a thing, right? I was raised in Asia but I feel like I have heard about Big Gulp drinks and I feel like they should be a some kind of testimony to American obesity which we hear about all the time, though let me tell you, I have seen plenty of Indians who have eaten enough chapatis to fill out their saris and sarwals in creative ways)…It is also nice not to have to worry about travel-sized shampoo and toothpaste or nitroglycerin or whatever.

But don’t let India’s lack of concern for the prevention of liquid explosives on airplanes make you think that they aren’t focused on safety and security and being aware of all that is going on around them. Airports are one of the few places where I watch Indian news on tv (since I don’t have a working one in my current house) and I’ve noticed that Indian news is ALWAYS breaking news. I mean, I have yet to see a program that doesn’t have “BREAKING NEWS” scrolling across the top or bottom of the screen (top or bottom of the screen is left to the creativity of the news team, but breaking news is not an option-everything is breaking news). Maybe I’m just not watching tv enough, but I did mention that I spend a lot of time in airports. What is the likelihood that every time I look at the screen it is breaking news and every time I’m not looking at it, it is not? I’m not so great with probabilities, but I’m thinking it’s kind of low.   It does kind of freak me out. I’ve been conditioned to believe that “BREAKING NEWS” signifies some dire event—a huge storm coming my way, an act of terrorism that could/will lead to war in some country that I have probably lived in, an escaped convict on the loose in my neighborhood, the latest contestant to be kicked off American Idol—you know, the BIG things. So I glance up to see “BREAKING NEWS” and I’m thinking, “Crap, I hope my flight doesn’t get canceled.” And then I notice that it’s just some political rally in some random state about some random politician that said something about a food shortage or Hinduism or whatever. No one besides said random politician and enthusiastic nearby onlookers with nothing else to do will be immediately affected. But, I’ve got to hand it to the Indian news media: they make you want to watch the rally for about 10 seconds (9 seconds more than I would have watched if it hadn’t been “BREAKING NEWS”).

My final thought on Indian air travel (I know you’re so excited that I’ve almost finished this lengthy treatise on my life in Indian airports) is regarding an issue that used to bug the crap out of me before I learned to prepare myself for it. It is the showing of the boarding pass to a random otherwise-unemployed person as I get OFF the plane. Yes, I said get OFF. “Why?” you ask. I don’t know. I have been asking myself this same question. Here are several theories:

1.     They want to make sure that I am getting off at the right stop. But if not, will they put me back on the plane until I get to my intended destination?

2.     They want to make sure I wasn’t stowing away in the bathroom the whole time or clinging to the wing, hitching an illegal ride.

3.     They want to make sure that I didn’t switch tickets with someone on the plane during the flight which could result in…some kind of shenanigans?

4.     They want to employ that otherwise unemployed person who is checking my ticket.

Seriously, if anyone on Earth has any idea why they do this, let me know. If they have a good reason, it would greatly help my peace of mind when I get off the plane and have to dig around in my bag, trying to remember where the hell I stuffed that ticket in the mad rush to find my seat and sit in it before I get smacked in the face by someone rushing to get his bag into the overhead compartment. Now that I am prepared for this ridiculous and (in my view) completely unnecessary inspection, I keep the ticket tucked in my kindle or passport for easy access and I swing by the uninformed foreigners digging through their bags with a smug knowing smile.  I wish I could keep it in my pocket, but as I mentioned previously, Indian clothes for women do not have pockets, and the ticket is too big to fit in my bra. Or my bra is too small for the ticket…either way, not an option.

So here I am in Ranchi for a day. I’m back to Kolkata tomorrow, on to Patna on Wednesday, back to Ranchi next week, then back to Patna, then on to Bagdogra, then back to Patna, then to Meghalaya, the back to Patna, and then a ridiculously long flight to the US of A, whereupon landing I do not have to re-show my ticket.

