And did I mention that I didn't convert? That I am not so much a Catholic as I once was but definitely NOT Muslim? But it pains me, some. That I am not really either, that I have the confirmation of my Catholicism, the christening of my girlhood, the blood of Christ and his body still lodged in the folds of my throat, but that has been so long ago now that I even forget the ritual of the Mass.

No one really asks me about that, except my dad and even he's given up that ghost, it seems. Of course, one is never Not Catholic, one is always an ex-Catholic. It stays in the blood stream. Especially mine, having been quite literally born in a convent, played with saints' teeth sewn on little green velvet pillows, and entered puberty so, so harshly in the halls of an Opus Dei school. There are so many stories there, but they will have to wait. No one asks me about them any way.

It is the other religion in my life that gets the most queries.

So, how does that work, that he can be Muslim and you haven't converted? she asks. Well, a Muslim man can marry a Christian or Jewish woman. She doesn't have to convert. But the kids have to be raised Muslim.

But somehow, the question not directly stated is, how can your lives mesh to one? How can he pray five times a day and follow the rhythm of Islam and yet you are not.

This song on the radio today. Traffic on the LIE, the trucks' crawling through the cloudy morning and this girl is singing she misses how they breathed together, how they dreamed together. She wants that again.

In my marriage we have our breath together but also our breath apart. Even if I were Muslim I wouldn't go with him to the Mosque, like my parents went to Sunday Mass at St. Edmunds. Not in Algeria, any way, where the women for the most part don't go to the Mosque, but pray privately, at home. Not here in Astoria to the Mosque Larbi goes each Friday. For most Algerians, the Mosque is men's space. It's different in other Arab countries, and of course there are women who go the Mosque in Algeria but this is about me and my experience, so maybe I should stay away from those phrases "Most Algerians." It too much reminds me of people saying, "Most Arabs" and then always something nasty follows.

But it hurts me a little. To be excluded from that part of his life and now that my son is getting older he's going to the mosque, too, to learn Quran, to learn formal Arabic. He's entering that space and I'm getting left behind. More left behind.

It isn't like I haven't considered conversion. There is so much about Islam that draws me in, starting with the language of the Quran. The poetry is achingly beautiful. The rhythms capture me and the rhyme! The creation story is WAY better than the Christian one. But there is more to a religion than it's sacred text, no?

Early in our marriage I had a dream I was under blue calm water and Larbi was just above me praying. It soothed me and I awoke so refreshed and calm. The prayer and the water, always my element of peace, were telling me something.

But I didn't convert.

Look, I don't want to go into all the issues that I hear over and over and over that may or may not play a role in why I am not Muslim. Of course, there's the ever popular debate over how Muslim women should clothe or not clothe themselves. This debate is SO fucking old now and still it rages on, being held on behalf of Muslim women but, on my radio and on the TV and in the papers anyway, not BY THE WOMEN THEMSELVES. Was that too loud? It's just that this whole, "We have to save the Muslim women from the sick Muslim men trying to control them" thing has been around for a long time, way before any of this 9/11 Terror Wars on. And I am sick of it. To totally inappropriately quote Amy Winehouse: "My stomach drops and my guts churn." So to hell with it. I am not going to discuss it here. Right.

There is also the part of me that likes to be a bit removed, to keep a bit of myself as I have always known myself intact. So much change come with marriage and babies. I have always loved to reinvent myself. I break me apart so I can start all over again. When I was 16, I'd dramaticly say: Because my whole world shattered, my poems showed that. They were choppy and made only some kind of filthy picture but blurry and crawling. Because that was what woke me sweating in those early Denver dawns. But, I would say, I am slowly putting myself back together and my poems reflect that. I've even written a poem, 'A House Called Beauty.' I'm coming together again.

