Tag Archives: Ann Gaylia O’Barr

Thoughts after Reading The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam; From Jihad to Dhimmitude

At some point after living in the Middle East during the 1990’s and early 2000’s, I bought the above named book by Bat Ye’or.

Ye’or’s writings have focused on the history of minorities under Islamic rule, which she calls dhimmitude. She also has written and spoken critically against some Europeans for criticism of Israel, accusing them of anti Semitism. Some accuse Ye’or of fostering Islamophobia.

Regardless, at the time I bought the book, I had experienced Middle Eastern cultures for the first time. Previously, I, a Southern Baptist raised in Tennessee, had known them shallowly if at all. Despite having a college minor in history, I was barely conscious of the great Byzantine Empire.

This empire, based in Constantinople (now Istanbul) endured almost a thousand years after the fall of the western Roman empire. Yet I knew relatively little about it or about the eastern Christian faith communities at the heart of this empire.

On a visit to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, I had first visited museums and churches featuring eastern Christian art. (I fictionalized this experience in Searching for Home.)

I began to ask questions. How had Christians became a minority? In a matter of a few centuries, even their Greek language was overtaken by the new language, Arabic.

No doubt the language change played a part in the gradual turning of Christian majority nations into Islamic majority ones. The newer religion used what became the common language. Greek, language of eastern Christian churches, was spoken less and less.

In reading the history of the Middle East before Islam became predominant, perhaps Christianity, as it came to be practiced then, lost its common touch. It became a state religion, beholden to secular leaders for its survival.

Christianity rapidly lost its influence in the Middle East. It was pushed into the backwaters of a place called Europe, the remnants of the old Roman empire fused with the Germanic elements of its conquerors.

Yet eventually Europe became culturally Christian as the Middle East become culturally Islamic. Christians again were tempted to build Christ’s kingdom through worldly power.

Christians, it seems to me, are most likely to endure when they don’t confuse earthly power with the religion of Jesus Christ.

Rotten Boroughs

Parts of Britain, by the 1800’s, were known as “rotten boroughs.” A rotten borough was an election district that had lost significant population due to industrialization and movement to cities. The remaining shrunken population still elected a representative to the British parliament.

Meanwhile, in contrast, growing cities had little representation in parliament.

Gradual reforms eventually led to a fairer system, giving more representation to the cities.

Our voting system today doesn’t approach the unfairness of the rotten borough, but it bears resemblances.

Each state, whether California (2010 census: 37,252, 895) or Wyoming (2010 census: 563,757) elects two senators.

California elects 53 representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives. Wyoming elects one representative.

A combination of those numbers forms the “electoral college.” This electoral college, according to the U.S. Constitution, elects the president. It has 538 members (equal to 100 senators plus 435 representatives, plus 3 members for the District of Columbia).

Each electoral vote from California represents 719,219 Californians. An electoral vote from Wyoming represents 192,579 citizens of Wyoming. Thus, the citizens of some states enjoy more representation in the election of the president.

Several movements are attempting to change the election of the president to more equally reflect the population of the United States. However, whether one loathes it or loves it, the election of the president by the electoral college is, at present, perfectly legal.

However, one reason for less representation of urban voters in the House of Representatives has to do with the “gerrymandering” of voting districts by state legislators. Gerrymandering means the party in power too often draws voting lines to favor its members rather than honestly reflecting the population of the state.

Surely, true representative government rests on accurate representation of actual voters.

A New Deal for Immigration?

Few issues divide Americans like undocumented immigrants.

Peter King, a U.S. congressional representative from New York (Democratic) and Tom Suozzi, a Republican representatives from the same state, sketched out a plan to lessen immigration problems. (“A Grand Compromise on Immigration,” The New York Times, March 24, 2019)

The plan, if carried out, might solve the status of about 5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, plus provide money for alleviating border problems.

Today’s undocumented immigrants include the Dreamers (those without documentation brought as children to the U.S.). To qualify according to the plan, they must have graduated from high school, have no record of criminal activity, and be in the military or working full time for at least three years or attending college.

In addition, the plan would be available to those in temporary protected status (TPS). Beneficiaries of TPS are those who have been allowed to stay temporarily in the United States because of natural disasters, violence, or extreme poverty in their home countries.

