Hisham and I will be married twenty years this February. Everybody said it would not work. He is Jordanian, Muslim, and I am Italian, Catholic. We met in Florida twenty-two years ago. What we had in common was nothing except youth.

He could barely speak the English language, and I thought Arabs were from India. Within a year I found out where Jordan was exactly and he could say "I love you" in broken English.

When we got married people actually placed bets at our small wedding in my family's dining room, that it would not last a year. He did not tell his parents he was married for almost five years. Hisham felt that if he failed at school his family would blame the marriage. Of course everybody from Arabs to Americans thought he married me for the green card. I knew he didn't.

I lived in his country for six years after graduation and had a son there. Through Hisham's eyes I saw the beauty of his culture and religion and the simple ways of his people. I incorporated my personality with his homeland.

Being from Brooklyn and living in Amman, Jordan, I was a bomb ready to go off at any time, he would say. But I stayed Christan, though I married by Islam. I did this to insure my children's rights under the Islamic laws. So, if anything happened to their father, my children could claim his inheritance. I still had my Christmas tree's each year, my Easter eggs and even a Halloween pumpkin in the window. In fact, I expanded as an American living in his homeland and had a true appreciation of my culture and country.

I also took some of their ways -- cooking, methods of mothering, socializing -- and it enhanced my own character in the long run. Throughout the years, I was not the Italian girl from Brooklyn, not the American married to the Arab, I was a beautiful blended person with two children and a man who adores me.