the summer before entering grade 6, my mom, brother, and i spent almost three months with my dad in jeddah. being the place that it is, our vacation meant us staying inside the flat the entire day and having to wait until my dad came home at night before we can actually hit the malls.

my brother and i tried to make the most out of our vacation but given that everything on tv was in arabic and the only thing we can understand in the cartoon show we watched was "aiwa", we were basically reduced to creating weird shapes on the ref using the magnets my dad brought home from work.

that is until i discovered my dad's bookshelf and found lawrence sanders. however, before i could figure out why the girl kept killing her lovers whenever she had her period, my dad discovered me reading it, confiscated the book, and declared that i was in posseession of a book no ten-year-old should be reading. he then rummaged through his bookshelf and presented me with a book i won't ever forget: jeffrey archer's "a quiver full of arrows".

i remember reading and re-reading the book until it was time to come home to manila. by the time i went home, i knew i was in love with both jeffrey archer and short stories. once in a while, i'd come across a new novel or a new collection of short stories by jeffrey archer and i'd retire to bed with the book, foregoing food, drink, and baths until the book is finished.

ironically, i loved jeffrey archer so much that i've ended up sharing my books with my friends and failing to get them back. i don't think i have a single jeffrey archer book in my bookshelf.

that changed today. mindful of the fact that i've managed to spend every single minute at home glued to the television, i made myself promise that i will begin reading the way i did when i was back in college. after work, an officemate and i made our way to booksale at robinson's manila and began rummaging through the books available. she then declared that she won't buy a book over twenty bucks and made me begin looking for books that would fit her budget.

guess what i found.

a quiver full of arrows.

i convinced her that it was an amazing book and proceeded on telling her how i had come across jeffrey archer's short stories almost twenty years ago. i then went through the book trying to see if the twists at the end of the stories would come back to me or if, after more than half my life, i would hardly remember them. i didn't.

it took a while but i managed to convince her to let me buy (and take home) the jeffrey archer book (i bribed her with a P35 copy of "how stella got her groove back" and a promise to pay the fifteen peso difference).

i just hope that this time, my jeffrey archer book will manage to stay with me.