With nimble, practiced fingers she raced to capture the living parable before her eyes in the fleeting moments of sunset — a clutch of white desert lilies she happened upon while walking to the Algerian slum she called home. Lilias Trotter was no longer a starry-eyed missionary who was struggling to learn the Arabic language. Over these 20 years the desert had become home. She had grown accustomed to what had, at one time, appeared strange and foreign alongside her wealthy London upbringing.
My husband knows my history-loving self all too well. When my 35th birthday overlapped a business trip I had accompanied him on, he arranged (unbeknownst to me) for us to dine aboard the Queen Mary — one of the largest and most luxurious ocean liners of yesteryear that carried British royalty, historical figures, Hollywood stars, billboard crooners … and the likes of me.
The string of verses formed a golden chain of truth in the young woman’s mind that she went over link by link, verse by verse, in her memory. She sat motionless, face tipped towards the sun, deep in thought. Though God’s Word resounded in her soul, her lips didn’t form silent words and she didn’t dare breathe the words of the banned Book out loud.
Darlene felt the room sway as her hand groped for the barracks ladder. Her husband’s last words to her before he was carted away to his eventual death rang in her ears. Darlene’s surroundings screamed a different reality. The Japanese prison camp had every appearance of being Godforsaken. And now this — Russell was gone.