The Princess on the Pea's pricking past

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there was (1) a prince who wanted (1) a real princess for his wife. He had been searching (3) long and far but no girl had been (4) quite the right one. To find out whether his last candidate was (1) a real princess, she had (1) to sleep on twenty feather beds piled on top of twenty mattresses. He knew (1) that she was the perfect princess when she was telling him (2) that she barely had closed (4) her eyes the whole night. He saw (1) at once that she must become his wife since she had felt (4) a single pea through such a heap of mattresses and feather beds.

The forty layers of mattresses and feather beds are like the layers of our past experiences, and some of those past experiences can prick us even though they happened very, very long ago. As every mattress or feather bed has a different color or texture, past experiences or actions are expressed in different forms to clearly indicate what happened when in relation to other experiences or activities.

1) Simple past (realized) for activities/situations that began and ended in the past
2) Past Progressive (was listening) for activities that occured at the same moment as another action but began earlier and were in progress when the other (realized) occured.
3) Past Perfect Progressive (had been searching) to show the duration of an activity that was in progress before another activity in the past (realized)occured.
4) Past Perfect (had met) for an activity that was completed before another activity in the past (realized) occured.

From a long, long time ago to January 31, 2010. The incorrect past tenses of the original are corrected:

Andrea Elliott tells the story of Omar Hammamia, a "popular kid from a small town in Alabama," who became Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, an Al Qaeda sympathizer. She tells us that Hammami once called his wife to tell her "that he had traveled to Somalia because he wanted to meet her relatives. Indeed he was staying with Sadiyo's [his wife's] grandmother in Mogadishu...In other phone calls, he told Sadiyo and his parents that he was stranded because someone had stolen his passport...He started reaching out to [his sister] after his wife in Toronto had asked for a divorce... In October 2007 - less than a year after Hammami had landed in Somalia - he made his public debut as Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki...His high school girlfriend caught a glimpse of the video on the news ... He seemed like a shell of the guy who had taken her to homecoming, a boutonniere pinned to his lapel."