After much discussion, the consensus was the main downtown Houston fireworks display-- as long as we tried to find a place outside the actual Buffalo Bayou park. I balked at paying $6 a head to get into to see a fireworks display. Not just because I'm cheap-- though I am, and these days am especially so-- but more on principle. What happened to giving back to the community? Maybe this is what happens when your U.S. Independence Day celebration is sponsored by BP-- that stands for "British Petroleum". Is anyone else finding this at all ironic?

In the end, we didn't finish eating and laughing at VH1's "I Love the 80's" show (Kristin finally had to turn the TV off sometime in the middle of 1987 in order to get the boys off the couch) until almost 9:00, and the show was due to start at 9:25. Needless to say, between the time crunch and the inevitable Houston traffic, we didn't quite make it all the way down by the bayou, and finally we just parked it on the overpass where we were gridlocked, and then dragged the blanket out onto the grassy slope in the middle of the interchange cloverleaf. The oohs and ahs ended a little sooner than expected, however-- we were back in the car and pulling away by 9:45. So much for the much-publicized "30-minute" display. But we all had to agree that it had been a very good Fourth. Fun, relaxing, good food, great friends... and we were back at Kristin's within half an hour of the last sparks fading out of the sky. Who can beat that?

Kristin's 15-year-old brother was in town last week, and plans were in the works to go bowling on one of his last days here. The outing was never realised, and I can't say I'm too disappointed. The thought of trying to bowl left-handed with a six-pound ball (in which the finger holes would inevitably be too small) was not exactly thrilling-- and my therapists were none too keen on the idea either. Even left-handed.

A couple of friends from college are driving down on Thursday, and so it looks like I may have plans for the Fourth after all. My observances of the past few years have been decidedly dim-- two of the three weren't even in the country (not that I'm complaining)-- and the idea of grilling and shooting off a few fireworks with a small group of friends is very appealing. There's discussion of going downtown or out to Galveston, but I think I'd rather avoid the crowds.

Immobility breeds immobility. I know this well. And yet at some point it becomes far easier (in the short-term) to slog mindlessly along rather than make the effort to drag myself out of this morass of stupefying inertia.

And that pretty much sums up the past several days of my life.

This seems to be a lamentably easy state of affairs to achieve (if "achieve" is at all the appropriate word to describe such a slimy and slippery descent into lethargic hell) when one is living with one's parents.

Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to see clearly enough to move forward.
Right now I'm just trying to figure out which direction forward might be.

But the week I spent in Oklahoma was a good start. As the second installment in the "Prove I Really Am Alive" tour, it was quite a success. (A couple of my friends think that we should print up t-shirts: Sarah Potter, Alive and Kickin' in 2003. Have one of my more spectacular x-rays screenprinted onto the back of the shirt. Bring in some bands to do benefit concerts.) And being there and talking with people softened the horrible aimlessness and fear of the future that confronts me every day. There are desirable possibilities. Many of them. Or several, at least.

Time spent in the orthopedic surgeon's waiting room is always a good chance to regain some perspective. By this point I look fairly normal-- I can sit in a chair for more than a few minutes without looking (and feeling) extremely uncomfortable-- and so I almost feel like a fake, needlessly consuming time and space in a place where the real injured bring their pain to the altar in hopes of being healed. Of course, a simple reach with my right arm for a magazine on the table next to me, or the recollection of that painful twist in my upper arm resulting from attempting to steer with both hands while in the parking lot, is enough to reassure me that I too have the unwelcome and unrequested right to be here.

Still-- I have no cast or bandage or wheelchair, and my bright pink scars are concealed beneath my clothing. What do these others-- the "real injured"-- think as they see me sitting here, apparently whole and healthy?
Suck it up. You're not that bad off. Clearly.

But I left Egypt because of this, a selfish inner voice protests. I have tragedy too.

Yeah. Well. Suck it up. After this appointment I will get in the car and drive myself to physical therapy. Tomorrow I drive alone to Fort Worth, and then on to Norman on Friday.
It could be worse.

