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What is Lost in IsraelIn Israel, Amira lived in a small village that bordered a Muslim area. She played with caution with a boy named Batul. They played together innocently, and Amira’s family rarely cared, but one day Batul’s did. She saw his face, bruised and swollen. He was only 13. BeachesShe had thought they’d truly be “best friends forever.” They were joined-at-the-hip, sentence-finishing best friends, and she couldn’t imagine their relationship ever weakening. She couldn’t imagine that she’d ever be happy without a BFF. She was wrong. Adagio SostenutoThere are some things that you never forget. And the funny thing is that they’re not the major events – graduation, losing your virginity, or buying your first car. No. It’s the little things that stick in your mind, rip you apart inside. For him, all it takes is a piano. My Hidden ShameShe was active in the church and worked with troubled teens and cancer patients. On the surface all appeared to be well as wife, mother, and woman of God. However, there was something hidden that taunted her: She was addicted to telephone sex chat lines. Showdown in Phnom PenhThe bar went silent. A waitress stared at the floor. The kid was sitting directly between a major weapons inspector in Cambodia and a journalist, and the two were about to come to blows. The kid was fighting every urge in his body to scream, “THIS IS SO COOL!” Physician AssistedHe held the letter for a few days before calling Robert. He dreaded putting himself through the emotional turmoil he suspected it would cause. He printed it and kept it on his desk, sensing that this experience might change his life. But he did not sense the extent. You Can’t Leave Home BehindHe was embarrassed. He felt ashamed to have friends over at his house because he didn’t live in a house. Growing up, he lived in a double-wide trailer in Holiday Woods trailer park. Michael’s, a two-story brich house with a yard, allowed them to avoid parents altogether. Fighting at the SurfaceSquinched to the box width the runt arrived, double-cursed, black. Seven newborns, eight teats; a good chance of survival for all. The boy understood he could sit and watch but not touch. “Leave Nature alone,” the old man told him, but he worried for the littlest. Thanksgiving in VietnamIt was 1968. Thanksgiving Day in Vietnam. They were dug in on a ridgeline, close to the Laotian border. There was talk of hot food for the holiday. These rumors gained wide currency in a place where food and sleep were the only obsessions worth having. WaterfallsHer only children developed typically until they were about 15 months, but since then temper tantrums, lack of language and communication, sensory sensitivities, and other manifestations of autism are normal. She doesn’t want pity or trite phrases. She wants answers.  |
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