(I miss this boy like crazy)
Dear Zaq,
I am still hours from NY. The train rattles by greenery and a cowboy with steaming hot Irish sits across from me dreading our arrival in the stinking city.
The train is dreadful for lonely people and alcoholics. They are boxed in and their faces over faces split and end up raw nerves, live wires exposed to the elements. The alcoholics find each other before the end of the first hours aboard, hands anxiously crushing Budweiser cans in hand, shaking hands, spreading out the cards and guffawing at each other's jokes no matter how bad.
The lonely might try a little more, put a little more effort in. They try the grumpy German Grandma next to them, but when she turns her face decidedly against them, forsaking their desperate speedy monologue for the raw, ugly industry of Indiana, they give up and wander to the lounge car and join the drunks.
My headphones barely hold them at bay. Ton Waits rolls his drunken moon songs over me and I try not to smile, stare blankly into the patches of green outdoors or my think, hard backed book that sits propped open between me and the world.
I go back to NY still hungry for greenery, starving for the drugging smell of lilacs in the dusk, in the evening as the sweat-lipped kids rush by on clipping Big Wheels.
I am still looking for silence. I drink it in from all the still waters we pass.
It was wonderful to see you, Zaq. You have to visit me in NY. It's frantic and beautiful and covered in a filthy fabric of voices and frying shish kabobs and bright saris kicking up midnight blue screaming parrot reds through subway tunnels packed with bodies.
Bodies bodies eyeballs smeared against walls pressed up against my ass stuffed down my shirt.
In subway cars the wheels rolling and rocking they dig deeper in.
Amtrack Train again: Old women are better than men with silence, with solitude. One hand on paper, lipsticked coffee cup, head nodding vaguely to the outdoors, one hand always on that cup anchoring they hold on.
I am dreading NY. Despite my rave reviews and love of its insane streets, I can't sit still there. It is hard to find peace. I need to learn how to find silence in it all. Only then will I be filled and whole.
In (the summer of Chicago) look for stink trees, as my dad calls them; trees of heaven, as my old neighbor Mrs. Jones called them. The city is built upon their name. They line the 'L' tracks and will creep in your windows while you sit sloppy with sweat on the living room couch.
I decided I can do whatever I want. I just need to set what that is.
Write me a letter back if you will. Don't if you won't. I am not suck a good letter writer anymore, but the train inspired me. Maybe it was my own loneliness popping its head up.
Zaq, take care of that girl with bruises all over her. Tell her to buy Vitamin C with bioflavinoids for the bruises. She is someone destined to get fucked up by those drugs. Her body so openly, so visually rejects it. Watch her, Zaq. I had a nightmare.
love,
Merricat
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
Sunday Sunshine
Birthday Poem for Jana
In the Sunday Sunshine
Splash, kids in the bath
and the green wraps
round wood banisters
and gives me breath.
It's spring again.
But the crush of black ice
and layer after wet sloppy
still sits on my chest and only the
small voices of your crocuses
can start to nudge me open
to warm again.
The ginger carrot soup, the
fiery North African spices
kept me above the water
but give me more of these spring days,
more violet light through the petals, yours
and I might come alive again.
In the Sunday Sunshine
Splash, kids in the bath
and the green wraps
round wood banisters
and gives me breath.
It's spring again.
But the crush of black ice
and layer after wet sloppy
still sits on my chest and only the
small voices of your crocuses
can start to nudge me open
to warm again.
The ginger carrot soup, the
fiery North African spices
kept me above the water
but give me more of these spring days,
more violet light through the petals, yours
and I might come alive again.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
figs
to be in algeria in the summer, driving through heat with the windows whipping more at you. this defies what i love about the place. but this happens when we drive south to sig. the water is sucked from the air, though, so are the mosquitoes, and replaced by more of africa than i can bear.
we drove out to our farm, where, by late august, the sky and the earth are bony and blue, respectively, togetherly, and yet, and yet, the hallowed halls of snails cling to dead grass. where can they possibly come from? they stick like burs to the ends of the grass blades and i try to pick some off to take home with me as a reminder, as a way to keep a memory of this place, but they always end up lost in the filthy floorboards of our car.
the farm close to ours is owned by a neighbor who lives next to my husband's family in town. so, he is familiar to us. we have eaten dinner at his house while visiting the sea. he, being, the grand papa of the house. Ahbess, his name is.
