jacket.â
Samira believed her. She was
wearing the dress that had been made for the heat of Baghdad. Her other
dress was warmer, but the cloth was getting thin at the elbows. It had been
somebody elseâs dress for a long time before it was given to her in
Kermanshah. As for her warm jacket, she had mended it so often it was hard
to put a patch on it anymore.
âWarm clothes will be
wonderful,â she said. âWill we have new shoes, too?â
âYes, the men down at the
other end are shoemakers,â said Britha. âSome boys will work with them and
every one of you will have the shoes and clothes you need if we just get to
work.â
Hanna laughed. âWeâll all
work,â she said. âSusan Shedd wonât rest until every last child is properly
dressed.â
Samira was surprised. âDo
you know Miss Shedd? She hasnât been here very long.â
âI knew her when she was a
girl, living with her family in Urmieh,â said Hanna. âShe was just as
determined then as she is now. She asked for a horse so she could explore
outside the city walls. Of course she was never allowed to go unless her
father or some other man could go with her but she never gave up
asking.â
âShe told us she went to
America when she was ï¬fteen,â said Samira.
âYes, people who came from
America to work in the mission always sent their children back there to go
to school when they were old enough to live so far away from their families.
Susan Shedd hated to leave Urmieh, but she had no choice. Of course, being
in America meant that she missed the war, so maybe she was lucky. I never
thought Iâd see her again but I should have known she would come back and do
something useful. And now that sheâs here sheâll expect us to be working,
not talking. Letâs get started.â
They got to work. Samira
remembered watching the women in Baghdad make the green dresses on sewing
machines, but she had not used the machines herself.
âLook,â said Hanna. âYou
turn the wheel with your right hand so that the needle goes up and down. You
guide the cloth under the needle with your left hand.â
Samira found that sewing on
a machine wasnât hard as long as she kept her eye on the line of stitches.
It had to be straight. If the seam was crooked she had to rip it out and
stitch it again.
Anna was not sewing. She was
learning how to take care of babies. It seemed that there were some Assyrian
orphans in Hamadan, most of them very young. They would be coming from the
nursery in Hamadan to live at the orphanage soon.
âBut these babies werenât
even born until after the war was over,â Samira said. âHow did they come to
be orphans?â
âMiss Shedd says itâs been
very hard here,â Anna replied. âSome people were weak and sick when they
came and they didnât survive. Like Eliasâs mother. Miss Shedd says we have
to do our best to give these babies a good life.â
Samira felt a little jealous
of Anna. Taking care of orphan babies was surely more important than sewing
clothes. Then one afternoon Miss Shedd came to the sewing room.
âWithout warm clothes and
sturdy shoes children will be cold. Some might get sick,â she said. âSo Iâm
counting on you to do your work well.â She smiled. âI would even say that
what you are making is essential to the childrenâs survival, at least to
their healthy survival.â
Essential to our survival.
Samira liked those words. She repeated them and wiggled her toes inside her
new ï¬annel-lined shoes as she watched the sewing-machine needle go up and
down. She was making a pair of blue trousers for a little boy. When she came
to the end of the seam she held them up. They were thick and warm and the
seams were straight.
âThese trousers would ï¬t
Elias,â she thought. âMaybe they would even help him survive.â She
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