Georgette offit

Lonely in Chicago

Amanda She never considered the practicality of what she was doing and in fact, practicality was never really the point. Her coworkers thought she was being characteristically kind by using some of her breaks at the diner to rummage through an old, black, leather notebook some customer left behind in what appeared to be a highly unlikely attempt to track down the owner. Normally, forgotten objects like this book would be tossed into the lost and found box under the register and later tossed out altogether if never claimed. But Amanda was intrigued by this notebook the moment she picked it up. It was an old but clearly expensive and well-made leather-bound notebook that someone used as an address book. She only realized it was an address book because she flipped to the back half. The first half was filled with faded characters she did not recognize. Likely Arabic a co-worker suggested. Amanda was intrigued. Who still used address books? Did the book have different owners, or just one who learned or otherwise began using English at some point? What Arabic speaking country was the owner or owners from? Was it a tourist or one of Chicago’s many immigrants? Whatever the case, Amanda intuitively knew that if someone was walking around with this book during the lunch hour, it was for a reason. The book was clearly of value and irreplaceable. She committed to herself to find the owner. First, she had to identify the origin country. This was difficult as people generally do not include the country when writing an address. Its understood. But they often include cities. She eventually worked out that the owner was Moroccan, with lots of friends or family Fes and Chefchaouen.