I am in... have been in... the doldrums of recovery. There's my excuse for not posting. It's just been difficult to believe that anyone would care to read dismal postings about the repetitious pettiness of my current existence.

But today, hamd-el-allah (I miss saying that), is a definite improvement over the past week and a half or so. Life doesn't seem quite so drainingly bleak as it has most often lately. The prospect of my trip to Norman this weekend contributes to that, I'm sure.

I think I'm finally regaining a bit of my late-night self. Getting back to more of a normal (for me, at least) sleep shedule at last. The slight down-side to this is that I have to get up every morning at 6:20 to take my mother to work. But then that leaves me the perfect excuse for an afternoon nap.

I'm really beginning to miss my meals of Egyptian rice and cucumber-and-tomato salad. So I decided to indulge in some late-night grocery shopping. Gd bless 24-hour grocery stores. That's something I really do love about the U.S.

I've had a surprisingly social past week. Surprising, because other than my immediate family the only person here whom I really know is Kristin. But a friend from college was in town last week to visit his parents, and beginning with my birthday last Tuesday I seemed to acquire quite the social life. It was nice. Gave me some interaction outside the house (besides physical therapy) to look forward to.

I miss speaking Arabic. I have the name of a woman who works with an ESL program in the area, and rumour is that my Arabic skills could be put to use. Now that I've worked out medical arrangements and started a fairly regular therapy schedule, I'm hoping to find out more about helping with that.

People here are very interested in where I've been living for the past many months. Interested on their terms, that is. They ask a lot of questions, most of which seem not quite relevant to my life there, thus making them very difficult to answer.
I try not to get into political discussions.

Things here are familiar, but the familiarity seems to be a bit out of focus. I haven't yet had any major heart problems over seeing people wear shorts in public-- in fact, I've worn them myself once or twice already. Nor has seeing the large houses and lawns and cars and the general extravagance of this enclave of self-satisfied Suburbia caused me any more stress than previously. I think I'm compartmentalizing all that. It simply is different. Doesn't even go under the same heading as where I lived for the past eight months. Still, there is a part of me that wonders at all these things. But it is a detached wonder.
A lot of things seem detached these days.

Kristin came over last night to help me rearrange some books. I walked into my room last Wednesday afternoon and was floored by the number of books on the shelves. I'd forgotten. My mother, bless her, unpacked them all for me sometime last fall. They're in a bit of a disarray (somehow Pascal's Pensees ended up in the middle of the linguistics section; I found Norman Mailer's The Gospel According to the Son rubbing shoulders with various Bibles and holy books-- there's definite humour in that), but it's good just to see them all. Like greeting old friends.

_________________________________________________
Written Tuesday, 6 May 2003:
Eight months ago this evening I arrived in this country. Tonight I leave it.
There is an irony in the precision of that timing that makes me smile. And as a small bonus-- one month ago today, seven months after I came here, was my surgery.

Goodbyes have been said. Bags packed. Finances settled (insha-allah). And in slightly less than 24 hours I should be in Houston.

I don't know that there's anything else to say at this point.
_________________________________________________

And now I am actually here. In Houston. At least I think I'm here. That doesn't seem quite possible. I think I'm still reeling. It could take me quite some time to sort through this past month. So much has happened and changed.

A couple good points of being here: I have a stereo. No more Metallica eeked out through headphones. And the toilet paper is very soft.

One-handed typing is extremely frustrating. But I'm going to try to start posting again. A little bit at a time.

Major accomplishment of the day: I wore a shirt with both arms actually in the sleeves. Versus the one-armed humped style I've been favouring recently.
Tomorrow's excitement: my staples and stitches are supposed to come out.

I'm sitting here wrapped in an afghan and holding my computer on my lap, which means that all of me is warm and snuggly and comfortable... except my feet, which seem to have morphed into the usual and banal blocks of ice. I could go put on other pair of socks, but I'm either too lazy or too stubborn-- I'm not sure which right now.

