By bintarab
Published: December 1, 2008
Updated: March 2, 2010 PrintEmail
Part X: Green
(350 words minus the title)
First Khulud then Munal. Then Mona asked me about it in a tone of just wanting to know. I'tidal figured it was a quirk of Americans, and as she spent the next few months applying to schools in Australia, she wondered if Australians were the same. Anwar decided it came from having grown up in a country where water was so plentiful that they wasted it on growing grass and taking showers every day. One by one, the girls in the dorm who'd seen my room cornered me and expressed concern:
Don't keep those plants in your bedroom-- and so close to your bed! They'll use up all the oxygen and suffocate you while you sleep!
Whatever happened to the rigor of a Jordanian high school education? Had those science and math track students truly learned nothing after four years of biology? At first I tried to explain. Eventually I got tired of the impromptu lessons in photosynthesis that I had to teach over and over again, but how could I find fault with people just trying to look out for me?
Thank you for worrying about me, but no, I'm not in any danger. Yes, I know what I'm doing. Really.
I suppose I got it from my mom, this love of green things. After six months of living in Jordan, I'd finally broken down and bought my first plant. The kid at the flea market got to know me since I bought a new one from him and his grandfather every week after that. The time that I came to their stall after having been out of town for a spell, the boy expressed his disappointment.
"You didn't come last week!"
Ah, green! Surrounded everywhere by the sandy native stone they use for buildings-- the same color of the dirt roads and the dust that dulled the spindles and bark of the ubiquitous pine trees-- my room became a place where I could rest my color-starved eyes. It wasn't until I'd covered every shelf and table surface with a potted plant that I started to feel at home.
