Part I: I met a traveler from an antique land
It was a pleasant early May Saturday morning in suburban Houston, sunny but still in the seventies, a welcome gift before the blast furnace heat of "Texas in Summer" hits. At about 10:30 AM I walked out the front door of our typical "gated-community" house, intending to get my bicycle and head over to our community pool to swim my laps. Despite having been underweight most of my life, I had put on the middle age pounds, and at 45 was really trying to lose them. My knees couldn't take running, so I started a three times a week swimming regimen.
Our home, in the Sugarland area southwest of Houston, is only a single story, as Leah and I married too late to have kids, so we didn't need two stories. It's middle and slightly upper-middle class families paying mortgages between $250,000 and $600,000. Our neighborhood is very diverse, reflecting the nearby jobs in oil and gas, hospitals and higher learning institutions, so hijabs and saris are very common, among the walkers, joggers and bikers, making their way around our retention pond lakes in the early evenings and late mornings. I often joke to my Filipina wife, Leah, that I am the minority in this community, a white Christian male of German/Irish descent!
When we bought this house a few years ago, I loved the design, as it was not cookie-cutter suburbia. The driveway and two car garages sit stage left when viewing the street. A big picture window is next, fronting my office/study, containing my book collections and historical art that is part of my life as a teacher of AP US history at a nice upscale high school about fifteen miles from here. To the right is a sheltered porch, which hides our front door from the morning sun, as the house faces east. I have always liked the slightly off-set door, a unique feature as opposed to houses with centered doors.
Exiting that front door, I looked over at the flower beds of our next-door neighbors, the Nassars. As usual, at this time of a Saturday morning it was being tended by the sole current occupant of that house, Rohaifa Nassar. Facing away, she knelt with a pruner in her right hand, tending a rose bush, one of several plants adorning their curved concrete walkway. She was wearing blue jeans, and flip flops, her heels currently arched up, weight on the balls of her feet. A simple grey long sleeve tee shirt and a scarlet hijab completed her gardening outfit.
"Assalam alaykum" I greeted her.
Not realizing I was there, she looked back at me over her left shoulder, smiling, displaying her near perfect white teeth, "Walaikum assalam, Bob." Rohaifa was always pleased when my wife or I extended her the small courtesy of using her faith's standard greeting. She rose and turned to face me.
Rohaifa was forty-one, but she looked a few years younger. In addition to the aforementioned teeth, she had flawless olive skin, high cheekbones, full lips and stunning slate gray eyes, the kind you usually only find on ginger red heads. I could not help but wonder what was currently hidden by her hijab, brunette (I assumed). Long? Short? As any good stripper knows, what you don't see is often more exciting than what you do.
Facing me I noticed her figure, not that I hadn't checked it out before. She stood about 5'6" so her face cocked up slightly to speak to me. Like most men, I am a terrible judge of female dress sizes, but I imagined her to be about a size eight. She had full breasts, and only a bit of a belly. Rohaifa had only given birth once, her eighteen-year-old daughter, Aliyah, who was currently finishing her freshman year at Baylor. She had full hips and yes, a curvy ass, that I had taken a few seconds to admire before greeting her just prior. I also glanced down at her feet, nicely shaped toes, painted red, lined up in descending size away from her big toe (a personal foot preference of mine, never cared for the extended second toe look)
The Nassars had already lived there when we moved in about five years prior. At that time, it was Rohaifa and her husband Hamid, both from Egypt, and Aliyah who had been born here. Hamid worked as an engineer for Exxon Mobil, and Rohaifa was pretty much a stay-at-home mom. They were great people, enjoyable to socialize with and were not at all standoffish to westerners, a sad trait you see in a decent proportion of the Muslims and Hindus that live in our area.
We often had them over for our barbecues with a few neighbors and friends. They were westernized Muslims, so there were never any cultural tensions. Rohaifa did not insist that Aliyah wear the hijab, when she became old enough, giving her daughter the choice, and Hamid would even enjoy a beer every so often while we stood around the grill, me cooking up burgers or steaks, discussing the eternal question of "What's wrong with the Texans this year?" It was at one of these gatherings that Paul, another neighbor of ours, who possessed a Cajun's wit, observed that Hamid, standing near the grill, Shiner Bock in hand, with his close-cropped haircut and spectacles looked a bit like "Hank Hill." Hamid laughed and the nickname stuck.
