It was a long journey to arrive at this unknown land. Yet, the deep feelings of safety and peace of mind were worth the pain and the dark times left behind.
The township was small and away from the city. Coming from a remote land, Amani’s curiosity was triggered by the simplest happenings. Since stepping down from the plane, he was determined to be open-minded and was eager to understand his new surroundings.
Since his arrival, every person had been particularly welcoming and attentive to his needs and those of his young son. Carrying the total riches of his family in a small suitcase and a blue backpack with a large picture of a superhero, he felt blessed and thought that life was plentiful. After all, anything was better than the camp they had left behind, crowded with people and blue tents.
On occasions, simply observing the ambience was an entertaining experience that he could hardly believe was true. Despite those impressions, the first few weeks were perhaps the hardest, particularly trying to figure out how to behave and what to expect as the seasons began to move from winter to spring.
Soon, however, he began to understand the subtleties of the new culture.
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He had arrived in the middle of winter and found out what never-ending snowy-days were all about. It was difficult to grasp. He had never seen nor touched snow, and pictures he had come across were not a true representation of the experience. Everything was whiter than the whitest colour he has ever seen, and the cold was more bitter than the coolest ice cream he ever tried in his youth.
The first few days, Amani spent hours just looking out the window into the backyard of his small new house, intrigued by the ripples in the snow, the millions of shining crystals, and the blue and pink hues of shadows, whose origin he could not understand. But what puzzled him most every morning, were lines of tiny prints crisscrossing the landscape as if miniature people has gone out for a walk during the night. Some went around soft domes of snow, strategically placed, that reminded him of sand dunes back home.
Only much later, he realized that the mounds were small bushes covered by snow, and the tiny tracks were made by squirrels running inn the snow. Squirrels were a type of wild life he had seen only in children books. He was also amazed that the most freezing days were the sunniest, and despite the cold, that life flourished in every corner. The smallest chickadees reinforced this observations they darted in and out of bushes to get seeds that only they could see.
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