Journal of Single Gal in Q8 - Episode Six

From last episode

"Their telephone conversation was coming to an end and he told her that he'd call her later. She needed her brain to stop over analyzing. She had to stop thinking about this particular subject. She needed some fresh air. She finally picked up the phone once again and dialed the number from the business card. This time there was no recording, it rang twice and she finally heard a voice saying "hello"....

"Is this Basil?" she asked."

It didn't take long for her to freeze after she spoke the words. What the hell was she doing? Why was she being so stupid? This was a new term for brain freeze! She'd lost all senses and her brain had turned to mush!

She heard him say "Yes, this is Basil," he sounded irritated, under pressured and above all an expatriate? Great! That's all she needed. An over worked, underpaid, unappreciated victim of fate. She always sympathized with the expatriate but still as hard as it was these were the rules "take it or leave it" and they knew that before they came here.

She understood what they meant when they spoke about the unfairness as businessmen to get 49% of the profit while the Kuwaitis got the 51% even though he "never came to the office". She also understood that the minute the Kuwaiti "partner" felt he wasn't happy with him he'd threaten to "kick him out of the country" and the feeling of insecurity was actually a way of life for them. She often tried to explain that "these were the rules" and living in this negativity only made their lives worse. She couldn't walk around feeling guilty for them, it was enough carrying Kuwait's issues than to have to carry the expatriate too. No. She definitely didn't need another expatriate in her life. The negativity of it all would kill her.

Finally she said "I'm sorry, I think I have the wrong number." What a genius, she thought to herself, you just asked if he was Basil and he said yes! She slapped her forehead and pretended to shoot herself. She needed to end this embarrassment and said "I'm really sorry, good bye".

What was the matter with her, she asked herself. According to the books, women with relationship problems had to have something related to her past. Maybe she needed to take a trip down memory lane. All the way back to her first love or did they call it Puppy Love?

She was thirteen when she'd first met her first love standing by his dirt bike outside her school. A Desert boy with hair and skin kissed by the sun and piercing eyes to make Omar Sharif blush. He was the equivalent of a Kuwaiti James Dean. Very different from the boys in her class. He was intriguing.

She remembered how she'd be attending her last class in school when she'd hear the sound of his dirt bike and her heart would skip a beat. As soon as the bell would ring, she'd rush outside wearing her school uniform and stand in the parking lot carrying her school bag as she admired his dirt bike. The dirty looks that the boys from her class would give her, only made her want him more. She knew what they thought. Why is she talking to the bad boy? He was a TK (typical Kuwaiti)! A Bedouin on a dirt bike. They didn't realize that the fact that he was different than them was what she liked about him. He attended local schools and his attitude was unique. He wasn't just another classmate from school.

It wasn't long when she'd finally had the courage to talk to him and they started their innocent relationship. They expressed their feelings to each other and a few months later, the most amazing thing happened. He grabbed his pen knife and carved her name on his wrist. It was a moment in time that she'd treasure for life.

Slowly, she began to have a stronger appreciation to the more traditional things around her. There she was in foreign schools being "cool" when all of a sudden, there he was teaching her about Gulf music while she'd been busy listening to Michael Jackson. Her love for Arabic music, Arabic poetry, Arabic perfume, henna, bakhour (incense), bird hunting in the desert, fishing in the Gulf, farming in Wafra, the taste of old Kuwait grew even stronger as she saw it through his eyes. She knew he'd done her a favor. He had turned her into a love of tradition and she liked that. He even teased her about her baby handwriting in Arabic and he showed her the beauty of his Arabic handwriting. It was all amazing.


The difficult part was finding places to meet him other than outside the school. Being a teenager without a car, the only way she was able to see him was at school parties. Her friends and classmates always looked at them as the weird couple. He would stand in the corner looking like the odd one out. He didn't dress like the boys from school and he'd huff and puff when they'd come over to her and kiss her hello. He couldn't understand that this was normal for kids from foreign school, try as she may, he just wouldn't see her point of view. They would argue.