And no matter how many times I shifted my shape over the years, I've always used the same pieces to put myself back together again. I make myself whole again into a face I come to recognize as my own again. And if I were Muslim, I am sure where I would put that piece of my puzzle and if all the other parts of me that I know to be true about myself, would they all click into place again?

getting ready for our trip to algeria every year is like preparing for the end of days. i go prepared for life without: tampons, zip lock bags, contact solution, packets of miso paste, my favorite pilot precise fine rolling pens in black.
today i went to target and bought calamine for the mosquito bites. i got 24 crayons for the plane. i got a ridiculous microphone for us to yodel into at the beach house.

the kids and i get nasty big misquito bruisey bumps at night in our apt. our apt is way, way up high on the last street before the crashing cliff down, down to sea and port. we have the 11th floor with no one above us and and look far out into the med. sea and the ancient port- russian ships docking and spanish ferries leaving, their lights trailing behind in the ending smoke of sunset.

our balcony is huge, an extra room, really. our apt is the only one with this. the apts below us have another bedroom in its stead, but i'll take this space a million times, yes! it's floor is smooth red tiles you might see in an oven. there is a faucet and every morning while the kids and larbi sleep i wake and fill bucket and then bucket and crash it over the tiles. i pull the long-handled squeegee to sloose the water down the drain. i sit and watch the sky and the silence that is long in oran, algeria, where the work day schedule is flexible, when it gets done at all. i wait til the tiles' lighten and dry off then i go to boil the coffee and spiral cookies on a plate, sniff last night's left-over mergez sausage and wilted peppers.

but the mosquito's. i wanted to tell you about the mosquitoes. the water supply is kinked up by the government. stops and starts without warning. sometimes, two, three days the faucets pant hot air before they gush again. so everyone keeps these huge barrels of water. and small pots and out on their balconies (and there are so many balconies in this city that is like a broken, crumbling paris in its architecture). so mosquitoes breed and breed and there are no screens on the huge windows that open out or up or both in tricky ways that only a few old men even understand how to repair anymore.

so, yes. mosquitoes wait and hide during the day and when the lights go out they feast. yes, really, they hide. before we go to bed larbi and sofiane will hunt them. they open up the closets, and, balled up t-shirt in hand, aim and fire. sofiane loves this and larbi really kills a lot of them. 'kelba,' (bitch) he says after every kill. why is it always she, i ask? seriously!

we have to bring plenty of deep-woods OFF. the other kind that is supposed to be family friendly or some shit DOES NOT WORK. the algerian mosquito's use that stuff for deodorant. it bothers them not in the least. every night i spray down the kids on the balcony with a sinking heart, trying to ignore the threat of cancer and whatever else that crap can lead to.

so, lots of OFF is always on my shopping list. i am going to Costco for that tomorrow.

larbi is kind of a one-man santa show in his family and every year he insists he isn't bringing much, but that is always FAR from the truth. he packs the presents he brings for his eight brothers and sisters and all their kids and all their grand kids in between my striped dresses and pink swim suit, between my hair conditioner and flip-flops. yes, he is the only one in his family living in the USA and, yes, he is looked up to by all the siblings as the peace maker, as the successful one who made it, but the mountains of stuff he feels he has to bring, or that he just wants to bring, i don't know, each year drives me crazy.

maybe i'm jealous that his generosity goes beyond me, maybe i want all that attention for myself and when we're there, his sisters, especially his sisters swallow up most of it. here in new york i get him all to myself but over there i am not at the center of the family any more. we cross the atlantic and the earth has tilted and the family structure is shifted.

i am not one for searching anthropology to better understand my life with larbi. my life is not an experiment and it is not a chance to rub shoulders with 'the other.' and anthropology separates too much what is a contiguous fabric. But. An anthro. professor of mine at columbia once told me that in algeria, the family unit is the patrilineal line, not the nuclear family.

so when we are here - larbi, sofiane, zakeria and i - we are a family but when we go to algeria, it is HIS family that is central. i feel it and it makes me so pissed. it is not our apt., it is the house of his sisters' brother, his house. i am tagged on as an afterthought. a baby machine. not that i feel my husband thinks of me in this way. it is just the climate of his family that i only come to understand in bites and fits, starts and screaching halts.

thank goodness you have a boy, my professor told me. at least his family can't harp on that. and it gives you status.

how did i get into all this? i started out writing about my lists of essentials to pack and end up no where i wanted to be, opening up parts of my life that take too much out of me to explain except in sweeping strokes and i give up feeling that i've entirely misled you.

memory of my sisters cooking

chicago kitchen

fried orange cheese they
flip with spoons
two small girls, tall on stools
leaning over the stove.