To start the process, each applicant would be required to pay $2,000 dollars. The funds raised would be used first of all to fund the process.

The excess would go to additional physical structures along the southern border, aid to Central American countries to discourage further immigration from those countries, and improved border technology.

One advantage for the immigrants targeted by the program is that they already are productive individuals and are familiar with American culture.

The Marshal versus the Marshall Plan

America has always included an element of “might makes right.” The marshal in the old West meets the villains and defeats them. Order is restored. The good people are able to get on with their lives.

Typically, however, the good comes more slowly but also more peaceably. Child labor is defeated: perhaps by a combination of ballot box and shame. Corrupt political bosses are voted out of office when a free press shines light on their activities.

Nazi Germany was defeated by military might. Yet the structures which have prevented a return to world wide conflict are of a more peaceable sort.

The Marshall plan directed American aid to countries ravaged by World War II (including our enemies) and helped them rebuild. The U.S. used trade and commerce instead of war.

International bodies set rules about fair trading. Scholarships were given to foreign students for study in American universities so they might return and benefit their countries with new knowledge and skills, as well as spread American influence.

Certainly, the attacks of September 11, 2001, called for a military response in Afghanistan. Yet the war in Iraq drew us into a quagmire more because of our desire for cheap oil than anything else. It was might for our own economic benefit rather than a true desire to rid a small nation of a cruel dictator.

War is expensive in both lives and fortune. The United States is still strong enough to win by bolstering its working and middle classes. It can keep alliances with allies, especially democratic allies. It waited out the Soviet Union by such policies. It can do the same now—if it doesn’t yield to the pre-World War II kind of America First syndrome. That was the slogan of Nazi sympathizers before Pearl Harbor silenced them.

Rush to Judgement

William Burns held a leadership position in the U.S. Department of State when terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. In an article in politico.com (March 13, 2019), he speaks of that time when the country, reeling from shock, was deciding on responses to the attacks.

The title of the article is “How we tried to slow the rush to war in Iraq and why the lessons from my time in the Bush administration are relevant today.” It speaks of Burns’ attempts to come to terms with that time and the wrong decisions made.

Even as Burns watched from his office window at the plumes of smoke from the attacked Pentagon, he wrote in a memo: “We could shape a strategy that would not only hit back hard against terrorists and any states who continued to harbor them, but also lay out an affirmative agenda that might eventually help reduce the hopelessness and anger on which extremists preyed.”

In hindsight, we chose to hit back hard but tended to ignore the need to also craft a positive policy to reduce the factors that led to the attacks.

Burns writes: “In the 18 months that followed—that rare hinge point in history between the trauma of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq in early 2003—we took a different and ultimately disastrous course. This is a story of the road not taken, of the initial plan of coercive diplomacy in Iraq, which turned out to be long on coercion and short on diplomacy.”

Burns writes of how the campaign in Afghanistan morphed into a tragic focus on Iraq and became quicksand from which we are still trying to free ourselves.

In a memo from the time before the decision to invade Iraq, Burns wrote: “we needed ‘to show that we will finish the job [and] restore order, not just move on to the next Moslem state.’”

We did not finish the job in Afghanistan. While the work was unfinished there (and remains to this day) we moved on to Iraq, then Syria, and now Iran.

The hardliners won after 9/11, and they are continuing to win today in our policies on Iran. “The Iraq invasion was the original sin,” Burns writes. Unfortunately, we are still following the path begun then.

Working Forward

I keep a file I call “life purposes” and add to it from time to time. About once a month, I pull something out of it to reread. I’ve had the file for many years.

“Thoughts from a foreign correspondent” is the title of an article I saved from the March 14, 1987, issue of Editor & Publisher.

The author of this particular article is a lifelong journalist, Georgie Anne Geyer, born in 1935 and still writing, according to my current internet search.

In the 1987 article, Geyer said she loved and cared about other cultures, languages, and history. She wanted to be one of those “couriers between cultures.”

She persevered in an era when women journalists were mostly relegated to the society sections of newspapers. Nevertheless, she managed to become the Latin American correspondent for the Chicago Daily News in 1964 and never looked back.

Geyer’s column is part of what inspired me also to search for that kind of job. The search took many years, but the chance finally came, and I had to decide in the space of a weekend whether to make a momentous change in my life.