I couldn't think of Hank without a tinge of sadness as I recalled why Rohaifa was currently alone in that house. Three years prior Hank had been driving home on Route 359, a great little shortcut to get from College Station to Richmond, avoiding the tollways and busy expressways. He had been attending a conference at A&M, and decided to drive home that evening, rather than stay another night in the hotel. Around 1AM, as he headed towards Pecan Grove, a semi-truck was travelling in the opposing lane. In a horrible bit of bad karma, the driver had a seizure and lost control of his rig, which slid across the lane, obliterating Hank's small SUV, before jack-knifing into the ditch, taking out about seventy feet of some rancher's fence. Both he and Hank were killed instantly.
The investigators found no trace of drugs or alcohol in the driver's system, and Rohaifa did not wish to pursue any legal action against the trucking company. She wanted to bury her husband, honor his memory and let her and Aliyah try and rebuild their lives. Rohaifa went back to school and earned her real estate license in short order and worked for a local family-run firm.
"So how is the "bachelor life, these days?" She asked, her expression a sly knowing smile, as she held the pruner at her side in her right hand, casually adjusting her hijab with her left.
"Oh, you know. I was always the one who did most of the cooking, but the nights get a little lonely, with no one to talk to, or watch TV with." I replied.
Rohaifa was inquiring about my current situation, which saw me currently living alone, temporarily though, unlike my exotic neighbor, while Leah was visiting her homeland for a lengthy period. Her Father had passed away two years prior and, he had accumulated a bit of property on the island of Catanduanes, where my wife grew up. Some of that land went back to Leah's grandfather.
The legal system in the Philippines can be pretty messy and uncoordinated and various claims needed to be settled among the heirs of my Father-in-law and his seven brothers, so Leah flew back home to help her brother settle affairs, and have some legal disputes challenged. She had been gone two weeks and was planning on spending at least a month there.
My wife is a staff accountant /bookkeeper, who has worked mostly contract work since she moved here from California and married me. She enjoys having one assignment and then moving on, as opposed to locking herself down with one company permanently. And like many Filipinos she has that "saving" gene, so she always had a big savings nest egg to fall back on, which allowed her to go without working for a three- or four-month period, while still having enough money to pay the bills. As an AP teacher in the spring, she knew that I could not take the time off to travel with her as my "busy period" was in full swing, getting my scholars ready for their big exam this month.
"That's nice to hear. Glad you are doing well." She responded.
"Thanks, your roses look great as usual." Since Hank's death, Rohaifa, who had always had somewhat of a green thumb, really threw herself into her landscaping. Her shrubs and flowers would have made Joanna Gaines and Martha Stewart jealous.
Her front yard and side flower boxes were amazing, but to me the most striking feature of the Nassar home was their backyard. Growing up in a desert country, Rohaifa had always wanted a pool, but Hank had always put her off about it. Our houses are on fairly small lots and a pool is a lot of money for not a really decent sized hole in the ground. Well one thing Hamid believed in was life-insurance and he had been insured to the hilt, not to mention the double benefit that came from the manner of his death
She received a great deal of money after his tragic passing, and so she built the pool/patio of her dreams, as a way of fondly remembering her husband. She had a large pool put in, one with a rock wall feature and a small waterfall at the far end, the side bordering the yard of her other neighbors, the Tranhs (I told you it was a diverse neighborhood). She had the entire patio redone, installing an outdoor kitchen, for the parties she hosted for her Muslim ladies' social group, and she made sure to plant desert style vegetation all around the perimeter, including palm trees, making it a suburban desert oasis.
"I try. The gardening keeps me busy during the down times in the real estate game." She answered. "Any big plans today?"
"Going to go swimming and then grade some essays this afternoon. Going out with the trivia gang tonight." For a few years we had a standing Saturday night bar trivia gathering with a few friends at a local Katy bar. Our group featured me, Leah, and two other teachers plus a well-read engineer. We liked this bar because the prize was cash money, not gift cards like the corporate bars, and we won a lot. Leah and I used the trivia winnings for our vacations. "You should come with us sometime Rohaifa."
"I don't know if I would be much help." She laughed, a bit self-consciously. "Perhaps some time? Oh well, back to my roses; have a nice swim."
"Take Care." I headed to the garage to get my bike.
As I had informed Rohaifa, my subsequent day consisted of a swim, grading and then heading to Tesla's Bar" for dinner and trivia, with my friends Mike and Barry. We had a good game and finished second, winning $50. I drove home about 10:30 and headed for the shower. Tesla's is an old-school bar that still allows smoking. Smoking doesn't bother me as much as others in our circle, as I grew up blue collar in Pittsburgh. My parents didn't smoke but seemingly everyone in their social circle did, plus before going into education, I worked in food service in the old days of "smoking sections."
