"who's mom talking to?" my little sister Fatmeh asked me while holding my hand, "I don’t know maybe he's just a friend" we looked at my mom speaking Arabic and we couldn’t understand anything, yes we are muslims but we don’t speak Arabic we were raised in America so we never leanred Arabic, we came to Jordan to live with my uncle Ahmad and with his wife and daughters, they all lived in a big house with my other uncle Sharaf and his wife and daughter, they also lived with my grandmother they all lived in one big house and now so were we, I had to say good bye to my dad in America he stayed there because he had a better job there and mom left to Jordan because she wanted me and sisters to live between muslims and to raise us as muslims in a muslim community, at first I didn’t really like Jordan but after time it grew on me and I began to like it here, the guy that was talking to my mom was her brother Ahmad, my mom was crying but I didn’t know why but now I do she missed him a lot she hadn’t seen her family in years, uncle Ahmad took us to his house in his car and when I first saw where we were living I saw that there was a KFC restaurant I thought "wow maybe we can eat here every day!" I always loved food I ate too much but I never gained weight until I was eighteen I was always small and tiny nothing ever fit me so my mom had to sew my clothes and make them smaller I miss my old body I was so thin!.
When I first stepped a foot in the house I saw my mom kissing my grandmothers hand and crying like I said she hasn’t seen them in years, when we first got there my mom opened mine and Fatmeh's toy box and she called her brothers daughters to come play with us, when we were young we had a lot of toys my dad always bought me what I wanted and he did the same with Fatmeh, "Deema, Fatmeh be nice to them ok share your toys" "ok mom" me and Fatmeh said together then we went to play with my uncles daughters, they really liked our barbies so we gave them some of them, my mom has always taught me and Fatmeh to be nice with others thank god for that she's a great mother, the best actually, after playing with them the day became night and we had to go to bed, me and Fatmeh had two night gowns each so we wore one of them and went to bed but then my uncles daughters (my cousins) wanted to dress like us so we gave them one of our night gowns I wasn’t mad or anything I liked them a lot and I like being nice and all the thanks goes to my mom for raising me and my sisters this way.
Days passed by so fast and days became months and months became years, when I first came to Jordan I was only six years old but then I turned eight and by the time I was eight I learned how to speak Arabic and I understood what people were saying, me and Fatmeh and my cousins became friends we were inseparable.
I remember the first time I went to the dead sea, I thought it was like any other ocean I didn’t know that it was really salty so when I first got there me and Fatmeh jumped in like crazy people wanting to swim we've always liked swimming, and when I got in the dead sea my eyes and my whole body was burning I felt like I was on fire my skin burned me so much so my uncle Ahmad took me and Fatmeh to a place where there was sweet water, we washed off then went home.
After years of living with my uncles and grandmother my mom found a place of her own it was a two bedroom house, mom was in one bedroom and me and my sisters Fatmeh and Rawan were in the other, I didn’t want to move out I wanted to stay with my cousins they still visited us and we still visited them but it wasn’t the same waking up in the morning and eating breakfast with them knowing that you would spend the whole day with them.
I remember the only thing I loved about our new home was that there was a pizza restaurant near our house so we always ordered pizza, there even was a CD store near by so I always went walking to that store and I bought a lot of DVD movies and a few music CDs, after a while I made a friend with our next door neighbor her name was Shahed we played all the time with her and her little brothers Fahed and Mohammad.
Years passed by and I turned thirteen when we moved to another house my mom liked, I was kinda excited to move out of that neighbor hood it was kinda boring, when we first moved to our new house I saw our neighbor it was a boy, a boy named Mohannad when I first saw him I knew we were going to be best friends and we did become best friends we always played this video game on my computer called (GTA: vice city) we were obsessed with that game, every day we played that game over and over again it never got boring but then Fatmeh accidently deleted the game off of my computer and we couldn’t find the CD and every time we went to a CD store we never found that game ever again, just our luck I guess.
As me and mohannad grew together we became best friends and then in the future I began to like him more than a friend I fell in love with him.
I remember when my feelings changed for Mohannad from a best friend to a crush, i was fifteen when I knew I was in love with him I liked being with him but then I found out that he didn’t like me he liked Fatmeh.
I never told anyone I liked Mohannad before not a soul, I wasn’t jealous of Fatmeh or anything actually I got over him easily it wasn’t love it was just a crush.
After I turned seventeen my older sister Rawan got married and after a year of marriage she had a baby boy named Omar and in the future she had another baby girl named Samar I really liked my niece and nephew they were so adorable I liked playing with them.
When I turned nineteen Mohannad asked Fatmeh to marry him and she said yes by the time he asked her to marry her I was so over him I just liked him as a friend and only a friend.
After both of my sisters got married I lived alone with my mom and my only friend Mohannad had moved to another house with my sister so I felt lonely I didn’t have anyone to spend my time with not my sisters, not my cousins, not Shahed and not even Mohannad I Was completely alone and that’s when I found a hobbie to make me busy I started making friendship bracelets I really liked making them and I was really good at it I even learned how to write names and stuff on bracelets I even did smiley faces and signs and a lot of stuff, when my mom saw how skilled I was with bracelets she gave me an idea. She told me to sell them and that’s how I started a business.
At first I would sell them while I was in college then one of my costumers told me that her sister owned an accessories store and she offered me to sell my bracelets at her sisters store, I was thrilled! I never thought I would make a huge success, I started working there as an employee in an accessories store in a mall and making bracelets and selling them.
I was sitting in the accessories store waiting for a customer to come in when suddenly I saw a man walk in I got up from my chair and asked "hi there can I help you?" "yes can you make me a bracelet for my sister, I want her name on it her name is Farah and please make the bracelet pink and purple ok?" "ok I'll get started on it it should take me a half an hour, you could wait here or you could come back later" "I'll go and come back in a half an hour" "as you wish", he left and I began making the bracelet and I finished quickly and as soon as he came back he bought the bracelet and left, I couldn’t help but think how handsome he was I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
The next day I was taking a break from working it was my break time, I was sitting in the food court drinking a banana and orange smoothie when suddenly I heard a man say "excuse me, are you the girl that makes bracelets?" "I'm on break now come back later" I said and I didn’t even look at him I didn’t know who he was, "I just wanted to thank you for making such a beautiful bracelet thank you so much" I looked up and saw that it was the handsome customer I saw yesterday , I smiled and said "you're welcome I'm glad she liked it" "I have to go now bye and again thank you" "it was my pleasure" and that was how I met my husband, after a while of seeing him a lot we sort of became friends and then from friends to a couple and as the years passed by I became twenty seven and then that was the year that Hamzeh (the handsome customer) asked me to marry him, I never thought that I would get married but when he asked me to marry him I was so happy that tears came from my eyes and that was how I found my muslim soul mate.
THE END.
