[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.He decided to seek asylum in Britain.He settled in Wales, where he helped other refugees with translation and completing their asylum application forms.Some months later, he was contacted by a friend who asked him if he could help a woman and two children from Sierra Leone who had just arrived in Britain.To his amazement he found it was Fatmata and his daughters.“I could not believe it,” he says.“She just started weeping—and I was crying tears of joy.She later told me she had given up hope of ever seeing me alive again.”HOMING BRUSHDuring the First World War, a U.S.soldier was on board a troop ship torpedoed off the French coast.He survived, but lost all his possessions.He also survived the rest of the war.In America after the war he was by the seashore near Brooklyn when he found a shaving-brush cast up on the shore.It had an Army number on the back.It was his own shaving brush.A RADIO YOU CAN RELY ONCanadian Mike Mandel tells this story about his father, who was active in the amateur radio scene in Toronto in 1976.Mike’s father knew his subject, having been a radio communications tutor with the British army during World War II.One evening a radio enthusiast friend came round to pick up some gear he had bought from Mike’s father and the pair lugged it from the basement of the townhouse to the car outside, where they stood chatting.Mike’s father asked the friend if he had ever heard of a 19 set.The friend shook his head and Mr.Mandel explained that the 19 set was an old Russian tank radio that he had used to train radio operators during the war.The gauges were in Russian but the radio had the advantage of being reliable and simple to use.He hadn’t seen one since the war, he said, but he’d love to get hold of one.They said good-bye and Mike’s father was walking back to the house when he noticed a pile of junk at the bottom of a wall.On top of the pile of junk was a 19 set Russian tank radio.“Dad said he got a chill when he saw it,” said Mike.“He took it from the junk pile and carried it to our townhouse.He plugged it in and it worked perfectly.All the ancient tubes were intact.”They made enquiries but never discovered where it came from.When Mike’s father died the 19 set was donated to Ottawa’s National War Museum, which displayed it with a photograph of Mr.Mandel senior seated at it.PHOTO FITColin Eves was standing outside his local shopping mall when a man approached him and introduced himself as Derek from the local post office.“I’ve seen a photo of you,” he said.“You were looking out over the harbor.” Derek took Colin back with him to the post office and produced some prints that had been found loose in some incoming mail.They were indeed pictures of Colin.His mother had taken them on a visit to see her son and had sent them to him but the envelope split open during processing at the post office.A WARM WELCOME FOR JACK FROSTNovelist Anne Parrish was excited to find a copy of Jack Frost and Other Stories, published in English, in one of the secondhand bookstalls beside the Ile de la Cité, in Paris.It had been a favorite book in her nursery in Colorado Springs, but she had not seen a copy since she was a child.She showed the book to her husband, who opened it at the title page, where he found the inscription: “Anne Parrish, 209 N.Weber Street.Colorado Springs.”A DIARY’S SECRET ENTRYA diary lost in a field in 1952 turned up just over a year later at the feet of its owner, who had stopped to light a cigar in the same field.Leon Goosens, a famous oboist, picked up the battered object and flicked through it.The bindings had sprung apart and inside he could see that the covers had been stiffened with squares of newspaper.This was normal practice in book binding at the time, so there was nothing unexpected about that, but what gave him pause was that this particular scrap of newspaper was about him.It was a piece from a nineteen-year-old gossip column about his marriage in 1933.MEET THE FAMILYSometimes things we have lost turn up in the most unexpected circumstances, many years after they disappeared.In the case of Kari Maracic, it happened to be her brother.Ila Manner was only seventeen when she discovered she was pregnant by a young surfer named Chris Maracic she had met at a Florida high school dance.Maracic had just been drafted to Vietnam so when the child, a boy, was born, Ila’s parents arranged for him to be adopted.On the adoption form Ila wrote that the parents’ occupations were hairstylist and oceanographer, jobs they had dreamed of doing.Eventually Maracic returned from Vietnam and the two were married.A year later, they had a daughter they named Kari.The son, named Ben, grew up knowing he was adopted, but not who his real parents were or that he had a sister.“While I was in high school I took a test to determine what I was going to be when I grew up,” Ben said.“One of the options that I was given was an oceanographer.My foster dad said that was amazing because the adoption papers had said that my real father was an oceanographer.”Kari meanwhile had moved to San Francisco where she shared a room with a girl named Erin Kehoe.One evening Erin invited Kari to a dinner.Also at the meal was a friend of hers named Ben Davis.At some point in the evening Erin asked Kari about her long lost brother.Kari told how she had looked for her brother for eleven years without luck.Ben told her that he had been adopted from Florida.This in itself seemed quite a coincidence.Kari then told him the date of her brother’s birthday and a startled Ben replied, “That’s my birthday.” Erin looked hard at them both.“Hey you guys do look kind of alike,” she said.But the possibility that they were brother and sister seemed to be dashed when Ben told them the occupations his natural parents had put on the adoption papers.When Kari next spoke to her father on the phone she told him about the meeting.He became animated when she mentioned the adoption paper occupations of Ben’s parents.He told her that at the time Ila had been studying to be a hair stylist and he had planned to be an oceanographer.At this point, said Kari, her stomach turned over.She knew she had found her long lost brother.VIETNAM JACKETThe anonymous winner of a “strange but true” story competition posted the following account on the Internet.“One weekend I went with a new male friend to a local flea market.My pal—a Vietnam veteran—had voiced a casual interest in finding a fatigue field jacket and I was keeping my eyes open for one [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]