Unit 1: Selection Vocabulary 1

Almost tiptoeing across the office, I maneuvered myself to keep my mother between me and the gringo lady.

In a matter of seconds I had to decide whether she was a possible friend or a menace.

Then Miss Hopley did a formidable thing. She stood up.

Miss Hopley was not a giant in body but when she mobilized it to a standing position she seemed a match for giants. I decided I liked her.

She, too, sat down and the questions and answers began by way of our interpreter.

And when I least expected it, there she was, crouching by my desk, her blond radiant face level with mine, her voice patiently maneuvering me over the awful idiocies of the English language.

Step by step, she loosened me and my classmates from the safe anchorage of the desks for recitations at the blackboard and consultations at her desk.

We got up and performed our ablutions quickly in the darkness, with just sand because that’s allowed when you have no access to water.

I was walking quite well that day, quite athletically. I had that good prosthetic leg from Germany.

I don’t know what made me so supple and strong that day, but I felt no hardship, no anxiety or fear, just concentration and intensity.

Perhaps desperation gave me energy and made me forget the rigor of the climb.

That Ghulam Ali was certainly a good man, so patient with us and so
compassionate. He had never seen us before, and yet when he met us, he
said, “I will help you.”