From Act I, Chapter 2
Ann Petrila watches Bush on television in her Denver home. Hates the man with a profound, volcanic, and deeply satisfying rage. The tarmac statement from Green Bay is replayed endlessly among bits of evolving news about the thwarted attacks. Saturation coverage, round-the-clock. The phone rings in the kitchen.
"The kids have been held up at security in Washington and missed their connecting flights," the caller--someone from the American Councils--tells her. "At least, that's the report we've received. We'll call as soon as we get any more information."
She hangs up and heads for the basement, a wood-paneled cave that her son, Ben, will be sharing with their Afghan exchange student.
He's pushing thumbtacks through a small poster with red, white, and blue stripes drawn around the words welcome to America, Ibrahim.
"I can't believe I'm putting a sign like this up in my room," he tells her. "I think I've lost my mind."
She laughs. This three-bedroom house--a classic, lovingly preserved Sears Craftsman, circa 1911, with a sun porch on the front and oak beams--is the progressive home of Ann; her husband, Michael; and their son, Ben--a fallen Catholic, a Buddhist (by choice), and an atheist, respectively.
Ann goes out the screen door to the garden, plops down alongside a row of tomatoes, and starts weeding. She is a professor of social work at the University of Denver's Graduate School. Michael is a psychologist at an academy for troubled youth. By training and inclination, Ann is sensitive and, when need be, quite candid. Like many Americans, she believes in getting everything on the table and talking it out. As she tears at the dandelions, she thinks of this poor child, a seventeen-year-old boy named Ibrahim, and what it must be like to come from Afghanistan to America and end up in some interrogation room in an airport.
This was a lark, this idea of having an exchange student, which took on a life of its own and, as she digs deep for the dandelion roots, she thinks of sitting with Ben and Michael at the dining room table back in May with folders of possible students. She remembers there was a boy from Serbia, a religious Christian.
"Yuck," Ben said. "A fundamentalist Christian, no way."
Ann laughed. "Well, a Muslim from the bowels of Afghanistan. He's going to be religious, too, Ben."
"I know--but at least he's not some holy roller."
That's when she first saw the photograph of Ibrahim, stapled to his application. . . .
Ann Petrila is a professor of social work at the University of Denver's Graduate School and was the first host mother of Ibrahim Frotan on his journey to America. As a representative of the independent and modern American woman, Ann presents a challenge to Ibrahim's worldview, forged in traditional Afghan Muslim society. The Way of the World documents the frictions of Ann and Ibrahim's encounter as they search for common ground and a personal connection that can trump their differences of background.