Spring rains leveled the grass,
lifted the trees and....
I was running through the constellations,
running blessed by michigan summer of lighthouses and blueberries and
welts on my legs ghost in the graveyard running past cat tails
scorched
spring rain leveled the grass
and it was into the hollow of the summer/

it was night when the storm of stars overtook us.
and pumping cool icy well water onto raggedy andy's face
and losing my shoes and walking quietly through the house
with all the windows shattered
his blond voice towering over me

lifted the trees but spread me out wide in my tom boy shorts in my
snuggle t-shirt

spring rain leveled the grass
and its between the plum trees wicked black toes
and between the elms rotten sad trunk bowed as a circus elephant
between the briers of gooseberries: thin worms bloat and wait for
their tunnels to clear before they return underground.
i wait next to them.

spring rain leveled the grass and lifted the trees
and heat's open mouth was wide as the oven's
and when it swallowed me only the green fan could save me
the fan that started up by clearing its throat and lolling its head
and then beat itself into such a frenzy.

OH! to sing into the blades of the heavy metal fan, liberty green!

The joy of the reverb!

Postcards from North Africa

Postcard #1

Oran, Algeria

The lion is Front de la Mer, squared by all the ice cream parlors of Oran.
Kids run circles round it, climb and slip down its Parisian green back while their parents push back,
scraping the aluminum chairs and settle in, scooping up bright, bright ice cream.
Even in the dark the pink and yellow, slippery blue shine through.
This is summer in Oran and the children run wild until the last prayer calls
on all sides and its time for home, home, home.



Postcard #2

Marrakesh (what the postcard doesn’t show)

small sputtering tan mini-taxis fouling the streets with their old diesel engines,
the street crowded with Moroccan girls walking shoulder to shoulder,
shirts cut off over shoulder just above the curve of belly
hips swagger, and looking.

the Moroccan Men-boys with their cheap jeans slung low
hair oiled back
loafers shine in the night heat

the old women waiting at bus stops,
their bulging woven shopping bags torn in corners sprouting cilantro’s muddy ends,
earthy carrots, turnips for the Friday couscous

these are the people here
not those not those women sitting in spotless white caftans and gold hoops,
watching a fantasy happen far below their starry hotels’ rooftop terrace

not these pasty Germans in earth-tone sandals sitting in bleeding heat getting stung by the black venom henna paste that curls round and in and round and out
while the sellers holler cool cold juice orange juice impossibly cold and pulpy in the furnace of the square, calling out greetings in every language

these are the people who live here, young boys of gangly legs and just a hint of fuzz on his upper lip and the old man who approaches, pushing his white hair back but not nervous, not really.
this, too is a trade, here.
he is shopping. just as I finger the glittering sequined slippers, the hint of sheep still in the purple leather he is tentatively he
he hesitates and then traces a single finger of the boy as they walk away together.

Ramadan. Day 4. Sig, Mascara, Algeria (08.25.09)

The heat here covers your mouth and you've no energy to scream. A small breeze but no relief in all the sun blinding, no, binding your eyees closed into your scull.
Now you smell sweet figs in syrup bubbling next to Ras el-Hanout spices and fine grains of sheesha bubbling up to the surface of the harira soup.
I sneak and eat soup with Zakeria. She makes no comment but takes note, politely, if that ca be, that I've broken the fast. That in fact I never have fasted more than 1 hours time.
Outside the pushcarts line up, blocking off the street- grapes and figs soft and ripe, in their green or black skins, some split. On the corner is sardines. The seller splashes handfuls of water over them to keep them glistening but it is 95* and not yet noon, so fat lot of good that does the silvery stinky skins. My skin is crawling misquitos suspend from the ceilings elaborate molded ceiling.
Spindly dancers, the bugs wait out the day for the sun to dampen the sky in peach and moon to cut the sky into night. But the edan calls for prayer and all the world goes silent. All the city folds in on itself and in every home the feast of evening begins.

