Fawaz had many good friends who were medical specialists and they looked after the health of our family during our stay in Syria. Some of them had trained as doctors in Russia. One of his childhood trustworthy friends was Doctor Fawaz, a neurologist, who had studied in St. Petersburg, where he met his wife Luda, a pharmacist. Fawaz would telephone him if the children or I were ill and Dr Fawaz would come to visit us, in our home, at any time of the day or night.

My dear friend and fellow artist was Doctor Olga and she was married to Doctor Rafeak. He too, studied in Russia and he met his blonde haired, statuesque wife at the same university in Moscow.

Olga and I became good friends and we shared many interests in common. However, at the beginning of our friendship we did have difficulty verbally communicating with each other because she spoke Russian and Arabic with a Russian accent, which was difficult for me to understand. She had learnt to speak Arabic at a college whilst studying in Russia. On the other hand, I had taught myself to speak my version of the Arabic language and was oftentimes embarrassed by my lack of grammatical knowledge. Fawaz was not concerned about my mispronunciations of his beautiful aurally aesthetic language and he did not have the patience to correct every word that I mispronounced, so I floundered along with my own interpretation. Olga and I managed a beautiful friendship and we connected on a deeper level that often didn't need verbalization. She was a gynecologist and worked from her clinic that was built onto her husband's family home. She had two young boys and lived with her in laws.

She was homesick for her country, mother and sister. Her patients mainly came from the small villages that surrounded Skelbieh. The women would give birth in her clinic. They were from the Muslim faith and their husband's were pleased that their wives were in the care of a compassionate and skilled female doctor.

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