From Act III, Chapter 1
. . . Fine, but where to send Ibrahim? There was no school willing to accept him in Alabama. So Naeem sent out emergency notices to American Councils coordinators across the country.
Soon the alert reached Kane, Pennsylvania, and the home of Mary Lisa Gustafson, a French teacher, and her husband, Tom, who works in a lumber mill.
It's a second marriage for both of them. Their children are grown, and Mary Lisa sort of runs the show, much like Ann Petrila. The two women are actually quite similar. About the same age, early fifties, with husbands who are away a lot. The lumber mill where Tom works is not always operating at full capacity, so he does odd jobs to make ends meet. Mary Lisa teaches French at a school down the road, in Johnsonburg, a town shadowed by a giant paper mill that gives off an impressive odor. There are no complaints, though. At least, in Johnsonburg, there are jobs.
Most of the rest of the industrial towns in this northwestern part of the state, including Kane, are not so fortunate. Factories have fled, one after another, for cheap labor overseas. Unemployment here is more than 25 percent, if you count the people no longer looking for jobs--the result of twenty years of downward drift.
Like Kane, Mary Lisa hasn't had the easiest two decades. She's from around here, from Erie, took French in high school and, in college, matched up with a Moroccan boy--a French speaker and a Muslim--who was the star of the school's soccer team. That'd be her first husband, long gone, who now lives in Florida. her two sons, whom she raised, are living in upstate New York.
When, eight years ago, she met Tom, a quiet mill hand from Kane, gentle and dependable, she said, "Why not?" Which is what Tom said back, when Mary Lisa, in 2003, showed him a flyer she'd picked up at school, about Afghan exchange students. Their house was small, but they had an upstairs bedroom, and it was far from too late for them to try some new things in their life.
In the fall of 2005, the bedroom was home to Fazila, one of the genuine stars of the American Councils' program. A brilliant girl from Kabul, Fazila soon became fast friends with Mary Lisa. She blazed through her studies. Eventually, she got a full scholarship to Sweet Briar College, in Virginia.
Naeem remembered that Fazila had said only the nicest things about her time in Kane. Calls were made, and Mary Lisa found herself sitting in the office of Kane High School's principal. He remembered they'd had one good experience with a kid from Afghanistan.
Why not another?
Soon Ibrahim was walking the halls in a daze. . . .
Mary Lisa Gustafson is a French teacher from Kane, Pennsylvania, and was Ibrahim's second host mother during his year in the U.S. Mary Lisa wins Ibrahim's trust, teaching him the value of independent thinking and how to slow dance with a partner before prom. In many ways, Ibrahim's relationship with Mary Lisa reprises his relationship with Ann Petrila, his first host mom, testifying to Ibrahim's personal growth and maturation during his time in America.
