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 Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 6:57 am
"Good." Parisa smiled. "Darya sleeps like nothing I know but I was worried about you."
Smiling as Obie watched her she crossed into the kitchen and took some bowls down for her Aunt.
"Do you like the colour?" She asked Obie, interested in her aproval. "My grandmother does not like my wearing such colours. But in London girls wear this, and designer lables. What do you think?"
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:05 am
Obie blinked a little in surprise when Risa asked her for her opinion on the brightly colored headscarf, then smiled.
"I like it a lot. That color looks really nice on you. I don't think I would be able to pull it off, but looks really pretty on you," she smiled and walked a little closer to the two women to see if there was anything more she could do.
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:15 am
"Thank you." Risa said bouncing a little and holding the bowls out for Lahleh to ladle in the sweet porridge. "You can tryu later if you want?" She asked with a smile.
Lahleh laughed.
"You can scare Ra and pretend you have converted." she said with a wink as she ladled the porridge. "O.k. Obsidian, help me carry these in and Risa, go and shout them all down for breakfast."
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:22 am
"Sure," she replied with a bright smile and small shrug at Risa's offer. She turned her eyes to Lahleh and laughed at her comment. Still laughing a little, she picked up a couple of bowls and carried them into the dining room. After a few trips back and forth, they got the table set just as the first people started trailing in.
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:34 am
After breakfast Lahleh beckoned Obie over to sit on the sofa with her. The rest of the family were out in the garden again as it was yet another pleasant day.
"I promised I would show you something last night." She said opening one of the cupboards and taking a large album out. "I think now, as Ra is out, I can play the proud mother and show you all the photos of him growing up." She gave Obie a conspirital smirk and sat on the sofa.
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:47 am
Obie watched Lahleh and grinned at the smirk she was given. Settling back comfortably into the sofa, she looked at the album with interest. She had one album, compared to her sister's many, and it was comprised mostly of school photos and pictures of her and her sister together, not many of her alone.
"Is it true that you can remember the last time he smiled like he did last night?" she asked, keeping her eyes on the album for a moment, before looking up at Lahleh with a small smile. She was intensely curious about his life before they met, and though he spoke freely on most things, there were just some thing that needed to be told by other people.
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:00 am
Lahleh nodded and smiled.
"I don't look at this very often" She said tracing a finger over the designs. "Some of it is ... hard to remember but I want you to see. He was such a happy child, then it stopped. He seems like a new person now."
Smiling she opened the first page of the album.
Ra as a tiny baby, maybe only a few days or weeks old.
"See how small he was." She said pointing to the pictures of him being held by several of his relatives. "This is a special ceremony for boys. Circumcision. Just like in Judaism. This was at his father's parents house. They live in the country and I gave birth to Ra-ne in Tehran. I had to travel all the way to their house for this when all I wanted to do was sleep." She smiled and pointed to a picture of her holding baby Ra. "See I look like the back end of a bus."
Turning the page she smiled and pointed to a picture of Ra aged one, sat with a girl of around five and a woman.
"This is Parisa's mother and sister." She said looking down at the beautiful woman. "Has he told you much about them? About what happened?"
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:13 am
Obie watched Lahleh carefully and swallowed a little before looking back down at the album as she opened it. He was such a gorgeous baby, she thought as she smiled and laughed at Lahleh's comments. When she turned the page, Obie looked at the photo she pointed to and then up at her as she shook her head no.
"About the earthquake?" she questioned and looked back down at the photo. She could remember a faded memory of him talking a little about it, seeing the fear in his eyes, but she had never pushed him to explain what had happened in detail. "No. We really have not talked about it. I know that those are painful memories for him, and I would rather see him smile," she replied with a small smile as she turned her blue eyes back up to Lahleh.
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:29 am
Lahleh nodded and smiled.
"I know what you mean, which is why we do not really look at this album." She smiled down at the faded picture again.
"Parisa's mother, and her two sister's died in the earthquake. It is strange. Risa was a baby, only a couple of months old. She wouldn't settle and her father was going to visit his parents who lived an hour or so away. So he took her to try and make her sleep. Whilst they were out, it happened. They came back to no house and no family."
