What’s more, it was quite exciting because my husband would fly us as the only passengers on an airliner he was returning to Abadan.
The next day, Frank bought home two pets, a young donkey for Frankie and a baby goat for Teresa. It was his way of making up.
Soon after that he brought home a polo pony for me but I was very uneasy with such a high-spirited animal. I had ridden only a few times as a young girl when I lived with my grandmother on the farm in Palmira, and those horses were placid work animals.
When I needed company I asked the berra, whom I now called by his name, Makhmal, to please hail a rickshaw and I would go back to the Hotel Metropole and listen to the band from Spain.
The road approaching the hotel from Beirut airport passed along a bluff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and our room at the Saint George Hotel viewed the ocean from high above.
A local business associate, Kassem, met us at the airport. He apparently already knew I would be accompanying Jean Claude, had brought a camera, and asked if he could take a picture.
This time I dressed in a purple sari with a gold embroidered pallu that hung loosely over one shoulder and extended almost to the floor.[
Finally reaching home, our Beach Luxury Hotel in Karachi, and both exhausted, we went to our room, had some refreshments, and enjoyed the privilege of a shower together, to save water we kept saying, and enjoyed scrubbing each other’s backs.
Finishing my walk along the street where Madame Donzé lived, my thought was of the rich feeling I had the day before, walking in Paris with Jean Claude’s mother. It was so much better than that cold feeling I received upon our first meeting in Beirut.
Mother Superior listened attentively to my story but said there was nothing she could do to release them to me. Frank had placed them there because he was leaving the U.S. for another overseas job.