there, on a farm close to ours, i climbed out of the car to chase my kids down and make sure no scorpions were black and poisonous and close to them. far off into the distance of empty land there are people visiting the farm, where no one lives, unless you count the saint.
driving through algeria, high into hills, you often see small white buildings domed with aqua blue. these house local saints, which is either a custom that is reviled and mostly ignored, by people like my husband, or very carefully attended too, much as the pomegrate and olive trees that often share the land where the saints rest.
but since my husband falls into the anti camp, i have never been up close to a saint's toom.
the kids are chasing what look like dung beetles back and forth across cracks and crannies in the sandy-colored earth.
it is ramadan and no one here will be eating for a couple of hours yet. that is partly why we are here. killing time while the women in the house finish up their Syrian soap operas and put the final touches on the sunset meal. the first meal of the day.
all around us are fig trees in full ripening glory. not just the fruit gives a sweet, thick smell in this dry air, but the leaves glorify the end of the afternoon. this is a fruit blessed by god, eaten by the Prophet. it gives grace and cures. and now, my husband walks toward me with a handful of its sweet fruit and gives them to me.
to be in ramadan, in a country where everyone all around me is fasting when i am decidedly not, is to exist in an unease. i don't know how to handle it. how to be polite to people who have not drank water ALL day in the blazing heat, who have not had one drop of coffee, when, by this time, two meals devoted solely to coffee have usually been observed. that is the word i am looking for. i do not know how to observe this time, when i am not Muslim, when i do not wish to fast, but i also do not wish to stick out like a sore thumb. and i do not wish to piss anybody off. and i do not wish to be viewed as more of an outsider.
my problem in life has always been this: i want to be accepted completely and yet viewed as apart from, distinct from. it is impossible and i am miserable for it.
but this is not just respecting another's religion. the whole country is living this experience and not me. yes, of course, some people must not fast. but i have yet to meet one of those individuals. and they are not visible on the street, drinking a coke or whatnot.
so do i turn from my husband, after taking the figs, and quickly stuff my mouth? do i hold them in my hand until we reach back home and i wash them and set them on a plate next to the sweet tray? do i try to ply them off on my kids, who both don't eat figs?
in this situation i do what my need strangles me to do: i turn from him and the eyes of the others and gorge on the sweet, seeded fruits.
we drove out to our farm, where, by late august, the sky and the earth are bony and blue, respectively, togetherly, and yet, and yet, the hallowed halls of snails cling to dead grass. where can they possibly come from? they stick like burs to the ends of the grass blades and i try to pick some off to take home with me as a reminder, as a way to keep a memory of this place, but they always end up lost in the filthy floorboards of our car.
the farm close to ours is owned by a neighbor who lives next to my husband's family in town. so, he is familiar to us. we have eaten dinner at his house while visiting the sea. he, being, the grand papa of the house. Ahbess, his name is.
there, on a farm close to ours, i climbed out of the car to chase my kids down and make sure no scorpions were black and poisonous and close to them. far off into the distance of empty land there are people visiting the farm, where no one lives, unless you count the saint.
driving through algeria, high into hills, you often see small white buildings domed with aqua blue. these house local saints, which is either a custom that is reviled and mostly ignored, by people like my husband, or very carefully attended too, much as the pomegrate and olive trees that often share the land where the saints rest.
but since my husband falls into the anti camp, i have never been up close to a saint's toom.
the kids are chasing what look like dung beetles back and forth across cracks and crannies in the sandy-colored earth.
it is ramadan and no one here will be eating for a couple of hours yet. that is partly why we are here. killing time while the women in the house finish up their Syrian soap operas and put the final touches on the sunset meal. the first meal of the day.
all around us are fig trees in full ripening glory. not just the fruit gives a sweet, thick smell in this dry air, but the leaves glorify the end of the afternoon. this is a fruit blessed by god, eaten by the Prophet. it gives grace and cures. and now, my husband walks toward me with a handful of its sweet fruit and gives them to me.
to be in ramadan, in a country where everyone all around me is fasting when i am decidedly not, is to exist in an unease. i don't know how to handle it. how to be polite to people who have not drank water ALL day in the blazing heat, who have not had one drop of coffee, when, by this time, two meals devoted solely to coffee have usually been observed. that is the word i am looking for. i do not know how to observe this time, when i am not Muslim, when i do not wish to fast, but i also do not wish to stick out like a sore thumb. and i do not wish to piss anybody off. and i do not wish to be viewed as more of an outsider.