I decided to leap and accepted a position with the U.S. Foreign Service. Tours took me to those places in my own dreams of a courier between cultures.

Answers to dreams come in different ways. Holding a dream, even tenaciously, does not mean we will always realize it. Seeing a future beyond our present, however, blesses us with the ability to search and change.

American Reckoning

“The American Civil War was a struggle over two competing ideas of the nation-state. This struggle has never ended; it has just moved around.”

So writes Jill Lepore in “A New Americanism; Why a Nation Needs a National Story.” (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2019)

Prior to the Civil War, two ideas pitted themselves against each other. Stephen Douglas said in 1858 that the United States “was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever.”

His sparring partner, Abraham Lincoln, challenged Douglas to find a single affirmation in U.S. history that “the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence.”

The Confederates attempted to craft a new country based on ideas like those Douglas held. Though the union defeated them, the battle between competing visions of the nation still continues, according to Lepore.

The victory of the union was eventually overtaken by a kind of schizophrenic nation. One provided a new beginning for immigrants fleeing persecution and oppression and stood in contrast to segregation, Jim Crow laws, and Chinese exclusion acts.

Our current conflicts, mirrored in our views toward “the other,” are a continuation of these old battles.

I grew up a child of the South, proud of my heritage. I still cherish the kinship and unique community spirit of my childhood. Much was good. But a tough love of that place requires me to speak out against the malignancy that festered side by side with our native caring.

As a Christian leader, Jim Wallis, has written, slavery was our original sin. Until we repent, not only of the original sin but of all the insidious descendants we have refused to root out since then, I think we will fail as the nation we were meant to be.

Embassy Evacuations: a Hazard of the Diplomatic Career

Log on to the website for the U.S. embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, and the phrase immediately pops up: “The embassy is only providing emergency services for U.S. citizens . . . ”

Due to the crisis in Venezuela with the Maduro government, most American staff have been withdrawn from the embassy, removing employees and their families from harm’s way.

The possibility of a mission draw down or evacuation is one of the facts of diplomatic life. My two evacuations were easier for me than for some. Both were due to terrorism dangers, but my children were grown and unaffected. My husband’s job wasn’t dependent on where we were living. Within a few weeks, I was assigned to another post.

By contrast, the evacuation within seven days of sixty diplomats and their families from the U.S. embassy in Moscow last year was not due to terrorism, but nevertheless involved many people suddenly pulled out of planned lives. The United States and Russia both ordered large numbers of diplomats from their respective countries over U.S. sanctions against Russia.

Household goods packed out, health and school certificates issued, keys and radios turned in, rabies shots confirmed for pets, and seats on charter flights arranged were only some of the tasks. Children and teenagers had to deal with leaving school terms only eleven weeks before they were to end.

On arrival in Washington, they were met with balloons, welcome home signs, and hugs from former colleagues. Jet-lagged toddlers fell asleep on the floor as their parents attended information meetings.

Evacuated officers began searching for forward assignments. Other families left officers behind who continued to work in Moscow.

Yet as one embassy member wrote: “There is no pretense in the courage of its members, playing the hand they have been dealt with dignity and grace.”

The remaining staff in Moscow stepped up “determined to keep the embassy not just functioning, but moving forward.”

Some who left said it would have been easier “if they had hated Moscow. The truth is,” the article writer said, “we who live here love the city. That is also one of the strengths of the mission. We are moving forward. That is what we do.” (Anne Godfrey, wife of the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2018, “When the Going Gets Tough: Moscow”).

Stuck

My latest fiction attempt isn’t flying off the pages lately. Maybe it’s because Mark Pacer, my main character, is stuck, too.

With the help of a friend, he overcame the early stages of grief (Thy Dross to Consume). He has family; he’s not alone.

Still, he’s just going through the motions lately. Coping.

My idea is: shortly, someone is coming into his life to shake him up. He’ll have to decide some things.

I’ve left Mark in the late 1980’s time wise. Maybe I’m coping myself with this fictional return to that in-between era. It’s a return to that time immediately before my life changing decision that took me around the world. Both the world and I changed after that.