here is what we see in Ein Frani, Algeria in July : shine the flashlight on the garage wall and fat juicy crawlies grey with centipedal like legs- fatter but much like Rollie pollies- they'll drop in their effort to keep out of the lights path.
they don't like the light ( a lizard as grey as the dust is hanging from the corrugated tin roof's white washed corner you'll see flies, flies , flies because below the watermelon rinds are rotting on the edge of the sea
youll see starlings fighting midair above the silent sea/ you'll see yourself covering between your legs even though the iron door to the yard is shut and all the houses are way below your fence line and your husband and kids are asleep/ here is what you find in July: the water is so, so still all day and then, just suddenly waves begin to crash an d wind begins to pull and stir/ maybe now you'll sleep
here is what you'll see: your husband is called away from the house for an emergency at his sister's house:
here is the emergency: his niece and his sister want his approval of a marriage match she might make ( the niece) and the prospective husband is coming for coffee and so
you'll see him slam the water bottle down in front of your son because he (your son) is pulling him one way (toward the toy boat his papa promised to take him to buy) and
another way by his sister who most days of the week (except Wednesday, the only night her husband spends with her, wife # 2) except the one day she thinks most days HE is her rightful husband to spoil and prod, so sit next to in the car's front seat, to cook special cuts of lamb for, to pull out the red, centered heart of the watermelon and place it specially into his hands,
to lovingly sift Cinnamon through her fingers into designs of dots and loops into the words 'I love you, Mohamed" in Arabic onto the plate of rice pudding cooling on the plate: stop and digest that please: I love you, Mohamed, something even I, his wife of 9 years would be shy to write on a plate of sweet, creamy dessert. she does not see that this might not be normal

this is what you'll see: the starlight cups the windows/

this is what you'll see: heat so still land thick firm no relief comes from lieing down or cold water/
only when you sit and fold your whole body into a huge bucket of water (who care the rolly pollies have mostly drowned there?) dress on, underwear on, and try to pour water over your head
this is what you find in the market of Kristel in mid-July- measly corn, zucchini, zucchini, green beans potatoes a light brown thin skin that fries like paper in the oil, foot long branches of mint and parsley and cilantro- cilantro always with flowers on top, tiny white flowers/ this is what you find in the center of the marke: men elbowing each other to get to the fresh spring water that comes from the crack in the mountain's wall just outside the mosque. the water is so sweet and cold and pure from the dead volcano of Kristel.
this is what you'll smell: fig leaves;. even if you pick one leaf and use the sticky, burny white sap on the end of the leaf's stem to try to burn the tiny wart on right hand off, even after that you come home and you put the one largish leaf on your window sill, you'll smell it whenever the wind begins to stir again in the afternoon.
this is what you'll smell: the first, barely ripe figs sitting in a green bucket being fanned by a small child to keep the flies from laying eggs, eggs, so many eggs they will burst open and sparkle black caviar seeds of flies as they did in the fig tree beside the abandoned house that was planted by a frenchman who returned to france abruptly in 1962 after the revolution forced them all to flee, flee, flee and which now belongs to a man who has now immigrated to france to work.
you'll smell the hot round loaves of bread, golden brown and just crusty, a sprinkle of black seeds across its face.
this is what you'll smell in mid to late-July in the Northwest of Algeria when you speak half the language but have forgotten your french, remembering it only in bursts and mostly when the english word with an accent passes as french and you have to communicate something to the mother of a small child who is jabbing your child under his eye repeatedly.
oh/ you will also smell the fig leaf when it is so still that the flies seem to bring a breeze and the rooster calls in a sick voice for a bride and one of the green, green pears you bought at the market yesterday burns your throat it is so unready but you keep eating it anyway and the cicadas whirl up and down up and down in dizzy voices and the rooster god damn/ the rooster is waking up the baby/ not quite a baby but 2 now and still nursing and in diapers but able to talk and demand demand demand/
and the older son torchorously wakes up the younger one all the way and you forget the fig leaf and sea and get up the make coffee because now it is coffee time again