Nothing Beats The Intimate Thrill Of A Letter

I wrote letters with my first Teacher, Mr. Ben Ammar Ali back in Northern Africa between age 7 to 31.
Then, he stopped writing. He lived in the Tunisian Desert. We would write to each other on embossed paper, weighed down with elaborate stickers. In my mind, the letters smelled of figs, which grow abundantly in Moulares. They came in the most exciting envelopes I have ever seen. Red and blue borders. A little logo of a plane, with AIR MAIL or PAR AVION on them…
The men in the stamps, the Romanian and the ones from Tunisia, had differently styled beards from those I saw in everyday life. Usually there would be multiple paper stamps and then circles of ink on top of those; a busy little corner of navigation. The envelopes from my first Teacher, later on turned pen pal, were cream, though the ones I had were a pale yellow.
Nothing exciting comes through the letterbox now. Bills, despite the fact that I long ago requested e-mail statements. Lucky me! Leaflets for pizza shops, though I am (um, ~~mostly~~, at least one day a week) vegetarian. Sometimes sheets from real estate agents inquiring as to whether I want to sell my condo. I admit I am lucky enough to receive books – Thank You, Amazon! – secondhand books I have ordered ~~obsessively~~ on-line.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate modern communication. WhatsApp can be fun.
Phone calls? I enjoy them more and more. Still, e-mail and for sure text don’t have the personality of real, inked words.
The takeaway from all this? The last impression is the lasting impression, so make it a good one.

Anyway, the address of the office can be found here, on this web site. Just saying.