Thursday, October 25, 2012
Algeria
this lip of cool above
the old port
this place of inverted
sugar and head scarves
this place of swollen doors and
loose teeth
Here. Algeria.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Ramadan Morning
Here is what I have been up to: waking at 12 with my kids still sleeping on their pull-out beds- stitched by hand, stuffed with wool, finished with heavy needlework covering the crimson cloth.
I have slept and woke at pre-dawn prayer, slept and woke with the call to pray as the sun rose, slept again and now it is time to push off the heaviness and roll out of bed.
Our balcony is huge, the sizeof my NYC living room and in the morning when I am the only one awake-though it is not morning, the same holds- Iturn on the faucet on our 'housh' and filland throw, fill and throw and with my long-handled squeegie, pull the water over the red tiles smooth and older than Algeria.
Morning begins like this. I wait a bit and watch the sea and the containers being unloaded in the port, far far below.
To the West is an old, Spanish castle, to the East new building rise up and shake their tan dust through all the city and we are caked in it: our feet from the streets, it pushes through window cracks with every call for prayer, every stirring on the city.
When it isn't Ramadan, but it is, I start the coffee like this: I fill the coffee kettle up to the spout with water not from the faucet but from the huge jugs we fill in the mountain spring that comes from a crack in the mountain. We go there to get our drinking water and to buy the mint and Swiss chard that grows with huge, gorgeously green leaves in the volcanic springs there.
But it is Ramadan and the smell of coffee would be maddening to L and to my brother-in-law who is always almost with us, spending the night in our spare bedroom, then slipping out silently to hang out in the mosque across from our building. B is a character and speaks his mind freely, to the point of blunt rudeness, but never with me.
For coffee, I will wait until L and B go to shop for the day's meal and then I will quickly re-heat last night's coffee and sit and gulp it down from a silver-rimmed cup.
I am lost in Ramadan here. I am on the outside looking in or rather, I am inside but shut out by my own hand, or my own mouth.
But I have a mini-panic attack whenever I consider fasting along with every one around me. L tells our son that the first day is always the hardest and after that it's not that hard and you get used to it. And, really, all around me 15, 16 year-olds are abstaining from food and water and even brushing teeth.
How could I do it? The most I have ever lasted is about an hour. Ok, more like 30 minutes.
I just can't. There is a part of me, a large part I guess, who wants to remain separate from everyone around me because maybe I will forget about pieces of me, like the girl who can fill her whole apartment with an aria. I am afraid parts of me will get covered up here and shuffled under foot and lost.
But in the interest if my own sanity, which I will lose entirely if we eat with his family, I have been cooking the Ramadan meal. My neighbor across the hall makes us the Harira soup and makiuda - like mashed potato mini pancakes fried- and I make the rest: slow-roasted lamb covered in wild honey and white cilantro blooms and purple garlic slivers; I cook prunes and raisins in cinnamon and vanilla and stew and stew forever.
There is more to write, but I have to leave the WiFi now so more later.
Love from Algeria
MCF
I have slept and woke at pre-dawn prayer, slept and woke with the call to pray as the sun rose, slept again and now it is time to push off the heaviness and roll out of bed.
Our balcony is huge, the sizeof my NYC living room and in the morning when I am the only one awake-though it is not morning, the same holds- Iturn on the faucet on our 'housh' and filland throw, fill and throw and with my long-handled squeegie, pull the water over the red tiles smooth and older than Algeria.
Morning begins like this. I wait a bit and watch the sea and the containers being unloaded in the port, far far below.
To the West is an old, Spanish castle, to the East new building rise up and shake their tan dust through all the city and we are caked in it: our feet from the streets, it pushes through window cracks with every call for prayer, every stirring on the city.
When it isn't Ramadan, but it is, I start the coffee like this: I fill the coffee kettle up to the spout with water not from the faucet but from the huge jugs we fill in the mountain spring that comes from a crack in the mountain. We go there to get our drinking water and to buy the mint and Swiss chard that grows with huge, gorgeously green leaves in the volcanic springs there.