I've been sick of hearing about the war since the second or third day of it, so all I'm going to say about that is that life here is proceeding pretty much as normal. I'm not allowed to go into certain neighborhoods, and unfortunately all of my local friends live in those areas, but other than that things have already settled back into the former schedule of classes and lessons and meetings.

The other day I was looking back over some of my posts from the last few months, and I realised that for quite some time now I have no longer felt I can write about anything beyond the most superficial levels of my life. I don't like that. I'll have to think what I can do about it.

Someone called during my lesson this morning to let me know it was okay to go out and buy food. That's what I was told. My rather liberal interpretation of that permission allowed me to make the few minutes' walk up to look at the sea-- which I hadn't seen at all since last Monday. Everything seemed very normal, and the people with whom I spoke were as friendly as ever. No problems.

For at least two months now it has been a part of my morning ritual to check the news to see if war has begun while I slept. After so much time, this morning's news that the attacks had finally started seemed almost surreal. And those moments of trying to assimilate the news seem several days away now. Per instructions and warnings, I haven't been outside much over the past two days, but today was the first day of actually being unable to leave my building. From my balcony I could see the sun shining and the girls in the school across the street going to and from their classes, and I could hear the shouts of the vegetable hawkers and imbuba suppliers rise from the street below. Everything seemed perfectly normal. I did hear on the news tonight that there were some protests and demonstrations today in a few cities here. One in the capital ended in violence when the riot police came to break it up. The real test is tomorrow, when everyone gathers at the mosques for the holy day.

Still, everything seems very calm, and I expect to be able to go out again in a couple of days.

It's difficult to believe that it's been nearly two weeks since I last posted. It doesn't seem that long at all. But I look back over those days and realise that I really have been rather busy... which has been a good thing. Besides the continuing language study (and these days I actually have homework too), I've been out visiting, and in this country a short visit is a mere five hours long. A couple of weeks ago I met two girls (who are actually women, since they're married, and that's the dividing line in this culture) while I was out searching for yarn, and since then I've gotten to meet their family... lots of family.

An interesting difference I've found here: in the US, the more "country" people are, the slower they speak. Here, the more "country" people are, the faster they speak. This family speaks Arabic with the speed of an experienced auctioneer with a well-oiled jaw. And, as I told someone else, "they don't speak a lick of English."
Speaking of country.

Which law of physics is it which states that, given that I have a desire to catch a taxi, as I approach the street but before I am within hailing distance I will see at least three empty taxis fly by, but as soon as I arrive at the corner there might as well be a tumbleweed blowing across the road while a steel guitar moans from somewhere off stage left? Or, alternatively, there are still taxis rushing by-- but all are occupied. Tonight I stood on the seaside road for nearly five minutes, clutching my several bags of groceries et al. and squinting to see through the sandstorm that had arisen while I was inside, only to watch dismally as taxi after taxi flashed by, transporting those luckier than I to their desired destinations.

And then, of course, there's the lesser known but equally frustrating natural law which states that all taxi drivers except mine will disregard one-way street signs. Apparently each one gains some sort of instant law-abiding conscience as soon as I climb into the taxi. My building is hidden within a warren of supposedly one-way streets and confusing switch-backs and dead-end roads. Tonight I discovered that yet another street that I had formerly assumed ran in both directions (since traffic flow on it had always seemed to indicate such) is in fact officially one-way-- in the opposite direction from which we needed to go, of course. That's another inevitability. One-way streets always run in whatever direction is most inconvenient at that particular moment.