my problem in life has always been this: i want to be accepted completely and yet viewed as apart from, distinct from. it is impossible and i am miserable for it.
but this is not just respecting another's religion. the whole country is living this experience and not me. yes, of course, some people must not fast. but i have yet to meet one of those individuals. and they are not visible on the street, drinking a coke or whatnot.
so do i turn from my husband, after taking the figs, and quickly stuff my mouth? do i hold them in my hand until we reach back home and i wash them and set them on a plate next to the sweet tray? do i try to ply them off on my kids, who both don't eat figs?
in this situation i do what my need strangles me to do: i turn from him and the eyes of the others and gorge on the sweet, seeded fruits.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Algiers, my first love
Algiers
This the gap-toothed sunset in Algiers
the mediterranean tamed and teemed in by port steel
by the mountained edge of the kasbah
the kasbah
whose arched alleys snaggle-teethed steps dark, ratty
whose thin cut streets break off
crumble at the edges into green-neon pharmacy signs
into rusty scales weighted with speckled bananas.
Algiers, Algiers you are wrapped in thin blossomed roads,
in the bellowing calls for sunset's prayer,
in drop-offs into the salty, puffy blue skirt of the mediterranean.
Cover up your face,
use the heavy shouldered roll of fog
use the spring-time trees
use the speeding train cars
but please hid yourself, your beauty.
This the gap-toothed sunset in Algiers
the mediterranean tamed and teemed in by port steel
by the mountained edge of the kasbah
the kasbah
whose arched alleys snaggle-teethed steps dark, ratty
whose thin cut streets break off
crumble at the edges into green-neon pharmacy signs
into rusty scales weighted with speckled bananas.
Algiers, Algiers you are wrapped in thin blossomed roads,
in the bellowing calls for sunset's prayer,
in drop-offs into the salty, puffy blue skirt of the mediterranean.
Cover up your face,
use the heavy shouldered roll of fog
use the spring-time trees
use the speeding train cars
but please hid yourself, your beauty.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Wedding, Rai Style
To have been married two years already and to have a wedding party already makes the celebration somewhat of a farce, but that was just the beginning. When my son was not yet a year and it was April or it is June, whatever it is not yet summer and we were in Sig, Algeria at my husband's childhood home. A lamb was purchased and slaughtered, the band from the Sahara was hired, and the invitations went out - which is to say that the kids ran around the neighborhood inviting people and some phone calls were placed to family who lived out of town. And, AND a girl was hired to dress me, pile on the make-up and in general, prepare me for the photographer who was hired.
A thing like a wedding party is dizzying anywhere, but in Algeria, where no one tries to prepare me in the slightest for the coming events, no matter what they are, it is dizzying.
(A trip to the hammam, for example, no one told me I should keep my underwear ON while pouring water all over myself and scrubbing off layers and layers of dead, black skin. No one told me that on the birthday of the Prophet Mohamed (peace be upon him) children spend the day shooting off bottle rockets and into the night sweet cookies powered with almonds and hot mint tea in which the gunpowder green unfurls (stars).
She came late in the afternoon with her roller suitcase of cheap, red plastic and I was ushered into the bedroom we had taken over for ourselves (ourselves being, my husband and I and our baby). Where and how she had found this red sari, Hindi costume jewelry, including a fake nose ring in Algeria where not even children's glue is readily available is beyond me. In all, she had maybe five changes of clothing for me. She had pancake pale make-up for me, along with bright red gooey lipstick, thick mascara, black, and eyebrow pencil.
We are on the third floor of the house, in which my brothers-in-law live, one with a wife and their six kids, the other unmarried and seemingly along for the ride. More on them later.