In this return to that in-between time, the Soviet Union already is changing. The U.S. President is an older guy, conservative. Is he too set in his ways to handle potential changes? Is the country he leads too set in its ways?

Mark is serving his latest U.S. diplomatic stint in Canada. It’s nice to live in a country with western values again. But maybe it’s a little boring after the Middle East?

Something is going to happen to shake him up. I’ve got the idea, but it’s still fluid, seeking its course.

Though he’s not yet middle-aged, Mark has traveled to the outskirts of a Dante-an dark wood.

Someone from the past enters his life again. His children are growing and asking hard questions. Finally, his work involves him in the first tip of an iceberg coming into view—the refugee crisis that later will turn into a flood.

What does he do now?

Religion and Writing: Never the Twain Shall Meet?

“So it is conventional among contemporary writers to exclude religion from their work, however religious the writers might in fact be. This reticence seems to be regarded by many as a courtesy, an acknowledgment of the fact that the subject can be painful or private or can stir prejudices or hostilities. Such scruples are respectable, certainly, but they tacitly reinforce the assumption that religion is essentially and inevitably divisive.”
–Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? “Considering the Theological Virtues: Faith”)

Yet, Robinson’s novel Gilead, as well as the two accompanying novels in the series, were critically acclaimed. Gilead, whose main character was a Christian minister, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005.

Humans can be capable of great cruelty, using whatever weapon is at hand, including religion.

A counterweight against cruelty, however, also is provided by religion—ministering to the excluded, for example: lepers, widows and orphans, prisoners, refugees.

Religion, at its best, searches for an inner journey leaving behind the quest for wealth and power fueling so many of our cruelties.

Why Do We Wave at Passing Trains?

Passengers trains—that is, trains for long distance travel, not commuting—remain part of our culture, despite the growth of travel by automobile and airplane. Songs like “Lonesome Whistle” and “John Henry” and “500 Miles’ feature the train as part of the country’s life story.

Anyone riding on a long distance passenger train will notice, as the train enters an urban area, especially a park, the people who stop and wave at the train. Sometimes passengers wave back.

I’m not sure of the reasons, one or many, for why we wave at trains. Perhaps it’s a moment of wishfulness to see new places, to experience a journey. Perhaps it’s also a form of community, drawing the stranger in, if only for a moment.

We wish good journey to the stranger who passes by. Just for a moment we touch.

Wealth and the Scrooge Syndrome

“The day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was free for him to administer during life, will pass away unwept, unhonored, and unsung, no matter to what uses he leave the dross which he cannot take with him.”

The words are those of Andrew Carnegie, the man who built up the American steel industry. After amassing great wealth, he retired and became a philanthropist. As a child, I fed my love for reading in a library founded with his wealth. My family would have found it difficult to buy all the books I was able to read free of charge.

Capitalism is a powerful economic machine. It is unrivaled in its ability to produce goods, but it is neither good nor evil in itself.

Some capitalists pay huge sums to politicians favoring policies allowing more and more wealth and political power to accumulate to fewer and fewer wealthy individuals.

Others support worthy cause like scholarships and homeless shelters and health programs.

As capitalism’s wealth accumulates, the capitalist decides whether to be corrupted by it or to share both wealth and power.

More words from Carnegie: “Of such as these the public verdict will then be: The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced. Such, in my opinion, is the true gospel concerning wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the rich and the poor.”

Our Waning Love Affair With Cars–Winners and Losers

Americans who came of age in earlier decades fell in love with the automobile. It became an appendage of their lives, like mobile phones today, the symbol of freedom, a way to escape parents and prying eyes.

As they grew into adults, many of them walked little more than the few yards from parking lot to their job in an office building or from the garage into their house at the end of the day.

That generation rushed to the suburbs, created for cars, difficult to serve with mass transit. The central city was left to those too poor to buy a vehicle.

The modern city actually began in the Middle Ages as a place for merchants and shop owners to lessen dependence on the landed gentry. Modern employers are again discovering the advantage of clustering in urban spaces. Today, Seattle, the largest city in my area, is a city for the well off young worker, especially those employed by tech companies. Some employees even walk to work. Many take mass transit.

However, lower income workers are not faring as well, once again forced into spaces less and less attractive as they move further out to escape rising rents. They inherit suburbs now spurned by the more well-off. Of course, living in suburbs often requires them to buy cars to travel to work . . .

