Saturday, June 7, 2014
To My Dearest,
Yesterday I joined Uncle Tony for the six-hour drive north to Montreal to pick up my sister and Michael from the airport. I felt bad not being able to pitch in with the driving, but I had never learned, because of a certain phobia I had developed ever since the last time I rode in a car in Syria (which fear just grew worse thanks to the lie I constantly told myself and others about my parents dying in a car crash). Fortunately, my uncle didn’t seem to mind, and we used the time to catch up on everything that I hadn’t been able to talk to him about during my stressful exam period. I also gave him more details about my work for the MCA, all of which impressed him – especially the part about having raised enough money to pay him back the $25,000 he had kindly contributed towards the ransom we paid for Maria’s release.
When we finally reached Montreal, parked the car, and made our way to the international arrivals area, I felt as if at least a decade had passed since I first came through the same airport a little over two years ago. I was in such a different place now – more confident, more secure about being in the United States, and more knowledgeable about myself and the world. I had been through so many new experiences and finally confronted past ones that I had hid from for so long. Just the fact that Maria was now the refugee and I was the New York resident picking her up made me think about how, thanks to the unfairness of chance, I was effectively “ahead” of my sister, even though she was older than me. Here she was, starting over in a new country, arriving with basically nothing to rebuild her life, other than me and our uncle. I had planned to offer her the option to share my small dorm room with me, although, as I expected, she ultimately opted for the greater space and privacy of staying with Uncle Tony.
As we stood in the busy arrivals area, with lots of expectant faces and a few hired drivers holding signs with the names of the travelers they were supposed to pick up, I suddenly thought about one important respect in which Maria’s arrival was easier than mine: she was more of a mature and confident adult – twenty-two rather than sixteen – and, above all, she was traveling with a strong male escort. On a few occasions, I had actually been wondering about how she and Michael would relate, but I never bothered to ask Maria about such details, because she had enough to worry about and I didn’t want her to think that I was getting jealously possessive or somehow more focused on relatively petty details. So I really had no idea how the two of them had gotten along – from the time he had helped to relocate her and our family from Raqqa to Kessab, to his involvement in her release from captivity, and then to escorting her to Beirut and finally Montreal. But I caught my first uncensored glimpse of their interpersonal dynamic when I spotted the two of them turning the corner into the arrivals area. Apparently neither knew that I could see them, because they looked at each other in the most happy and comfortable way possible, until they realized that they were now visible to the people waiting for travelers in the arrivals area, and then their facial expressions quickly switched to the focused task of scanning the crowd for me and Uncle Tony.
Maria’s eyes soon met mine and I felt my face light up with the widest grin as I ran towards her, while she hurried in my direction until we collided in a joyous embrace. It was our first physical contact since Christmas 2011, when she had left with Uncle Luke and our younger brother for Raqqa, back when Islamists hadn’t yet invaded the city and turned it into a living hell. With tears of joy streaming down our faces, we hugged so tightly it felt as if we might never let go, for fear of being separated for too long again. Eventually, we stepped back from our embrace briefly just to look each other over – as if to confirm that we were in fact experiencing this moment together and it wasn’t some dream. It had been so long that I had somehow forgotten that she’s actually a few inches taller than me. She looked exhausted from the international flight, and the countless ordeals suffered before it, but she was still as beautiful as ever: above circles of fatigue were her bright hazel eyes; her black, wavy hair draped over her shoulders; and her lovely figure was somehow accentuated by the backpack hanging from both of her shoulders, although she was clearly still regaining some of the weight she had lost in captivity. After our brief, mutual inspection, we resumed our hugging.
For a moment, it felt as if Maria and I were the only two people in the airport. But Uncle Tony eventually approached our endless, vice-like embrace and gave us a mopey face, as if he were being purposely excluded from all of the fun.
“Excuse me, but what’s an uncle gotta do to get a hug around here?” he asked in Arabic, placing his palms gently on each of our shoulders. “I was told that I’m on the welcoming committee too,” he protested, in his inimitable, jocular way. We laughed as we wiped away our tears and broke apart so that Uncle Tony could embrace Maria too.
I then ran up to Michael and wrapped my arms snugly around his. Uncle Tony eventually came over to Michael and said, “So, you must be the famous Michael Kassab – I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Uncle Tony, you’re looking at the future president of Antioch,” I beamed, as the two shook hands warmly.
“Look, I’m just thankful that the guy got me back my niece. After that, he can run for president of any country he wants, and I’ll vote for him!”
We all shared a much-needed, hearty laugh, and then headed to Uncle Tony’s car.