Downstairs on the first floor is where the kitchen is and women have been slogging through onion tops and discarded fat from the lamb and filling huge platters with first the steamed couscous (spread around, smoothed out with a hand that arcs around the plate as if to scatter). Over the couscous the pieces of lamb, the prunes, the rough cut carrots which have all boiled for hours in a thin, saffron broth flavored with ras- el-hanout (market mix of spices) and cilantro and burning black pepper. The arrangement of the meat and vegetables and sweet soft prunes is an art but done quickly because before the women will eat on the 3rd floor ten platters go to the men on the 2nd floor. All the while, there is music, enormous drumming and clattering tambourines that go way, way beyond the gentle Kumbaiya of my hippie childhood. There is a certain rhythm that is played for all weddings in this region of Algeria. It lifts you up and makes it impossible not to join in, not to get swept up in this thrilling moment of union.
So, this music has started outside the house and has moved quickly past the women in the kitchen, who are not wearing their hair scarves, but ignore the men from the Sahara as they move towards the 2nd floor and don't rush to cover their hair because, somehow, these men don't count in the way a male guest does. Drumming blistering up, loud, oh, LOUD, around and up the staircase to the 2nd floor, where the men are beginning to reach for their spoons and jockeying for the best cuts of meat (always the ribs are a favorite, tender the meat pulls away from the slender bone and the salted fat slips past your teeth and down).
I am getting dressed. And my sisters-in-law are tugging off their rings and unclasping their heavy, gold necklaces and placing them over the velvet dress, blue and brocade, garnished in gold thread (not real, of course, because this has come out of the cheap, red suitcase the girl someone has hired has brought for me). And over the dress comes strand upon strand of costume pearls. And then the jewelry that everyone loans me. Every finger is ringed in gold, my neck is circled many times over with gold. And I am crowned and wrapped in a shawl that glitters and photographed with Larbi.
In each picture I freeze, no smiles. How could I? With the din of drums and my baby is screaming and pulling from the arms of his aunt. He is in no picture, I guess because wee are pretending that this marriage has not been consummated yet. No one offers to add him into the frames and I don't ask for him.
I am sure there is more to tell, but I just want to put this into the world, because so often I start to write and then middle-through I stumble and give up and it sits in scrabbly piles of papers or in the chaos of computer files that elbow each other on my desktop.
A thing like a wedding party is dizzying anywhere, but in Algeria, where no one tries to prepare me in the slightest for the coming events, no matter what they are, it is dizzying.
(A trip to the hammam, for example, no one told me I should keep my underwear ON while pouring water all over myself and scrubbing off layers and layers of dead, black skin. No one told me that on the birthday of the Prophet Mohamed (peace be upon him) children spend the day shooting off bottle rockets and into the night sweet cookies powered with almonds and hot mint tea in which the gunpowder green unfurls (stars).
She came late in the afternoon with her roller suitcase of cheap, red plastic and I was ushered into the bedroom we had taken over for ourselves (ourselves being, my husband and I and our baby). Where and how she had found this red sari, Hindi costume jewelry, including a fake nose ring in Algeria where not even children's glue is readily available is beyond me. In all, she had maybe five changes of clothing for me. She had pancake pale make-up for me, along with bright red gooey lipstick, thick mascara, black, and eyebrow pencil.
We are on the third floor of the house, in which my brothers-in-law live, one with a wife and their six kids, the other unmarried and seemingly along for the ride. More on them later.
Downstairs on the first floor is where the kitchen is and women have been slogging through onion tops and discarded fat from the lamb and filling huge platters with first the steamed couscous (spread around, smoothed out with a hand that arcs around the plate as if to scatter). Over the couscous the pieces of lamb, the prunes, the rough cut carrots which have all boiled for hours in a thin, saffron broth flavored with ras- el-hanout (market mix of spices) and cilantro and burning black pepper. The arrangement of the meat and vegetables and sweet soft prunes is an art but done quickly because before the women will eat on the 3rd floor ten platters go to the men on the 2nd floor. All the while, there is music, enormous drumming and clattering tambourines that go way, way beyond the gentle Kumbaiya of my hippie childhood. There is a certain rhythm that is played for all weddings in this region of Algeria. It lifts you up and makes it impossible not to join in, not to get swept up in this thrilling moment of union.
So, this music has started outside the house and has moved quickly past the women in the kitchen, who are not wearing their hair scarves, but ignore the men from the Sahara as they move towards the 2nd floor and don't rush to cover their hair because, somehow, these men don't count in the way a male guest does. Drumming blistering up, loud, oh, LOUD, around and up the staircase to the 2nd floor, where the men are beginning to reach for their spoons and jockeying for the best cuts of meat (always the ribs are a favorite, tender the meat pulls away from the slender bone and the salted fat slips past your teeth and down).
