The Correspondent: A Novel by Virginia Evans - 51

TO: sybilvanantwerp@aol.com

FROM: Mansourebas850@hotmail.com

DATE: May 5, 2018 01:14 AM

SUBJECT: A job for me

Dear Ms. Van Antwerp,

How are you doing? How are your eyes holding up? Are you maintaining correspondence with your biological sister?

Last time we emailed it was early in the year, and I am sorry for the long stretch. We have had a great deal of trouble the last months. Zoha had a seizure in February while she was at school. I was working and Kalee was at a house where she takes care of an elderly man, and unable to leave because I had the car. I left the office where I am working now and rushed to the hospital in San Francisco and she was sedated and intubated. She had fallen and knocked her head, so she had part of her beautiful hair shaved and a terrible sutured incision.

The reason I took the job I was in is because of the health insurance, which is not much, but is better than none at all. Health care in the US is very complex (at Kindred, the insurance was excellent). Zoha was in the hospital for three weeks while they were testing her to understand the origin of the seizure and we came away without the answer, but the doctors are saying it may happen again at any time and there is no way of knowing when or what causes it, plus the very expensive hospital charges.

During this time, Emir was having problems in school. He was having poor grades on tests and having his teachers calling to tell us and he has a few boys who are his friends, but they are troublesome and they lit a small tree in a park on fire one evening when Kalee and I were still at work. He was picked up by the police. The officer was kind and did not log the incident, but of course it was terrible. He cannot do these things. It is very shameful to himself, and to his mother and me, and to other Syrian families we know here. I whipped him and took away his social privileges for three months (this is difficult to enforce when we are at work, however). We brought the children here to shield them from the life we left, to give them this good life in America. I don’t want them to know what we left behind because it is terrible. I am always trying to protect them, every decision is striving to protect them, and yet somehow we are doing things wrong.

This is all very bad news, and yet I have something hopeful to share with you. Dale Woodson interviewed me for the second time, this time with three of his colleagues, and I think he will offer me a job. It felt very good talking to them about the things I know. I remember when you said in an email that when you find a place for yourself in the world, it feels like music, and I thought of that, sitting over the table with Dale Woodson and talking about highway infrastructure. I guess I am a very boring sort of person, but to me highway infrastructure is a symphony.

This email is to tell you thank you, Ms. Van Antwerp, for setting a new course for my life.

With most sincere appreciation and respect,

Basam Mansour