Not Without My Sister by Kristina Jones, Celeste Jones, Juliana Buhring Read Free Book Online Page B

a suitable place to re-establish Loveville.

"I don't want you to go, Dad," I pleaded. "I'll miss you." "Don't worry, honey. It will only be a few months." He tried to encourage me.

I clung on tight like a baby when he said goodbye and Serena had to prise me away.

Chapter 3

    Where are we going to live in Sri Lanka?" I asked.

'You'll see. It's a surprise," Dad said with a twinkle in his eye. "Did you know that it was a Sri Lankan radio station that was the first to play Music with Meaning? It's a beautiful country, and the people are receptive to the Lord's message."

When we stopped over at Karachi International Airport, I knew Pakistan was near India, and I gazed avidly out of the airport windows, through the heat haze across the Arabian Sea. The air smelled vaguely familiar, a mixture of exotic spices and gasoline, as were the intense heat and humidity. I was close but so far from the place where I had last seen my mother. I thought about my sister Kristina. If only we could have stopped off in Bombay to see them. Then it was time to board another plane to Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital city and I was caught up with the excitement of arriving on an island in the Indian Ocean.

After the long trip, we stayed in the capital at a hotel resort for the first two days to rest up before continuing our journey. The air was hot and humid, filled with the fragrance of frangipani, the sacred temple flowers that were used in Buddhist ceremonies. You could see these trees everywhere, their brightly colored flowers hanging down in bunches, the ground beneath them littered with fragrant carpets of yolk yellow, white, purple pink, and red. My first day in this beautiful, exotic land was unforgettable. The first thing I noticed were black birds crowing loudly. They seemed to be everywhere. As I walked under one of the banana palms in the grounds of the resort, I felt something warm hit my head. To my horror,
I discovered a crow had shat on me.

The journey to our new home was exciting. Dad kept saying, "Just wait, you'll see." The anticipation was killing me. We crammed all our belongings into the air-conditioned bus we'd hired to take the three-hour drive into the mountains. It was all so different after the barren rocks and scant vegetation of Greece. Here, palm trees and the rich red soil of fields where black-skinned buffaloes toiled gave way to rounded slopes covered with tea plantations. With so much rain—the island is in the path of tropical monsoons and hundreds of inches of rain fall each year—we saw many tranquil lakes, which reflected the sky and the encircling high mountains. Everything seemed so peaceful, yet rich. I gazed at it all avidly, absorbing the sights and sounds.

Finally we arrived at the new home that Dad had found for us. It had been a farm, with a large colonial farmhouse anda few other smaller houses nearby. Dad took me round and showed me the large sugarcane field at the far end of the property, and rows of strawberries and green and red chilli bushes.
    The main house was large, with a huge, vaulted living room with a white marble floor. Our little family got one of the best rooms, a big, airy bedroom with an en suite bathroom that the five of us shared. In the back garden of the main house we built a swimming pool, and within a few months I learned how to swim the breaststroke and the crawl. Dad established his studio as quickly as possible so his work could continue without interruption.

On our Freeday Dad and I would always do something fun together. Sometimes we walked down the mountain to the local town, which was twenty minutes away by foot. It was easy going down, but quite a haul going back up. All the women dressed in colorful saris and the men in lungis, a kind of long cotton skirt, tied in a knot at the waist. Their chests were bare, and gleamed in the heat and humidity. I tried not to stare, but I was put off by the sight of the women's earlobes, which hung down almost to their shoulders. I