I am getting dressed. And my sisters-in-law are tugging off their rings and unclasping their heavy, gold necklaces and placing them over the velvet dress, blue and brocade, garnished in gold thread (not real, of course, because this has come out of the cheap, red suitcase the girl someone has hired has brought for me). And over the dress comes strand upon strand of costume pearls. And then the jewelry that everyone loans me. Every finger is ringed in gold, my neck is circled many times over with gold. And I am crowned and wrapped in a shawl that glitters and photographed with Larbi.
In each picture I freeze, no smiles. How could I? With the din of drums and my baby is screaming and pulling from the arms of his aunt. He is in no picture, I guess because wee are pretending that this marriage has not been consummated yet. No one offers to add him into the frames and I don't ask for him.
I am sure there is more to tell, but I just want to put this into the world, because so often I start to write and then middle-through I stumble and give up and it sits in scrabbly piles of papers or in the chaos of computer files that elbow each other on my desktop.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Breasts boulder
When did I ever think about nursing before I had kids? I guess never, really. You think about playing with your baby, imagine sleeping next to your baby, but nursing isn't something you can predict, or explain to any one else what she will experience. And for me, especially the first time around, with my older son, nursing came to dominate the first months of my motherhood.
After birth, when I could barely walk, was stumbling around in my disposable underwear still gushing blood, when my stomach was still puffed out but I had the baby, my baby, my son, in my arms jittery rocking him, watching him breathe in his sleep, my milk came in. Engorged is the word the baby books prepare you with. Bullshit. My breasts doubled in size and not in a sexy way. In a bulbous, fast way, ripping stretch marks over their swollen rims. They were so painfully hard, in a way I imagine fake tits would feel - but never having felt them up myself...not too sure.
I pumped out milk to ease the pressure but that just made more and more milk. So but Week 2 I was sitting on the couch with loads of towels to soak up the extra milk spurting out of my breasts. When I sat there, my top off, trying to feed my baby, I would let the milk shoot out, just for fun. It could easily hit the coffee table 4 feet away.
When in this place where a small, baby whose penis has been twisted up and skinned with a screw in a circumcision that everyone except God tried to talk me out of, when white gauze tries to ease the loosening of what is left of the cord that connected us, when his eyes are blue but turning brown, when sleep comes almost not at all as night and darkness bring new panic into me: has his breathing deepened or stopped, is that a cry to be fed or pain. And I am trying to feed him the only way that will do, the only way I will accept as right but he is biting down on the nipple because so, so much milk is overwhelming him and choking him. And then it is that my nipples are so raw that when he latches on, when his small mouth covers the darkened circles, the very outest ledge of what have become my breasts, I am brought to tears.
And beyond this, are the hormone rushes that it brings. Again, what The Books say: nursing can bring a sense of relaxation and calm, often sending a new mother into a peaceful nap. Yes, there is that. But here it is:
Nursing Him
Belly to belly
He's under my shirt tails
nagging away my layers
reaching around,
scraping his mean-edged nails over my hips.
Pushed from it's lacy cup he claps on,
lips untucked, tongue thrashing in a rhythm for the letdown
and the milk comes
breasts boulder: Porno Beasts,
the bite rolls through my clothes over the flannels
stinking up the room with my animal.
******************
Do you feel that? Sometimes I feel that if my voice could be linked to the poem, to each poem, that my voice should read each poem and THEN everyone will get it. That can't be true, but it seems that it should.
The crazy thing is, I nursed my older son for 2 and 1/2 years and now, my younger son, I stopped nursing him after more than 3 frickin' years. So, yeah, I made my peace with it. And it is something powerful that I both received gifts from and sacrificed for.
I have nursed other babies and donated frozen little bags of milk to babies for their mothers to thaw and mix in with their formula, doses of immunity and fat balance and secrets that are yet to be uncovered are hidden there. Here in the US, most women freak out about the very idea of another woman nursing her baby. But in Algeria, my sister-in-law asked me to nurse a new baby in the family whose mother was having a hard time getting her milk going. We were all staying in the same house and soon I was waking at night when I heard his cry, because my body was responding to him as if he were my responsibility. Not my child, don't think that. That is what women fear, I think. That the woman who nurses her baby is taking some away from her the role as mother. But that small baby boy whose fingernails were dipped in henna and whose poor, tiny limbs were over-wrapped, guarding, guarding always they are, their babies against a chill, even in African heat of July; this tiny child could not be my own but I could give him a sweet taste of perfection that his baby formula of questionable brand could not give. And I was proud.
