The Attempt
Touba’s visit made me think about the calling He has on my life. My first impression was that this relationship could never work. Riding together from the airport we were struggling to communicate basic things. My Dari was stronger than her English, which is an indication of how hard things would be, since I have been speaking English all day long every day since I’ve been here (she speaks Iranian Farsi, which is similar to Afghani Dari). But we were committed to give the relationship a fair chance.
It was truly amazing how much we were able to understand of each other by the second or third day. I had a grasp of her life story and some details about what day to day life in Tehran under the Ayatollahs was like. Wondering and discovering things about each other was enamoring – we certainly had lots of, “secrets” to be drawn out.
Exhausting would describe the turn that things took for me. Touba did not feel comfortable at the English only environment at ISK and would stay home during the school day. She would spend the mornings at the guest house and immediately after school be ready to begin an intense time with me. That left little time for me to gather my thoughts between class time (which has its own type of intensity) and the time for overcoming the curse of Babel to discover if we were in love. Or was this “exhaustion” just my own unwillingness to give my thought life over for someone else?
The daughter of our computer teacher is a High School Senior is fluent in Farsi. She and Tuba became friends quickly. It was a very difficult thing to figure out what Touba wanted by talking to her; the easy way out was to ask Gina what Touba was thinking. This was mostly a linguistic problem, but does it not often happen that third persons are brought into a relationship to facilitate communications even when everyone speaks the same language? It’s Middle School Deja Vu. All men struggle to understand their partners, but I had the “language barrier” as a built in excuse.
Touba may well be the world’s most devoted Christian young lady, but I could not pick up on that. Her actions I could see and her sweet attitudes were apparent, but what motivates her? What fills her heart? To that I remain clueless. It would not have been fair to Touba to hold out a hope that I would soon understand her well. I felt that we could not, for the time being, build on the relationship that we had established during those weeks
It was truly amazing how much we were able to understand of each other by the second or third day. I had a grasp of her life story and some details about what day to day life in Tehran under the Ayatollahs was like. Wondering and discovering things about each other was enamoring – we certainly had lots of, “secrets” to be drawn out.
Exhausting would describe the turn that things took for me. Touba did not feel comfortable at the English only environment at ISK and would stay home during the school day. She would spend the mornings at the guest house and immediately after school be ready to begin an intense time with me. That left little time for me to gather my thoughts between class time (which has its own type of intensity) and the time for overcoming the curse of Babel to discover if we were in love. Or was this “exhaustion” just my own unwillingness to give my thought life over for someone else?
The daughter of our computer teacher is a High School Senior is fluent in Farsi. She and Tuba became friends quickly. It was a very difficult thing to figure out what Touba wanted by talking to her; the easy way out was to ask Gina what Touba was thinking. This was mostly a linguistic problem, but does it not often happen that third persons are brought into a relationship to facilitate communications even when everyone speaks the same language? It’s Middle School Deja Vu. All men struggle to understand their partners, but I had the “language barrier” as a built in excuse.
Touba may well be the world’s most devoted Christian young lady, but I could not pick up on that. Her actions I could see and her sweet attitudes were apparent, but what motivates her? What fills her heart? To that I remain clueless. It would not have been fair to Touba to hold out a hope that I would soon understand her well. I felt that we could not, for the time being, build on the relationship that we had established during those weeks
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