The Chinese girl

She wasn't like all women I had ever met; her black hair was like the summer night, her dark eyes were like the forest in a rainy day, with long eyelashes like the wings of a dragon, if she smiled she could kill a thousand brave knights, if she spoke she could bring them back to life, she was whole like the tree, evergreen and tall, the sky was her home, and the ocean her bed.

I never planned to meet her, it was kind of serendipity, the first time I met her was in a local film festival, she attended as part of the Chinese Embassy representatives, she was introduced to me as the translator of the Ambassador.

I started talking to her, drawn to her because of her sincerity, and innocence, I enjoyed listening to her, she was speaking English all the time and some strange words, although I didn't know any Chinese, it sounded like Chinese to me, she told me how much she wanted to visit historical places in Jordan, I offered her my services, and she hesitantly accepted, she seemed happy, then suddenly she looked like someone who was sailing in the Chinese ocean, with a wrecked ship, expecting the unexpected.

It was Saturday, I waited for her for an hour, I might be the one, who came one hour earlier, and finally she came, I took her to Petra, but she didn't enjoyed it much, she always seemed drifted away, I tried to make her happy, but she seemed sad, after the long day I promised to take her to visit Jerash, but to my surprise she asked me if she could visit Jabal Amman, I asked her to make sure if I had heard what she was trying to say, "excuse me!" I asked, she asked again, Jabal Amman, but it's not a historical place, I said, she said that she knew what she wanted, so I took her there, she was looking for something there, we were both in the car, moving around the place, knowing nothing about where we were heading, or what we were looking for, like we lost our memories, I stopped the car, and asked her, where exactly she wanted to go, she said that she didn't know, something weird was happening there, what was I doing there?, in the middle of nowhere, with someone I don't know, I didn't know what to do.

She began crying, I tried to calm her down, but she couldn't stop, she suddenly became a woman who was crying without being able to control herself, I told her that I knew the place she wanted to see, I was lying, but I had no other choice, I took her to all places I know about in Jabal Amman, she screamed while I was driving in a narrow street, she said be careful there was a little cat in the street, at that moment she told me that she was looking for her parents house, where she used to live a long time ago, at first I couldn't believe her, but when she repeated what she was saying in Arabic, I believed her, but I couldn't believe that she was Jordanian, I told her that she looked Chinese to the bone, she smiled, and said yes, she was a Jordanian, who lived in a Chinese body.

She told me her story; she used to live with her parents in Jabal Amman, but because of her Chinese eyes and look, all people she knew thought she was Chinese, their neighbors, the students at her school, and even the pass byres, all stared at her as she was an alien who came from unknown planet, she hated herself, her mother wished she died before she saw her, she couldn't look at herself in the mirror, since she was a little child she decided to become Chinese, God created her Chinese why would she be something else, from that moment she started the journey to the unknown, she learned Chinese, and successfully had a scholarship to china to study Chinese language at university, she lived all her life a strange in a strange body, when she came home she worked for the Chinese Embassy, and since then she lost her identity, lost who she was, she confessed all that to me, she couldn't bare, but she was still crying.

That was the story of the Chinese girl, who is now the mother of my two children, a daughter and a son, who are also Chinese, but who are not afraid of who they are, or how they look, they have many friends at school, and they like being different.