Yes, that is a lot of traveling, but the good news is that JetAirways has a new November magazine out which I can now memorize, since I already finished memorizing the October one…There is never a dull moment in my life…

Merry Christmas and a Happy Sylvester

If you haven't heard this story already (so not Emily, Joanna, Marian, my parents, Scott, Ashley, is there anyone else who even reads this?), you may be a bit confused by the title. The first time I heard this traditional English greeting, I was also slightly unsure of it's exact meaning. I was quickly enlightened by my landlord, who loves to tell me new words in the English language that no one who actually speaks English has ever heard of. Apparently, in some places (maybe a remote South Pacific Island formerly colonized by the British...I haven't been able to to confirm this yet, but I'm working on it), "sylvester" is another way to refer to the New Year. We asked a British girl if it was some random British thing, like sardines on toast or spelling "color" with a 'u,' but she said it wasn't. At least it was a way of breaking up our traditional conversation that we have every time my landlord actually shows up to collect the rent (he was supposed to come tonight and didn't show). Every time he comes, he reminds me of the time that the French UNIFIL guys left for vacation and didn't shut the water valves. He got a call at 4.00am telling him that there was water flowing over the balcony of his apartment. When they got back from their vacation and saw the damage, all they could say was "Mr. Abbas, you told us. And you were right. And now we will pay for everything because you were right. If only we had listened to you and shut off the water valves." And so you see, Miss Amanda, you must close the water when you leave the house! Also, give me more money because you use too much electricity.

Mr. Abbas isn't the only Arab man who has helped me learn more about my language. One of my friends in Jordan had a father who was a lawyer and also an expert in every language in the world. Of course, as he informed me, all languages are derived from Arabic. He took my raised eyebrows as a sign of my interest and continued. "For example, your word "genie" comes from our word 'jinn'." I nodded. This is true. Of course, considering the fact that we don't actually talk about genies on a daily basis and that they generally only come up in conversations involving Arabian Nights or Scheherezade, this wasn't exactly an earth-shattering revelation. But Abu Mohammad was not finished yet. "Your word 'good' comes from the Arabic word 'jayid' which is sometimes pronounced 'gayid' and therefore 'good'." I murmured something about the German word 'gut,' but he ignored me and began to clear up another commonly misconception. "Your word 'technology' comes from the Arabic word 'teknolojia'." So you see why everyone needs to learn Arabic. It's the only way to honestly be able to communicate what you truly feel. Or so Abu Mohammad told me...

So that’s your little language lesson from me and my linguist friends. I hope you all have a happy Christmas and a wonderful Sylvester. I also hope you have some great friends who will give you exciting presents like some of the ones I have received- Guccirash perfume and a shiny porcelain picture frame with a dolphin on a spring leaping in front of the photo that will be inserted there someday. Enjoy your fake or real trees as I enjoy the dead one I spray-painted silver. And have fun with your families as I am enjoying mine…see you in 20 minutes, Emily, with the dressing, the rolls, the chocolate mint dessert and the marshmallows for your sweet potatoes. Bejewelled or Family Band tonight?

This is my Christmas photo with my tree and the Fuzz.

The Wedding-by popular demand

As many people have requested this story in print, I am taking this time to tell it.

While all weddings have their special moments, the last wedding I went to was especially exciting. It may be the fact that we had to leave early due to an altercation involving my friends, but that's just an assumption.

It began in the usual way. We were told to meet at a certain place at 7.00 even though the wedding would begin around 8.00. In Lebanon, as in much of the Middle East, weddings don't necessarily begin at a certain time. People show up, sit down at a table and wait for the bride and groom to arrive. Lebanon is unique, though, as most weddings are mixed. Men and women attend together and even dance together! This would cause great scandal in most other places, but people here don't seem to mind.

So we were running a bit late as we were visiting another friend in the same camp, and she was not ready to let us go yet. Nor was her daughter who has a fondness for Scott and biting people who don't do what she wants. You can see our dilemma. I called the house to see if they were really ready for us or if they were running late as is usually the case. I was informed that the girl we were meeting was not there. She'd already left for the party. This made us a bit concerned as we didn't actually know the way to the hall where the wedding was to be held. So I called her cell and she actually hadn't left yet, just her brother thought she was gone. But she did tell us to hurry over as everyone was waiting for us. So we hurried over (leaving before the biting kid realized we were gone) and then waited at the meeting spot for 30 minutes for the people who were all supposed to be ready and waiting for us.

