[mhmary]

Marina was my first love in Syria. I met her the first time at a party where she looked so gorgeous and everyone was staring at her. She was dancing all the time and having fun with her friends, while I was watching her to enjoy this gorgeousness. For some reason, after a while of staring at her, I stopped thinking about anything at the party except her. While everyone was enjoying the party, all I did was sit by my self looking at her and thinking about how to catch her attention. The party time was over and I had not even been able to dance with her because I was so attracted to her that I thought I was not good enough to dance with her. The next day I knew from my friend that she was single, and I started collecting information about her. In one week, I knew every single detail about this girl and every night I used to pass her house before I went to sleep.

I got into the church activities that she got involved in until I started talking to her and had her phone number. She knew that I loved her and one of those nights when I was passing her house, she threw a flower to me from her window. We loved each other so much; she wrote me poetry, and I wrote her back telling every feeling I had in my heart to her. All we talked about was love and every time I tried to hold or kiss her hand she told me to wait until we got married; eventually talking was the only way to express our love. One time on a camping trip we were standing alone by the river; I looked in her eyes and she looked too; I moved my lips toward hers and right before they touched she slapped my face and never talked to me again.
On the other hand Kate was my first love in the US. We worked together at the same restaurant last year and I really liked her personality. She looked beautiful to
me, and I used to give her a ride every night because she did not have a car. After a little while, I started talking to her on the phone and we both could not sleep if we did not talk to each other. She was almost everything and all I thought about. I knew everything about her and I really liked the way she talked and dealt with people. However, I felt that she had the same feeling toward me because she always made me feel special when she talked to me. Everyday we came closer; we were studying each other to make sure that we were really in love. One night I was taking her home and right before we got there I stopped the car and told her that I loved her so much.
Before she said I love you, she hugged and kissed me a long kiss that made me feel really happy about this new relationship. We always used to holds hands and hug each other when we went out; kissing was so normal to her, and fine for me. One night when I was taking her home, she told me that her parents were away and invited me to go in. I went in, we had cup a tea, and then she sat next to me and kissed me as usual. But this time she wanted more than that, and for some reason I remembered my first love Marina; I did not feel comfortable about what Kate was doing and I left her alone.
In those two different cultures, Syria and America, you can see a lot of conflicts and the story above is where the two cultures clash most times. Syria, the aged county where Jesus was born, is very different from the new world, the United States. In Syria the percentage of people that believe in god and go to church is higher than the percentage in the US. That causes those people to raise their kids with the Bible and to teach them how to respect god and do what god said. That is why sex is forbidden before marriage; however, if you are a man no one will know that you did, unlike women. With this idea people grew up in Syria and most men do not
get married to a woman who is not a virgin, unlike women who can not know if a man is a virgin. Marina was a Christian girl because she grew up in the church and she was told from her parents that the most wrong thing she might do in her life is not being a virgin. She really knew how to love and it was a great relation with her, but she was so afraid of the people from the community that would count her as a worthless person if she did the forbidden thing.
On the other hand Kate was Christian, but I really have no idea if she knew that by Christianity she was not supposed to have sex before marriage, because that was the last thing we talked about. And here in this free country, where you make your own right and wrong, she felt very free to do anything that was right in her opinion. She was thinking that sex was part of the love relationship between us and I am sure that Marina knew that sex was part of love, but her culture did not let her do what she wanted to do. But Kate could do what she thought was right because her culture let her.
Kate and Marina had the same feelings, the same love, the same thoughts, but they had very different ways of expressing their love. Not because they were very different but because they lived in two different communities that had very different cultures.