U.S. Embassy: Venezuela: On the Front Lines Again

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about the safety of American diplomats in the U.S. embassy in Caracas, Venezuela. The United States has recognized an opposition leader in that country as the legitimate president. Needless to say, Nicolás Maduro, elected president in a sham election, is not pleased and has made various threats against the embassy.

Pompeo replied as his predecessors have replied for decades in similar situations: The safety of its diplomatic personnel is the highest priority of the State Department. Given the number of American diplomats who have been killed in recent decades, concerns are valid.

A long time ago, after the first Gulf war against the Iraqi invaders of Kuwait in 1991, I knew two people affected by the buildup to that war. One was a junior diplomat in Kuwait on his first assignment. The other was the office manager in Baghdad, staying behind with the few remaining diplomats in that embassy.

The U.S. ambassador in besieged Kuwait, now overrun with Iraqi forces, sent greetings to his colleagues back in Washington: “Your colleagues in Embassy Kuwait are pleased to send you our greetings this evening. All things considered, we would prefer to be with you in person, but you will appreciate that this is not possible.”

When the invading Iraqis cut off utility services, the Americans reportedly used water stored in a swimming pool.

I had a more than passing interest in what was happening in those days. I was on my own first assignment to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a country bordering Kuwait.

Eventually, diplomats in both Iraq and Kuwait were allowed to evacuate before the war began. Families and friends breathed a sigh of relief.

After the end of the war, another colleague, whom I knew in Jeddah during the war, was assigned to accompany the victorious Americans returning to the embassy in Kuwait. I was jealous. I have pictures of her as she and her colleagues watched while the U.S. flag was raised again over the embassy.

Here’s to hoping the situation in Venezuela is resolved peacefully and in the interests of the Venezuelan people.

Cold War Joke

A joke from decades ago–during the Cold War, a golden age as far as the American worker was concerned.

An American businessman visited a factory in the Soviet Union. He was shown around the place. “Who owns this factory?” the American asked.

“The workers,” his guide said.

Leaving the factory, the American noticed three cars in the factory’s parking lot and asked who they belonged to. He was told the cars belonged to a couple of the factory’s managers and a government inspector.

Later, a Russian factory manager visited a Ford plant in Michigan. He was shown around the plant.“Who owns this factory?” the Russian visitor asked.

“Mr. Ford,” his guide told him.

On leaving the factory, the visitor noticed the large parking lot full of vehicles. “Who owns those cars?” the visitor asked.

“The workers,” his guide replied.

The anecdote was intended to show the actual results of capitalism versus communism. It was intended to illustrate how workers under a capitalist system are better off than those under a communist system.

At the time, according to what I have read, Mr. Ford believed his workers would perform better if they were paid adequate wages and had benefits like health insurance.

I don’t know about the Ford family today, but it seems many employers have forgotten that they depend on their employees to produce the products their wealth depends on.

Jobs change. What the products are and what procedures are needed to produce them have changed—whether it’s a physical product, a software program, or support services like janitorial work.

What hasn’t changed is the need for workers to find pride in what they do and to be adequately compensated for it.

Inadequate care of the working class will cost all of society—in alcohol and drug problems, in costs for sickness not treated early, in workers untrained for the jobs of today.

Capitalism is indeed a most efficient economic system—as long as the system itself is not placed ahead of the workers who operate it.

Slow Food, Slow Travel

We’ve been treated recently to recipes and cookbooks promoting “slow” food. Slow food is a kind of protest against “fast” food. It captures the pleasure of cooking, especially as it promotes fellowship around a dinner table.

Last fall, I enjoyed slow travel. I rode the train between Portland and Seattle. Train travel, properly done, is a civilized way to travel.

As we traveled north, I contemplated river currents and fall colors and the beginnings of Puget Sound. We rode under the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and into the first area of industrial development, as well as suburbs and urban linear parks. Bikers, hikers, and parents pushing strollers looked up as we passed. Some waved.

I caught up on magazines and enjoyed a slow mystery.

Years ago my husband and I traveled by train along the Rhine River in Germany. The scenery looked like West Virginia with castles. Unhindered by constricted seating, we enjoyed conversation, reading, and watching the towns we passed.