Finally we made it to the wedding. We parked near the hall while our friends parked near the gate. So we waited at the entrance to the hall for our friends to meet us to go in. While we stood there, the nervous wedding coordinator tried to hustle us inside. We told him we were waiting for our friends, but we could see the wedding drummers assembled outside, ready to enter, and I wanted to go in so that we wouldn't miss the excitement. After several long agonizing minutes of waiting for girls in high heels to amble our way, we went in and found a semi-empty table near the front. We were just in time to watch on the projector screen in front of us the arrival of the drummers and the bride and groom. We quickly noticed that had we still been standing at the spot where we'd been waiting for our friends, we would have been in the midst of the drumming and dancing and waving. That would have been a bit awkward.

The wedding began typical to most weddings here. Several young men dressed in traditional clothes drummed and tootled on horns and danced around swinging prayer beads over their heads while doing intricate kick dances. Amidst all this fanfare, the bride and groom are escorted in by more kick-dancing young men. They wave amiably at the cheering, ululating crowd that you can't actually hear because of the even louder music. The groom is dressed in a typical tuxedo/suit thing and the bride is wearing a cross between lingerie and a wedding dress. She is the first bride I've seen who wasn't wearing the head-covering and she was definitely willing to show off her body. The bodice of the dress was similar to a corset made of some kind of see-through netting which revealed the excessive curves of her body. While Song of Songs compares the Beloved's neck to the Tower of David, in this case the bride's hair more closely resembled an architectural triumph over gravity. Together they stood awkwardly while the dancers performed several more numbers, including an elaborately choreographed sword fight. No Arab wedding is complete without swords. At this point, I started helping Marian take notes for her own wedding. Finally the happy couple was escorted to the couch throne but not for long. They had to get up and dance the first couple dance. During the dance, the helpful wedding coordinator whispered instructions in their ears at various moments.

Then the festivities began in earnest. People spilled out to the dance floor, joined hands, and began the debke. This is a glorified hokey-pokey dance that really looks cool. The young men make it look good adding in energetic jumps and turns. Emily and I made it look awkward, trying to keep up with the steps that kept changing. Finally the debke was over and we could actually just dance. After the dancing slowed a bit, the lights changed as a signal to all to vacate the dance floor so that the staff could wheel in an enormous 12-layer cake. The soundtrack to this momentous occasion was none other than Vanilla Ice's musical masterpiece "Ice Ice Baby." The crowd at our table went wild. (Emily knows every profound lyric of this work of art). While swaying gently to the music, the bride and groom together grasped a long sword handed to them by the ever-present wedding coordinator and chopped the cake in half. Then, still dancing, now to "I Like to Move It-Move It," they shared cake and linked arms to drink the juice. This looked awkward and possibly threatening to the poofy white gown below. After the exchange of the rings, the dancing got started again.

During this bout of dancing, we were on and off the floor. We were served the sweet but bland tasting cake with crunchy fruit surprises hidden at random places inside. During one of these rest times we noticed a mass exodus of guys from the room. We were informed that a fight was going on outside. We stayed out of it, but later Ashley went out and came back with the exciting news that there was blood on the steps outside. Later when we ourselves were quickly vacating the premises, we noticed this blood. We thought that would be the most exciting part of our night there when another fight began. Apparently, our friends were dancing when an aunt of the groom told our friend (a relative of the bride) that she couldn't dance in the middle of the debke circle which is traditionally reserved for relatives. Then someone pushed our other friend who was dancing with the relative. Her brother went up to defend her honor, but he is a little guy, and he was grabbed by the throat by the aunt's relative. Our friend inserted herself between her brother and the other guy while the other brother rushed back to our table and told us to get up because we all had to leave now. We quickly gathered up our stuff, and left the hall.

Outside there was much confusion about whether or not we should go back in and make nice or just leave. When the lady who had been told she couldn't dance in the circle came out, she made the decision for us. She said she was not going back in and we all should leave. So we did. We tried to be very huffy about it to make a point.

So on the whole, the evening was a great success. Emily and I had wanted our sisters to experience an Arab wedding. And we'd had the bonus of getting to see a fight and being involved in another fight and best of all, we didn't have to stay until midnight because we got kicked out early!

Little added tidbit for your benefit: the next day while ordering food to go in a restaurant near my house, the waiter recognized me and Marian. "You were at the wedding last night, right?" He queried. "Yes," I told him. "Pretty wild night, huh?" That it was!

A photo of the sword cutting the cake that was obscured by the many guests and the staff. Use your imagination!