Lost and Found
The wind is what struck Dim Niang in those first days—a constant dry wind that knew no boundaries, wind that could lift a stretch of road dust and seem to cast it up to Oklahoma, New Mexico, and beyond. Back home in Myanmar, the tropical humidity would have pounded dirt like this into submission. How different Amarillo was. Paved roads that did not buckle under monsoons. Grocery stores built like giant boxes. Big trucks with cowboys for drivers.
Dim was more curious about Amarillo than she was intimidated by it. A slim beauty, the second oldest of six in a family that had farmed rice and cotton in Kalaymyo, a remote village on the southern edge of Chin State, she’d always been resilient. This was a quality of her people, the Zomi, a tight-knit ethnic group in the lush, green mountains that border India and Bangladesh. After moving from western China as late as the eighth century, the Zomi had staked out an existence in the isolated mountains, preserving their dialects and ceremonial dress even after adopting Christianity when American missionaries arrived, in the late 1800s. Dim had studied hard in school and eventually graduated from a local Bible college, an achievement that shaped her conditions for a suitor: he had to be Zomi, he had to be educated, and he had to be kind.
Zam Kap was aware of these criteria. A bold young man from the same village, he had met Dim’s family as a teenager, and as he and Dim reached their mid-twenties, he began to court her openly, announcing to everyone in the neighborhood that he loved her. He was a handsome college graduate with a degree in psychology and a fondness for story who showed promise as a community leader, and his enthusiasm seemed boundless. Standing before Dim, he’d stretch his arms wide, flash a contagious smile, and say, “I love you. Do you love me?”—a candor that made a shy but flattered Dim laugh. She dropped enough hints with her family about her admiration for him that when Zam’s father approached hers about a wedding, the ceremony took place within a week.
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