MASON

Around ten years ago...

“Diwana Armanaz,” read the small piece of cardboard that the tall, thin, brown-skinned man held at the exit of ‘arrivals’ in the airport.

He was indeed nervous, but nobody would ever know that.

He was the kind of man that was raised to be a ‘man’ in the old meaning of the word, suffering in silence and having no idea on how to feel or interpret feelings in any way. Too shy to find a girlfriend that one day would become his wife, he grew older, and tired of being alone while thinking of himself as too old to learn how to get a wife that he would really love, he found the way to get a mail-order bride.

She was beautiful, at least from what he had seen in the pictures.

“How was it possible that she’s available?” he thought more than once. “What would I do when she’s right in front of me?” he thought right then and there as she was just steps away from him.

The airport’s automatic doors opened and all the arriving tourists, visitors, and family members walked