I'm back home again after another quick trip. The birthday party last night was a great deal of fun-- food, presents, and music. And music is inevitably accompanied by dancing. One of the American girls had recently acquired a drum in a village she visited, and so they passed around the drum and took turns playing, with everyone else joining in singing. (Everyone, that is, except the ignorant Americans who didn't know the words.) That led to the inevitable dancing (which always makes me think that it's no wonder they make the women cover)-- and then after a while someone decided it was time for the "English dance". [warning: the following may expose generation gaps] Evidently, at a party a few weeks ago (which I unfortunately missed), the girls had asked to learn an American dance, so Brandi and Melissa taught them the Electric Slide. But that wasn't what they really wanted-- as one of them put it, they wanted to dance like people dance on television. So Brandi put in her Skillet CD (that's a band) and they started moshing. (If you don't know what that is, think rock concert, right in front of the stage. Better yet, talk to someone my age (or my father); they can explain it to you. Ask them to demonstrate.) I spent most of the first song doubled over in the floor laughing. The whole idea of it-- being in this country, with friends from another, neighboring country, having a birthday party, moshing to Skillet-- was simply too much for me. Eventually the first attack of hilarity passed and our "mosh pit" really got going. We even convinced the mom and the aunt to join in for a few minutes. The neighbors probably thought we were tearing the apartment apart. In the States they would have called the police.

I meant to be in bed about an hour ago, but then I picked up the guitar.... I have class in the morning, and after last night's excitement and late bedtime, I'd better try to get a decent amount of rest tonight.

My visits with old friends were wonderful-- it was very refreshing to see them again and to know that some sort of impact has been made through my living here thus far. Two of them have birthdays this week (they're sisters), and since I have to be back in town for a meeting Friday morning anyhow, the birthday party will be on Thursday night so I can be there. And hopefully sometime in the next couple weeks they'll be able to come visit me here.

I spent Saturday afternoon with my former grammar tutor and her family. She traveled to the States back in mid-November-- actually, my last lesson with her was the day I found out I was being reassigned, but at the time I didn't really know yet whether I would be moving and was having trouble processing the news anyhow... so she didn't know I'd moved until she came back in January. Amazing what can happen in two months. By that point I was already feeling settled in here.

I finally started school yesterday. It's a small school (there aren't a lot of serious independent students of Arabic in this city), so there will be only one other woman in my colloquial class, and my classical Arabic lessons will be on my own. So it should still be all pretty much at a pace I set-- but I also really think that the added structure will help me catch up a bit after the time I've lost over the past couple months.
And I always think it's exciting to get new books.

I went with some people today to visit a friend who lives in a small town not too far from this city. Our trip there and back required multiple taxis and micro-buses-- that was a cultural experience in itself. Definitely an exciting way to travel. Never a dull moment. Most of our visit was spent in preparing food, most of the rest of the time in eating that food, and the last bit in walking on the beach. It's difficult to imagine a better agenda for a visit. The turquoise blue of the sea today was so intense it looked as though the water had been dyed. Who knew that water really could be that color?

I travel tomorrow to visit some old friends that I haven't seen since our Christmas party the day before I moved here. That makes it two months, almost exactly-- I'm excited to be able to see them again.

Much silence of late. I have no explanations to give.

I realised the other day that my time before moving to this city seems as though it was only a short time of transition and preparation for living here-- odd, since when I came to this country I had no thought of living anywhere but there, at least for quite some time. But life now, since moving just before Christmas, feels much more settled and normal and real. Even with the ongoing language learning limbo (though I did have another meeting with the school director this morning-- insha-allah, next week...) and my difficulties in meeting people here. For some reason I can more readily believe that I live here, that this is my home. Perhaps that's mostly a result of having lived in this country for nearly six months now. A natural adjustment to the total length of time, rather than a consequence of any differences between this residence and my former abode.

Things continue to feel very much the same out on the streets. Maybe sometimes people are a little more emphatically friendly, as if they're trying to make a particular point or overcome a suspected assumption by the force of their welcome. My watching of the news has rather noticably decreased. I'm still interested, I still know want to know what's happening, but the daily contrast between the ominous harbingers of war and the pleasant hospitality of the people here was causing undesirable schisms in my thought life.
Life makes slightly more sense this way.