The Middle East Remembered
by Marjorie Abrahamian Sa'adah

When our over-loaded boat reached the Syrian coastline, I was about six... I still distinctly recall the sensation of a happy surprise, the tingling of my skin with excitement as we came closer and closer to that sunny shore, covered with green orchards and groves, dotted with modest brick houses with open doors. Children darted in and out, to disappear into the shade of orchards. Grown-ups also moved around filling baskets, presumably with fruit picked from trees still strange to me; they then balanced those baskets on their heads and carried them away... They all moved so calmly, so freely, without furtively scanning the area around them for supervisors or gendarmes, that they baffled us. So different, so unfamiliar was this atmosphere of freedom from the somber, fearful one we had just left behind in Turkey, where for years we had spoken in whispers and made ourselves invisible lest we attract attention and anger, that we stood bewildered, transfixed and silent on the ship's deck while our orders kept on reminding us over and over again that we were now in a new country we need not fear any longer, that we could talk and shout as we pleased. [READ MORE]