Last week there was a program in Pristine’s school called Arabic Day and in the note from her teacher, they are required to wear traditional Arabic dresses. It also said, “if the children are not Arabs, please let them come in their school uniforms“. I thought it would be interesting to have her wear something unique so I tried to look for a costume but found nothing and she went to school with her uniform, anyway, it was not required.

At 10 am, I got a phone call from her teacher saying, “don’t you have any costume for Pristine? Her class has a song and dance number and she is one of the lead dancers/singers.”

What!? This is the first time they told me that! While I felt bad they didn’t give me enough time to prepare (I could have searched more to find the proper costume), I rushed out and asked my Muslim colleagues where likely I can find an abaya, in children’s size. I rushed to the store and grabbed whatever I thought would fit her, handed to my husband who drove from his office to meet me at the store and he rushed off to the school. What a hectic day!

The program went well. Pristine danced so gracefully with an Arabic song in the background. She even loved her costume, though very plain and less sophisticated than the others.

You can click on the photos to enlarge. This was taken from far so it’s not really clear.

I love the costume of the girl in the middle. Next year, I’ll find something fancy for my girl too. Pristine is in the right-most of the three girls in the center. She is wearing a traditional black abaya (Arab women’s dress robes) with flower embroideries. 

Only M attended the program because I was caught up in a meeting and he had videotaped the presentation but with very poor quality because it is from the digital camera. Now we know we need to buy a new video cam to document the little girl in school.

Oh, and when the program ended with the curtain going down, Pristine shouted, “Bye bye Papa, I love you!”, to the delight of the crowd. All the while, our girl was aware of her father there in the crowd and acknowledged him.

The proud father stood there, amazed, shocked and soaring from happiness of course.

This writing exercise is fueled by the writing prompt “soar” at Sunday Scribblings.