"You think they look at you like you're their sister or like you're one of the boys," he'd say "but you're wrong. I'm a guy and I know how boys think. Even if they go to foreign schools. Boys will be boys." She would notice the pumping of his vein on his temple.

"It's not like that" she'd say defensively. "We've all been brought up together since kindergarten. You wouldn't understand unless you grew up that way too." In the end, he always ended up going home upset with her.

Somewhere in the middle things began to change. From the local kid that used to play with marbles in the neighborhood suddenly emerged a new side of him. His clothes began to change and he was slowly looking like her classmates. Soon, it was her standing in the corner as she watched the girls roam around him and make him smile. While she began to hate parties and find them boring he was now never wanting to miss one. He told her "What else is there to do in Kuwait?" How did the local boy suddenly turn into the playboy of the year? She couldn't comprehend.

The girls in her school now found an interest in him and the games they wanted to play didn't include her. As any young boy with high hormones, his interests changed from love to lust. The foreign girls could play games with him that she couldn't play. His infatuation with the traditional love of his life had now turned old fashioned. It was his turn to try to convince her to me more open minded. She knew then that she could never compete with the foreign girls. They were offering things that she couldn't deliver.

The irony began to sink in and she realized that she had created a monster. She'd shown him a world in Kuwait that he was innocent to and now there was no stopping him. He began to party hard, drink and smoke. Whatever happened to the boy next door she just couldn't understand. Her part was over.

In the end, he'd called one night after another party that she'd advised him not to to go to but he'd gone anyway and told her that he'd been unfaithful. The worse part was when he told her that some of the girls in her class had taken pictures and were planning to show it to her. It was a double stab to her heart and that was her first experience into what a "broken heart" felt like. The bitter sweet taste of love had made her sick and her biggest lesson was to know that her beautiful world could suddenly turn very ugly.

As she looked back at that moment in history, she could still feel the pain that she had felt when she first heard him say that he'd been unfaithful. Though time had healed and they had drifted apart they somehow managed to remain civil to each other. He never married and teased her about their "puppy love". He even confessed that there was no love after a "first love". She would roll her eyes and laugh. She felt nothing towards him except pity. He was a good kid gone bad and she somehow felt responsible for it.

Had this experience of deceit made her so confused about her love life? Was this history the reason why she didn't trust men? Although, she never liked bitter women who bitched about men all day long, even though she had been hurt by them herself, she still insisted that they were all not the same. Her optimistic side never gave up. The only thing that confused her was her wrong choices. Why did she chose someone that ended up hurting her? Was it a lesson she needed to learn? If so, did she learn it? She wasn't sure.

She smiled to herself. There was something nice that came out of her experience with her Puppy Love though and that was her introduction to the traditional things. It was funny. He taught her how to go back to her roots and she, sadly, taught him how to let them go. Something she was not proud of but it was too late. He had become one of the bad boys. He was history. A file stored in her memory cabinet at the back of her brain that she'd forgotten and now reopened for researches sake. Was it a right decision or did she need to remember how men did women wrong?

Back to her future, she recalled these memories as she drove her car after a long and busy day at work. This was always the case. If it was left to her, her busy life didn't require anything. It was only in those minutes by herself in her car that she'd think about the void. The void that she wanted to be filled by a special someone.

As she turned the corner heading home, she could see her old school and had to smile. The parking lot was filled with teenagers standing outside the school. Hard to believe that she was once one of them but it was another time, another life. A chapter closed. She sighed and whispered to herself "I hate growing up!"

Finally, she reached home and noticed a number of cars parked outside her house. "Strange," she thought, her mother hadn't told her that they were expecting any guests. What was going on and why did she feel nervous? "God, please don't ask me for something that I don't have the capacity to handle" she said to herself as
she entered the house.

To be continued...