Encrypted Catch by Susanna Zaraysky (book series for 10 year olds TXT) 📕

Modern love may involve communicating across various physical, linguistic, and cultural borders. The Internet and mobile phones may connect us, but technology can encrypt the truth.

I have a knack for meeting men I am interested in -- right before one of us is about to leave the country. Distance does make the heart grow fonder, sometimes unnecessarily so.

Javier and I met at a French conversation group, where we had spoken to each other once six years earlier. I recalled his name and that he was a non-smoker, danced flamenco, and practiced yoga -- very atypical for a Latin American man. This Colombian software engineer with a warm smile didn’t remember me at all.

Mildly flirting in French, he helped me eat my warm molten chocolate cake with chocolate fudge filling, vanilla ice cream and crunchy chocolate shell. The French conversation was temporarily interrupted when Javier mentioned something to me in English. I was pleasantly charmed by his light accent that reminded me of the Mexican actor Diego Luna. He asked me for my number and I dictated it to him in Spanish, wanting him to know that I spoke his language. Later, I gave him my card. He walked me to my car and quietly said, “Te hablo mañana

” (I’ll call you tomorrow.) Driving home, I laughed at myself for having found a romantic prospect just a few days before leaving the country, again!

The next morning, I was beyond happy to get an e-mail from him asking me if I wanted to attend a flamenco dance show two days later.

La luna se esta peinando
En los espejos del rí

o

The old white haired Spaniard stood with his cane, crooning this beautiful song, his deep voice resonating across the room. As I sipped my sangria next to the alcohol-free colombiano, just a few steps away from the passionate dancers loudly pounding on the tiny wooden stage in the small Spanish restaurant, I felt like I was a guest at a private juerga. I was enchanted to be with this charming South American with whom I could wax on philosophically in English and joke around in three languages. Why did I have to leave in two days?

“I am going to Macedonia to be an election observer for a week. Afterwards, I’ll visit Greece and Germany. I’ll see you when I get back but I don’t know when that will be.”

What a great way to plan a second date!

I told a male friend about my newfound romantic interest. He said, “He’s Latin American, speaks French, dances flamenco, doesn’t drink or smoke, is a vegetarian, and appears to be single. What’s the catch?”

I wondered as well.

While I waited for my flight at the San Francisco airport, Javier and I spoke for over an hour by phone about our families, relationships and cultures. I was surprised that he would talk for so long while he was at work. Didn’t he have better things to do? After our call, I ventured to the departure lounge bar decorated in green for St Patrick’s Day and ordered a Bellini.

Infused with champagne and peach juice, I relaxed in my airplane aisle seat, wondering if I should cut my Greek and German trips to see Javier sooner. But I was being silly, I had just met the man!

In the country officially known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, I was in a linguistic haze, resurrecting my Serbo-Croatian from when my life in post-war Sarajevo in 2000-2001 and speaking to the other foreigners in various languages. I was in a new place and in an old one at the same time. Being in the old Turkish part of Skopje reminded me a lot of Sarajevo, with its cobbled streets without cars, small shops, and restaurants grilling meat. Nostalgia for my life in post-genocidal Bosnia clouded my mind as I learned about the ethnic conflicts in Macedonia.

While I was both in the past and the present, I was also here and there. Javier and I wrote long multilingual e-mails and he signed up on Skype just to talk with me. With the nine hour time difference, we devised a fun game of finding each other online. When I woke up in the morning, I talked to him while he was at work. I enjoyed hearing his soft voice. His headset was so clear that I could even hear the light sounds of moisture in his mouth when he opened his lips. In the afternoon, we chatted as he was lying in bed. Sometimes, he left his laptop on all night to see when I came online. At night, I looked to see if he was awake in California and he talked to me before I fell asleep. Talking for hours about our lives, cultures, travel, religion, relationships and beliefs, I felt close to him and interpreted his efforts to communicate with me across time zones as an interest in me. It’s not common for me to find a man who can navigate the intricacies of different languages while talking about all sorts of subjects and make me laugh. I treasure these men when I find them.

