I received an occasional letter from my family in Australia but birthdays and Christmas were especially important times because there would be parcels delivered for the children from their aunties and grandmother in Australia. All mail went through a thorough screening by the Syrian authorities and if any article was deemed suspicious then it was confiscated. My mother and I wrote regularly to each other. I wrote my reflections on Syria onto pages and pages and sent them to her with a promise that she would keep them for safe keeping. I was so disappointed to find that upon my return to Australia they had been destroyed. Nonetheless, my memories of Syria were deeply embedded in my heart and mind and in my children's faces.
Five years had passed and we were all very excited by the news that my mother Jean was vacationing with us. She arrived at Damascus airport in the autumn of 1995 and was to stay with us for six weeks. Fawaz was glad to have his mother-in-law visit, although I wondered how long the mutual truce between them would last. Jean cut her stay short from six weeks to four weeks and I felt so sad as I thought we were having a wonderful time.
Lougene was thirteen months old when he first saw his grandmother and he wasn't to see her again for another three years. Even the thought of my mother leaving Syria brought me to tears, so I kept up a brave face until the day of her departure. We hired a small mini bus for our trip to Damascus airport and I sat next to her with Lougene on my lap and holding back my overwhelming compulsion to cry in her arms. She was not a physically affectionate mother but showed her love in other ways by doing things for the person she loved. There was a brief kiss and cuddle at the airport and she boarded her plane without much fuss.
It was a very long four hour drive home and I felt I had lost an important part of myself. When we reached Skelbieh in the late afternoon my thoughts turned to my daily routine of life, such as feeding and bathing the children and as usual, life moved forward and there only remained the melancholy memory of her visit.

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