Europe, smaller than North America, is ideal for trains. Some trains travel at speeds approaching 200 kilometers per hour or over 100 miles per hour.

One day perhaps the U.S. will develop an effective train system. Trains could connect with airlines—airlines for long distances, but frequent trains covering the areas between. Civilized slow travel.

A Post-Religious Society?

A couple of years ago, an article in The Economist emphasized the decline of religion in Britain. (“This sceptic isle,” August 13, 2016)

Churches are being sold. The percent of those describing themselves as “religious” has declined from 80 percent for those born before 1980 to 40 percent for those born after.

In the United States, the article pointed out, the nonreligious portion of the population rose from 16 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2014.

Who, the article asked, is going to take over the functions previously performed by religious institutions? Jobs like feeding the poor and counseling the grief stricken?

Of course, in the two millennia since the birth of Christianity, it has risen and fallen a number of times.

Byzantium, bastion of might and Eastern Orthodoxy, endured for over a thousand years before its military defeat by the Ottoman Empire.

But Ottomans failed twice to conquer Vienna and the rest of Europe. The European Renaissance and then the Reformation unfolded, movements both secular and religious.

After Christendom lost its way and became embroiled in barbarous wars, it declined, and the Age of Reason followed. However, Christianity eventually revived. Missionaries carried it to Africa and Asia. Other Christians were active in social issues, including the movement to abolish slavery. In the twentieth century, Christians took leadership roles in the civil rights movement.

Though the Christian faith now is going through a bad patch in Western countries, it is growing in Asia and Africa.

Somehow, one or way or another, resurrection seems to happen.

Old Order Dying

“A stable world order is a rare thing,” writes Richard Haass, a former U.S. diplomat who has dealt with such trouble spots as Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

Haass summarizes the history of the world order the United States helped create after World War II. (“How a World Order Ends,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2019.)

The U.S., tired of being dragged into two world wars it did not want, decided to work with allies on a new order. The new order would manage the growing Soviet threat with international organizations and treaties and cooperation between allies.

This order had its imperfections, but it staved off the totalitarian threat without another world war.

Now Haass fears a return to the end of this stable order that has worked for seventy years.

Factors influencing present instability include: the economic rise of a non democratic state, China; technological challenges; terrorist networks; drug cartels; smaller actors with the power to upend the order like North Korea; a refugee surge; climate change; greater inequality—to name a few destabilizing forces.

Haass believes the actions of the United States in leaving the world it helped create are disastrous: “It is one thing for a world order to unravel slowly; it is quite another for the country that had a large hand in building it to take the lead in dismantling it.”

He acknowledges the need for the U.S. to put its own house in order—dealing with debt, education, infrastructure, a better immigration system, the social safety net, and so on.

Concludes Haass: “The good news is that it is far from inevitable that the world will eventually arrive at a catastrophe; the bad news is that it is far from certain that it will not.”

Parents Teaching Children to Ride Bikes

Parents oversee their children’s first attempts to ride bikes as they oversaw their first attempts to walk. The journey on wheels may begin with tricycles, training wheels, or smaller bikes.

The children take short trips away, but eventually, they will take long trips to lives of their own.

Much of parenthood is teaching children the skills they need to leave home.

Those who become responsible, caring adults often are blessed with caring parents and stable households.

Thankfully, men and women can and do overcome incompetent, even cruel parents, but the resources required to undo the damage can be immense.

Not everyone is called to it, but to those who are, parenthood is literally the job everything else depends on.

No pay, mortgages, orthodontics

Sunny Blaylock is married to a U.S. diplomat. She and their children accompanied her husband to his assignment in Malaysia. Families were not allowed at his next post, however, in Pakistan, due to terrorist concerns.

She stayed a year in Malaysia with the children, while her husband worked to strengthen U.S. interests in Pakistan.

Her husband’s next assignment was a home assignment, to the U.S. State Department in Washington. The family looked forward to being together again. Ms. Blaylock received the offer of a job with a small U.S. contracting company.

She began working for the company, but then the government shut down. The company could no longer afford to hire her.

Her husband continues to work, but without pay at present.

Meanwhile, the mortgage must be paid, and their orthodontist has told them that their daughter needs braces . . .