However my romantic intrigue wasn’t enough to keep me from succumbing to the cold Balkan climate. I was in the land of Alexander the Great, but I wasn’t as strong as the Balkan hero. The snow wore me down. I got extremely sick with a cold and had to miss part of election day. Congested, I laid in bed coughing and vacillated between sweat and shivers. Weak and with no appetite, I barely made it through the vote count in the cigarette smoke-filled polling station, amidst election commission members yelling at each other.

I cancelled my trips to Greece and Germany, figuring that my body wanted me to go home and see this Colombian man again. With my sexy and ill Janis Joplin voice, I was eager to continue our intense Skype conversations despite my feeling sick. The balsamic sounds of his voice did not cure me. I could barely get up and attend the election debriefing. My local coordinators called a doctor to come to my hotel room. Even though I was fatigued and sick, I managed to explain my sickness in Serbo-Croatian. The physician prescribed antibiotics and told me that I was fit enough to board an airplane.

I came home to a warm California after having left during winter-like weather only eight days prior. The drastic change in temperature confused me and my exorcised Southern Slavic language was still ringing in my ears.

Javier and I met two days after I returned and I just didn’t feel a strong connection. I was still partially sick and with no appetite. Maybe he was not the same person I thought I was talking to on Skype. Hearing his voice so clearly on the Internet made me feel like I was with him, but I wasn’t. I was mad at myself for having fallen for the image of him that I had created from our Internet communications.

My personal frustration was soon replaced with out of body sensations. It was too warm. I had trouble seeing. While typing on my computer, I felt like I was floating; there was no gravity. I meditated and imagined my body, but it didn’t feel like my body. I had a constant feeling like I was going to fall. My friend drove me to my doctor. After running many tests, the physician determined that I was fine. She said the physical stress of travel can make people feel depressed or have out of body experiences.

I had traveled to over 50 countries and had never been so disoriented. Was I heartbroken?

Knowing that I had not been in a normal state of consciousness, I wanted to give Javier another try. Maybe I hadn’t felt as close to him as I had while in Macedonia because I was in fact not even able to feel like myself!

Soon after, when I was feeling better, we met again and I immediately felt physically attracted to him and enjoyed being with him, only to find out two days later there was a “catch”.

“I don’t want you to get hurt. I need to tell you that I don’t think I am emotionally available for a relationship now. I just broke up with my girlfriend. We had lived together for two years.”

I knew he was moving from his ex’s apartment while I was in Macedonia, but he didn’t talk about her much and I didn’t feel comfortable asking about her. He seemed so excited on Skype that I didn’t think he was upset.

“Talking to you while you were in Europe was safe for me. You were a distraction from what was going on with my breakup. Since you didn’t know when you were coming back, I didn’t feel any immediacy in our interaction.”

I was an escape to a man on the rebound! Our distance made my heart grow fonder while his thoughts wandered away from his emotional pain! The Internet was a false bridge.

I didn’t know what to do. Still attracted to him, I had trouble keeping my distance. Eventually, my resistance grew, and I stayed away.

After three weeks of not seeing each other, he invited me over on a hot day to have ice cream at his house. He talked the whole time while we ate partially melted ice cream, not taking any interest in me. I was wondering what was going on. We used to have great, long talks and now he was in his own world. Breaking up the monotony of his monologue, he showed me a video of his last flamenco dance show. Watching the show on the small TV screen was more entertaining than he was but that fun didn’t last long. He brought out his laptop to play part of a podcast about the terrible economy. I just wanted to spend time with him and chat and not worry about our impending economic armageddon. But after the podcast, he launched into a lesson on encryption software en español. Instead of showing me how to hide files, I wanted him to de-encrypt the entertaining man and good listener I had talked in Macedonia and bring him back to life!

Luckily, his female roommate came in. Hallelujah! I was wondering if his next move was to teach me how to de-fragment my hard drive. I was happy that she interrupted my misery. Annoyed, Javier didn’t even turn around to face her as she was speaking to him. I struck up a conversation with her because I found her to be more interesting than my Colombian geek. If he had started the seduction with computer mechanics, I would have never fallen for him two months prior!

Once I finally had my feet firmly on the ground and was in front of him, I saw the encrypted catch: he was a geek at heart. There was no match between us.

Modern love may involve Skype conversations, e-mails and text messages that make us think we are connected, but we are still human and need to be next to someone to really know if we can be together. Computers can be cryptic. Our hearts and souls can feel.