and then we realized...

it was a cold night. one of the coldest so far that year. and of course, our heaters didn't work. the landlord promised he would fix them soon. i said we should call up saleem asap to see if we could borrow the propane heater that he had since he never used it, it was actually ours at one point, and the landlord never fixed anything nearly as quickly as he said he would. but instead, i settled for my fuzzy blanket that jason had gotten me for christmas our year at the house of hope. he knew how much i loved fuzzy blankets, and since he got me one it meant i didn't have to somehow have all of my fuzzy blankets shipped over from the US - which was what my plan was.

so anyway, it was cold. i snuggled up in my brown fuzzy blanket on our uncomfortable couch, probably watching some re-run of boston legal, listening to hiba not sleep in her room and praying that matthias would actually stay asleep in his. it started like most other november nights that we'd had in palestine.

i don't remember who brought it up, but somehow jason and i got to talking about our rejection letter. the one from the ominous, all-powerful committee at the ministry of interior that kindly informed us that our request for visas was denied and we had two weeks to leave. by now we were down to 11 days. our plan was to ignore it. we had tickets bought for the end of december, weren't planning on coming back anytime soon, so who cares what the committee said. we'd stay. they might fine us, they might black-list us, but whatever. who cares, right?

but then we started talking. and thinking. and realizing. we realized that our plan was kinda dumb. jason is more qualified to work in palestine than anywhere else in the world. our lives, our kids lives, some of our best friends were formed there. and five years (our potential black-list time) is a long time. heck, three years is a long time. that's how long we'd been there. we realized that putting ourselves in the position of not being able to return was not really an option.

so we started to talk. and pray. and think. and pray some more. and in a couple hours our normal november night had been turned upside down. we were leaving in 11 days. we had plane tickets to change, baby furniture to sell, clothes to pack, books to ship, a car to sell (or push off a cliff....). but most of all, we had a life to wrap-up, a chapter to close. and we had 11 days.

but on the good side, we could tell our landlord he didn't have to fix our heaters and soon i'd be back to all the fuzzy blankets i could ever want. a lot sooner that i wanted.