and the day in sig passes slowly in the heat
they pressure cookers have a sharp ping to them like the buzz of a tv and they are furiously boiling the evening meal
the meal is a process that takes the whole day
she paces herself
first the soup and the main dish: small balls of koofta meat set into the heads of artichokes and boiled in broth with chick peas
later if it is cool she will knead bread maybe white and maybe whole grain too just barley flour and yeast and salt and water set to rise and then shaped and thrown onto hot black pan to cook and its best when it is just a bit burned by the heat and the grains inside are soft and full

but if there is no bread or if there is bread she will take a nap in the heat sleeping on the long couches that line the living room whose fabric changes with the seasons

because the afternoon is long even if you have 6 of your own kids plus 2 not your own plus a husband and his brother and the man who watches the building going up night and day and night again so the steel beams don't get stolen but whose only company is the many stray cats who crawl under the high metal fence for a quiet place to eat the sardine they stole from the dust where it fell

what have i gone with this§

ok

what i am saying is my sister in law has so so many people to cook for she jokes she has a restaurant and its true that she has the oven from one where she roasts three chickens for dinner and then bathes them in their own fat and dusty spices she hums as she looks for in the wooden cabinet falling off the wall

one of the people who comes every ramadan meal is an old woman who dresses in the traditional white cloth when outside
she wraps it around her waist it falls behind and tucks it into the waist band of her skirt
the fabric is not a white though but a cream that has passed thru summers dusty with the wind from the sahara and fought off the winter that brings only icy rain but no snow
women have worn this cloth this way
after they have wrapped it around themselves the old women the women who learned from their mothers while the french where still here these women bite the last fabric in their teeth so that their faces are sort of shielded though not hidden all the way
this is the algerian way
the way in sig
but so few women do this anymore

this woman lives in an apt without windows she tells me
her face is so leathered and wrinkly and she is skinny and talks with phlem behind her voice so that i barely understand her and try to nod and add in generic phrases that fit into almost any conversation here
phrases that always almost contain some sentiment about the power of god the goodness of god or thanking god

on her forehead are old black tattoo stripes going down to just between her brows

L tells me that parents did this to their daughters in the time of the french so the french wouldn't find them beautiful and lust after them or ask for them or i am not sure what life under a colonial power would be like when france thought of algeria as france except with these natives that wont quite be trained the way they would like

can she really live in an apt without windows
no no
it is just that the window is only in the front of her apt and that is the kitchen and the window is large and opens very wide but all the way in the back of the house when the air is still in the afternoon before the fresh breeze from the back hills of sig returns
and she rests there but gets no relief until she comes to this house just before the adan calls for sunset prayer and the air is rushing thru the hallway where she sits on the prayer rug and waits for it: prayer and the glasses of ice water that will follow one after another


so the day finishes sitting next to this woman pouring her glass after glass of icy water she lifts with fingers of old knuckles buckled and swollen up

the day finishes with her putting the leftovers in her margarine tubs she brings with her so she can eat later before she sleeps because she will not eat from the time you can see a thread in the dawns light until the call of the sunset prayer and it is august and the day is so very long

the day ends with her drinking her coffee with four sugars and again wrapping her cloth around her and taking the stairs carefully down again because she is already 84 and is sick in the way every woman in algeria past the age of 65 is sick and can take up the whole room with her health complaints that are both vague and seemingly life threatening

the day finishes with S and Z going with their cousins for lemon sorbet

the day finishes and i have had enough and long for my own bed and my terrace and my own coffee pot that i wash and fill as i wish

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

but the next morning after i had been in sig three days i woke and decided enough was enough and even if i had to be alone in the apt at least our apt in oran was blessedly blessedly cool and a view of the sea and my very own coffee pot i am free to use whenever i choose
but it is awkward here to be alone at home
there are dangers that wouldn't emerge at my door of b4 in astoria
but those i will have to tell about another time

i woke up and decided that once again i needed my own space and that the raging fury in my head of heat needed to be soothed

so here is what i had to do to get home:

send S downstairs to tell benouda that i wanted to go home this morning

S comes back to tell me that we should stay until night time when he can go to the mosque for the evening ramadan prayers and then race off to eat fresh lemon ice cream with his cousins and then play ball
basically Benouda tried to convince S to stay in hopes that he would convince me

i send him back down again and he comes up with another reason for us to stay and i send him back down with this: if they do not drive me i will walk back along the highway with my kids in the dust until i can hitch a ride with a trucker

so they bring me back home again

and in the morning i wake with all the heat rubbed out of my head and i throw water over my terrace floor and i put my feet up and i sink into the view of the sea and sky and the whole city around rising up behind me

to be in sig

to be in sig algeria in the house of my brothers in law is to close myself in to a world that is heat and heat and ear splitting heat in the day
all day all day is ramadan
i pretend i am not eating so i hide in the bedroom that is our when we visit here and munch apples with the door closed
god how i long for coffee
during nap time which is for everyone not just children even though one of my children the older one never ever naps but i do
during nap time i sneak to the kitchen and steal stale bread from last night%s feast

