MARRIAGE!!!

One of my good friends, Mark, happens to be a married guy. He is 26 in age, a lucky husband of a beautifull lady and a proud father of the prettiest baby girl ever.

Mark is committed to his responsibilities and always inclined to perform his duties. He is never distracted, not even by my demanding invitation - during the weekends, to watch Man U play Arsenal. Actually, I am a Manchester United die hard fun while he boldly claims to be a top Gunner.

I find him to be a settled guy, and I envy him for that. On the contrary, I pity him sometimes. OK, I know this is a little contradicting. But let me explain.

We were both on the dinning table, in his dinning room busy - not eating, but with a Programming project to tackle. We had preferred the table because it was wide enough to manage all the work we had a head of us. It was full. Papers, big Programming books, files, two laptops... it was actually full.The phase to cover was the Problem Definition, but we had a problem. There were no enough resources to help us achieve our goal. And this was simply because Mark never did his homework. Nevertheless, he wasn't concentrating at that time. He just seemed too disturbed, and to get a few things straight, I had to ask.

The problem was with mark's wife who wasn't in, and to make the matters worse, she had spent the previous night away. According to Mark, constant calls to her office during the day had yield no results. His wife had been to the office the previous morning and was reportedly in the field for official duties. Messages for her to return his calls were not yet answered, and this made him less enthusiastic about calling her again.

After listening to his explanations, I found the matter to be too big to mull over. At least not then. Yes. Honestly speaking, what could I had done? Jumped into conclusions? Hey! Not me! And neither did I know how to console him.
So I just stared at him.

To my relief, he postponed the analysis of the project work and kindly asked me to give him some time alone. And I respected that.

But I had to see him again immediately afterwards, to give the issue a followup. I had to know what happened and, at least, help where I can. So I met him later on and I realized that after I had left, he took Faith - his two years old daughter, to her bedroom and laid her on her crib. He went back to the dinning room, cleaned up the paper mess and finally went to the living room. He thought about calling her office again, but instead took a Bible and started leafing aimlessly through it. He eventually dozed off to a troubled sleep.

If I may quote him explaining, "They were chasing her, thoroughly enjoying her tortured run as they shot behind her heels, laughing as her frustration mounted. Suddenly she was in a cage with nothing to protect her from her pursuers, some holding crude weapons and others with guns. They would undoubtedly tear her to shreds".

"The leader of the gang sneered at her, opening the roof of the cage and then closing it like a hunter teasing a trapped animal on pointless ways of escape, knowing the prey had no chance to escape".

Then somebody was shinning a bright light on his eyes and shaking him at the same time. There was shrill in her voice. Mark had woken up with a start... It was her! Jennifer!

She was from a job related trip where they had to camp for the night. I just don't understand what Mark was expecting, or suspecting. I mean, she is working under the UN!

Hmmm... Marriage!