She took a deep breath and smiled at Obie.
"They think Ra was in the kitchen with them, His aunt was cooking. He was found close to her body. All thanks to his loud mouth." Swallowing she turned the page. Ra in a hospital bed, asleep and bandaged almost head to toe. "Can you imagine? My husband and I were in America in business and we came back to this." She paused for a couple of moments, the memories still painful nearly eighteen years later. "I felt like the worst mother in the world. They found him because he was crying for me and I wasn't there for him."
She blinked a tear away and ran her fingers over the picture.
"He was so, so lucky."
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:43 am
Obie watched Lahleh carefully as she spoke and returned her smile with an encouraging one as she turned the page. Obie looked down and had to swallow hard at the pictures of Ra in the hospital. She had seen his scars. Had traced them and kissed them many times over, but these photos and his mother's voice made his trauma real to her. She looked back up at Lahleh, her own eyes a little teary. When she finished speaking, Obie didn't think twice about what she did next. Leaning over, she wrapped her arms around her and gave her firm hug. When she pulled away, she had managed to regain a semblance of control again and gave Lahleh another warm smile.
"Trust me, you are far from being the worst mother," she said softly and looked back down at the photos. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to have Ra with her so she could wrap her arms around him and just hold him, but she settled for a deep breath and small smile for Lahleh. "There's no way you could have known."
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:56 am
Laleh smiled as Obie hugged her and stroked the girl's hair in a maternal fashion.
"It is not all sad." She said with a half smile. The next photo was once her favourite, but was now painful for other reasons. She turned the page. It was a large picture, taking up most of the page.
The picture was of Ra, still bandaged sitting on the lap of a man who was unmistakably his father, grey eyes the same as Ra's own. They were looking at a book and both of them were laughing. Ra pointing to a picture.
Lahleh smiled.
"In America, my husband brought a book for Ra. I think it was Doctor Seuss, or something. Here, he was reading it to him. Ra-ne loved that book. Even though he could not understand it he used to make up the stories to the strange pictures." She smiled at Obie. "This is one of the last times I saw him smile like he did last night. Before his nightmares started. He was always a happy child, but there was always something there, some darkness. Now, I think it is gone."
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 9:12 am
Obie stared down at the picture as she listened and again felt sad. He was so young. So young and that had been the last time he had genuinely smiled. Smiing though, she looked back up at Lahleh.
"I think you might be right," she smiled softly. "I can remember when he came to visit me in Greece earlier this year. The first thing I noticed when he walked through the gate at the airport was his smile. From the time I had met him, I don't think I had ever seen him smile like that," she smiled at the memory.
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 9:28 am
"Because you put that smile on his face." She said with a broad smile. "I wanted you to know that." She turned the next few pages, many were Ra in hospital at various stages through his childhood. His first day at school, various birthdays.
"I do not think even Parvaiz can argue with that." She smirked, looking at a picture of the three of them in Palestine when Ra was about eight or nine.
"He'd like you I think." She said with a smile. "I mean the real him, not this ... idiot his mother's guilt has made him into."
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 9:38 am
Obie smirked a little at that. That wasn't quite what she had meant about the smile she had seen on his face that day. That hadn't had anything to do with her. It was from his newfound freedom and self reliance, but it was sweet of Lahleh to think that. She watched the photos as they flipped by and looked up at the mention of his father. She smiled when she said that she thought he would like her, then smirked a little at her next statement.
"Why did he let her change him?" she asked without thinking, then blushed a little when she realized she had asked the question aloud. "Sorry. You don't have to answer that," she smiled a bit sheepishly.
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Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 9:53 am
Lahleh blinked at Obie's frankness and smiled.
"I don't know." She said looking from the picture of her husband ... ex husband and back to Obie. "He never used to care." She gave a small snort of laughter. "He married me and his mother hates me. Though once Ra got older she layed claim to him, my son. He was going to move to their town, he was going to take over the family business. She lays a lot of guilt on him, because both her and his father are old and Ra is the only male child."
She wrinkled her nose in distaste.
"It's rediculous. And at the end of the day she made him choose."
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