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Come and eat with us!
Taina Maki-Chahal (who has given her express permission to identify her in this blog) blurted these words as Joyce and I approached the house Taina shares in better times with her husband and children. That they are on their way home to her after a dangerous week in Lebanon shows in her face, along with exhaustion and the remnants of fear.
Joyce and I thought to get her a little something, just a token to show we care. We were successful, but weren't even sure she'd be home. As we approached, she looked up, saw us, and spoke.
In her backyard, she and her sister and a family friend had set a table full of food, a celebratory meal for life, for hope realized into happy reality. She invited us spontaneously, we accepted in the same vein.
Over spicy middle Eastern food (the chicken was amazing), she told us how she survived the previous week and a bit.
"It's been a roller coaster!" she exclaimed several times. Awakened at 5:30 that morning by her husband phoning from Cyprus, she felt at last able to release herself to the fact of their safety. Friends and family, and most notably fellow Lebanese-connected friends, had acted as a support for her throughout the time.
"I want people to know the story," she said at one point. "Not just what's on the media--the real story."
We ate. We drank. We talked. Mostly, Joyce and I listened. Sometimes, silence is the best response to miracle, and joy. Toward the end, she remembered the gift and insisted on opening it then and there.
It's a candle holder, shaped like a small pot hollowed out to hold a tea light. There's a lid for between-times. The surface was written on in a flowing script, the words coming from 1 Corinthians 13, describing love as enduring and bearing all things, and more. It was Taina's turn to be silent.
We left shortly afterward, beneath a sonic canopy of birds who had chirped and squabbled and flitted about us as we ate. We also remembered Taina's own response to good news: she had got up, thrown on some clothes, and brought out "something special" for the birds in their back yard early that morning, sharing her good fortune with someone, fellow living creatures, as soon as she could.
2 Comments:
You seem to live in an interesting community -- coop housing, lovely scenery, intriguing friends, unusual job.
This is a lovely post. I'm so very glad that Taina's family is safe and on their way home. I continue to pray for those who are still in the Middle East trying to get home.
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