Word: vera
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...Instead, Vera's life is often lonely and sometimes cruel. Classmates sense that she is different. At a party last year, the boys decided they would ask every girl to dance -- except Vera. The parents of Vera's best friend no longer allow their daughter to spend the night at the Ziemans' apartment...
...Vera is shunned because she is indeed different. Although her classmates are apparently unaware of it, her parents are Jewish refuseniks. She cannot discuss this with her would-be friends, which adds to her isolation. Since applying for permission to leave the Soviet Union in 1977, the Zieman family has lived in an excruciating legal and social limbo...
...time Vera wrote to the Reagans last month, many of the country's better-known refuseniks had been granted permission to leave, and so the Ziemans have now moved into the spotlight. Americans who have met Vera cannot resist comparing the cherry-cheeked, curly-haired moppet to Little Orphan Annie. The Reagans considered visiting the Ziemans this week but decided that this might hurt rather than help their chances of getting a visa. The President does plan, however, to talk to Vera's father Yuri and a dozen other refusenik families at Spaso House, the U.S. Ambassador's residence...
Religion was only one reason the Ziemans asked to emigrate shortly after Vera was born. "We've always thought differently from most Soviet people," explains Tanya, 48. "We couldn't read the books we wanted or listen to the music we wanted or travel to the places we wanted to see." Before applying for an exit visa, Tanya was a professor of English at the Institute for Foreign Languages; her husband, 50, worked as a computer designer at the Academy of Sciences. After applying to emigrate, both had to quit their jobs. Friends disappeared; family members felt betrayed...
...Ziemans explained to Vera the difficulties she would face as a refusenik daughter, and she has learned to be wary. She has been studying English privately since she was three, and tosses off expressions like "Come on, Mom" with the exasperated sighs of an American youngster. Yet she has never let her teachers at school know that she can speak English and studies Latin: they might become suspicious and incite their students to harass...