Letters to Gibran

Chapter 1

I couldn't contain the excitement bubbling through me as I glanced around taking in all that surrounded me. This was going to be my second home for the next five years and I wasn't complaining. The campus proclaimed a mix of its heritage through its antique brick faced walls and high pitched roofs on one side and modern block buildings that towered over you, creating a shadow across the footpaths on the other side of campus. I didn't think I had ever seen a greener lawn quite like the one I was staring at in the quadrangle. What impressed me the most was that the grass was levelled with each other and not a stem was out of place.

Yep! This was the Australian dream.

From my peripheral vision I noticed some commotion to the left and the sounds of hustle and bustle. My stomach sank and my cheeks grew warm from embarrassment when I recognised the loud voices that were carrying out on the main lawn.

"Amira-Rose!"

"Where are you?"

"Oh there she is,"my cousin Rita called out, pointing in my direction.

A few heads turned towards the source of the unfamiliar loudness. Some of these faces displayed some strong expressions of dissapproval as the noises grew louder.

I blinked a couple of times, trying to hold back the tears that were stinging the back of my eyes. "Oh God please don't do this to me here," I cried.

This was the reality of my life. No matter where I went a crowd followed. The crowd I was referring to was my family. When I say family, I wasn't talking about my brothers, sister and my mum and dad. The term family for me was inclusive to my grandparents, my aunties, uncles, their wives and husbands and my cousins.

Growing up within a Lebanese household, I was bound to so many customs that as a child you become conditioned to. One of those customs included always being supportive of one another. The problem was my family tended to take things to a whole other level. Entering university was one of those.

I saw my mother walking towards me with my family trailing a couple of metres behind her.

"Mum, why did you tell them?" I whined, waving my hands towards the group of them who were taking pictures of the buildings.

"What! I only told your Aunty Rachel and your Tayta".

"Mum you do realise that only telling one of them means telling the whole lot of them".

She frowned at me. "Amira-Rose be grateful that you have the support of family. Some people are not that fortunate in their life".

I shook my head as I walked away from her. There was no use arguing with my mother. Nothing would ever be resolved. She was stubborn and I happened to inherit my stubbornness from her. I knew what she was trying to imply when she said, "some people are not that fortunate in their life". My mother came by boat to Australia when she was five, after her village in Egypt was bombed and left in shambles. Her whole family died in those bombs and she had never been back to her home country since, so I did feel for her but I still couldn't comprehend why I needed a crowd on my orientation day. People would call it first world problems but I called it being rational.

After gaining enough distance from my family, I pulled out the map of the campus that I was given upon entering. I was bad with directions but somehow managed to pinpoint my location on the map. I needed to head towards the law library which was down the steps by the main entrance. I could hear my father calling my name and making more of a commotion. Without even turning around I knew what he was calling me for.