the day goes something like this
i wake up with the kids because the light is coming through the blond glass windows and the sound of the motor bikes are taking over the streets below
i guzzle water and wander out to see who is awake and if maybe i can somehow manage to pour a cup of coffee and get back to the bedroom before anyone notices
i am so afraid of being caught i still after three days have not found to courage to try out this plan
the floors are all tiled in large brown and or blue squares that when they throw water on them later will be insanely slippery the only major deterrent for boys wandering through the house to avoid the room being cleaned
this might be a choice that the women have made without knowing
this slippery floor tiles that are hard and perfectly melded to each other not at all like lynolium in my apt
but as i know that it is my brother in law who choose the floors for this house this cannot be true
already i am ready to go back to sleep
i lay in bed thanking god for the air conditioner that is fixed to the wall
i have been here sig algeria in the august heat when they did not have an air conditioner and the pain that is evident in my head now was so so much worse
the kids have nothing to do until their cousins wake up so for now i try to entertain them by reading magic school bus and harry potter alternately
the day proceeds with exactly nothing to except pretent to offer my help in cleaning but dissapear when the actual work is being done by my two oldest nieces yamina and fatima
i am hiding in the bedroom with the ac on and the door closed when i hear the bottle of soap being flicked over the floor
splat in quick jumps the sound falls on the floor
then will come the buckets of water and the foudwar which is a long handled squeegie thing is pulled along the floor directing water toward the bathroom door where there is a hole in the tiled floor that the water goes down and the huge water bugs come up
the floor will dry and then i will come out and stand by the door to the kitchen where my sister in law is beginning to cook already
already she has placed in the pressure cooker two frozen tomatoes two frozen carrots a handfull of flowering cilantro and parsely flat leaf meat is of course lamb and i am sure it is frozen too tho i cant tell exactly
the spices are little stars and colorant and ras el honout and salt and heavy pinches of black pepper that is so much spicier here than in the usa or spain or elswhere i have eaten black pepper
there are two onions chopped into four parts each and maybe a zucchini
the fire is high under the pressure cooker that has a sticker that reads secret in cooking is fast
the chinese really abuse the fact that this is not an english speaking country when they print their labels for products sold here
i often read the instructions on the ac universal remote or the instructions on how to put together a toy and laugh out loud and have no one to share it with

so my son is going crazy here so i have to go maybe more soon now that i have somewhat figured out this insane keyboard but not the punctuation so for that i am sorry

Espana

To people watch in Alicante is to find all mannor of elegance and sweat, elegance and buzz cuts, elegance - the high-waisted skirt fitted to the slim woman, now past children, now in a phase of her lfe she has found power and confidence in her straight spine and sure of her beauty

when the theatre opens the seniors are lined up, older women in eyeshadow and gold hoops with silk scarves and loneliness- B. would love it here. People do not get old and fade out, shuffling through their last decades with degradion and solitude- they go to the beach with their friends, sporting a new red poka-dot bikini, their beach chairs and coka in hand. they dress up to walk BLVD Espana in a shift dress and low heels, hair curled and smart, colorful glasses framing her face, bringing out the green hazel in her eyes

I love Spain. the quiet evenings of green olives and salted fish, the buttered toast and cafe con leche to open the day.
the men here are not without style either. While S and Z played on the playground of trains and planes and automobiles. a gentleman walked by with a crisp peach shirt, short sleeves, top white button undone. sunglasses shading him from the last Med´n sunlight

The market here, indoors at the top of the city. 1921, the 1st floor you enter on in all meat but no smells of the dark edges, the slit of fur from fat here. just gorgeous meat, neatly arranged and seperated. Maybe I am a sucker for the organization of the state. the cleanthliness codes and control regimes/ if I can buy four types of heirloom tomatoes, tigre babies, sweet fat cherries, marbled that just fit in your palm and firm bathing beauties, so be it. bring on the power of the state.
there are dried mushrooms and fresh- oyster and portabella, so many I don´t have the names for/ I´d simply point and order / grill with deep green olive iol, crumble of sea sale and serve.
the artichokes and fava beans, the white donut peach- donut peach I´ll rename olympus peach-

we wander to the fish and such silver fresh sardines brigh and luster dazzling in a way the frozen ones I buy in NYC have lost- sunfish and emperor and the impossibly strange lemon fish- a great Red Armored fish with its mouth puckered an even deeper monsterous red- the size of a huge belly of an old man- the thick red skin with seeminly no scales-
the skate a light, virgin pink and white sliced and spread /

we buy black figs and white peaches, raw and salted sunflowers and when we leave an hour has passed by under the vaulted ceiling and thick cooled walls/
Ah, Espana
Ah, Viva

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!