The easiest thing was that. I couldn't figure my way into lining up bottles and and a row of nipples and a row of caps and sterilizing. Draping my violet scarf over my chest and pulling out my breast saved me from hysterical baby fits on the subway, it made my life easier for those early years of confusing motherhood. And then again, when trying to be a mother of two impossible creations at once, it eased the way.
But there is more to this.
After birth, when I could barely walk, was stumbling around in my disposable underwear still gushing blood, when my stomach was still puffed out but I had the baby, my baby, my son, in my arms jittery rocking him, watching him breathe in his sleep, my milk came in. Engorged is the word the baby books prepare you with. Bullshit. My breasts doubled in size and not in a sexy way. In a bulbous, fast way, ripping stretch marks over their swollen rims. They were so painfully hard, in a way I imagine fake tits would feel - but never having felt them up myself...not too sure.
I pumped out milk to ease the pressure but that just made more and more milk. So but Week 2 I was sitting on the couch with loads of towels to soak up the extra milk spurting out of my breasts. When I sat there, my top off, trying to feed my baby, I would let the milk shoot out, just for fun. It could easily hit the coffee table 4 feet away.
When in this place where a small, baby whose penis has been twisted up and skinned with a screw in a circumcision that everyone except God tried to talk me out of, when white gauze tries to ease the loosening of what is left of the cord that connected us, when his eyes are blue but turning brown, when sleep comes almost not at all as night and darkness bring new panic into me: has his breathing deepened or stopped, is that a cry to be fed or pain. And I am trying to feed him the only way that will do, the only way I will accept as right but he is biting down on the nipple because so, so much milk is overwhelming him and choking him. And then it is that my nipples are so raw that when he latches on, when his small mouth covers the darkened circles, the very outest ledge of what have become my breasts, I am brought to tears.
And beyond this, are the hormone rushes that it brings. Again, what The Books say: nursing can bring a sense of relaxation and calm, often sending a new mother into a peaceful nap. Yes, there is that. But here it is:
Nursing Him
Belly to belly
He's under my shirt tails
nagging away my layers
reaching around,
scraping his mean-edged nails over my hips.
Pushed from it's lacy cup he claps on,
lips untucked, tongue thrashing in a rhythm for the letdown
and the milk comes
breasts boulder: Porno Beasts,
the bite rolls through my clothes over the flannels
stinking up the room with my animal.
******************
Do you feel that? Sometimes I feel that if my voice could be linked to the poem, to each poem, that my voice should read each poem and THEN everyone will get it. That can't be true, but it seems that it should.
The crazy thing is, I nursed my older son for 2 and 1/2 years and now, my younger son, I stopped nursing him after more than 3 frickin' years. So, yeah, I made my peace with it. And it is something powerful that I both received gifts from and sacrificed for.
I have nursed other babies and donated frozen little bags of milk to babies for their mothers to thaw and mix in with their formula, doses of immunity and fat balance and secrets that are yet to be uncovered are hidden there. Here in the US, most women freak out about the very idea of another woman nursing her baby. But in Algeria, my sister-in-law asked me to nurse a new baby in the family whose mother was having a hard time getting her milk going. We were all staying in the same house and soon I was waking at night when I heard his cry, because my body was responding to him as if he were my responsibility. Not my child, don't think that. That is what women fear, I think. That the woman who nurses her baby is taking some away from her the role as mother. But that small baby boy whose fingernails were dipped in henna and whose poor, tiny limbs were over-wrapped, guarding, guarding always they are, their babies against a chill, even in African heat of July; this tiny child could not be my own but I could give him a sweet taste of perfection that his baby formula of questionable brand could not give. And I was proud.
The easiest thing was that. I couldn't figure my way into lining up bottles and and a row of nipples and a row of caps and sterilizing. Draping my violet scarf over my chest and pulling out my breast saved me from hysterical baby fits on the subway, it made my life easier for those early years of confusing motherhood. And then again, when trying to be a mother of two impossible creations at once, it eased the way.
But there is more to this.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
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
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
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