But it is Ramadan and the smell of coffee would be maddening to L and to my brother-in-law who is always almost with us, spending the night in our spare bedroom, then slipping out silently to hang out in the mosque across from our building. B is a character and speaks his mind freely, to the point of blunt rudeness, but never with me.
For coffee, I will wait until L and B go to shop for the day's meal and then I will quickly re-heat last night's coffee and sit and gulp it down from a silver-rimmed cup.
I am lost in Ramadan here. I am on the outside looking in or rather, I am inside but shut out by my own hand, or my own mouth.
But I have a mini-panic attack whenever I consider fasting along with every one around me. L tells our son that the first day is always the hardest and after that it's not that hard and you get used to it. And, really, all around me 15, 16 year-olds are abstaining from food and water and even brushing teeth.
How could I do it? The most I have ever lasted is about an hour. Ok, more like 30 minutes.
I just can't. There is a part of me, a large part I guess, who wants to remain separate from everyone around me because maybe I will forget about pieces of me, like the girl who can fill her whole apartment with an aria. I am afraid parts of me will get covered up here and shuffled under foot and lost.
But in the interest if my own sanity, which I will lose entirely if we eat with his family, I have been cooking the Ramadan meal. My neighbor across the hall makes us the Harira soup and makiuda - like mashed potato mini pancakes fried- and I make the rest: slow-roasted lamb covered in wild honey and white cilantro blooms and purple garlic slivers; I cook prunes and raisins in cinnamon and vanilla and stew and stew forever.
There is more to write, but I have to leave the WiFi now so more later.
Love from Algeria
MCF
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Post Card from Espana
It's run and slipslide in your socks smooth. These tiles keep their color, their beauty and grace through years of blasting Mediterranean sun.
This year we took an apt and our fridge bursts with fat, black cherries, falls out donut peaches to roll. Ah! Creamy goat kefir.
The beauty of the earth here!
This year we took an apt and our fridge bursts with fat, black cherries, falls out donut peaches to roll. Ah! Creamy goat kefir.
The beauty of the earth here!
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Espana
Posted Card from Spain
In the Church's heavy stones I lay my head against it: all the lost swills gather like spit in my mouth when I hear the chant of mass from within.
But now, again, when I will be in Algeria and the call for prayer will start the bats into the sunset above the sea, it is there again, on my surface.
But in Spain I trace Jesus' fate through the stations of the cross tangled in carnations. I trace the old worn places in the stone and feel home for a moment.
In the Church's heavy stones I lay my head against it: all the lost swills gather like spit in my mouth when I hear the chant of mass from within.
But now, again, when I will be in Algeria and the call for prayer will start the bats into the sunset above the sea, it is there again, on my surface.
But in Spain I trace Jesus' fate through the stations of the cross tangled in carnations. I trace the old worn places in the stone and feel home for a moment.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Ramadan Day 11: Cooking up cucumber salad and Billy Holiday
Here's what I am cooking as the calls for prayer issue out from hundreds of mosques all over up and down and above the hilly streets of Oran:
Cucumber salad and Billy Holiday, onions red and so juicy I tear and tear, garlic still red mud caked to it, dried in violet-tinged sleeves. 8 zucchini, must be almost a kilo/
Leg of lamb I marinate and cook this way: cut slits into its side. ignore that there might still be a hoof on the leg. push slivers of garlic into slits. rub all over with local olive oil, ras el-hanout spice mix, sqeeze lemons bought from algerian farmer all over. made a bed of grated onion and more garlic, always more garlic, in the pan that can go on the stovetop first then in over with the light i can press on and off after.
into the bed i put cilantro with flowers blooming on it's tips set gently over (i do not slice the flowers, it might bring about my ruin if i do), i put a few stalks of mint. I find two fresh figs that have been smashed in the sky blue bag that my husband brings everything home from the market in. i set the lamb into the bed of onions and so on. i cut just 3 slivers of butter that still has the tinge of buttermilk that came from the 'lait cooperative algerien.' this goes on top of the meat then dribbles of honey stolen from starbucks to give to my brother-in-law who loves that honey the best and then taken back from him for cooking. then the figs that have been smashed go on top. then thin slices of lemon. just the ghosty bits of tomato i have parted from the whole.
cover with tin foil. cook first stovetop then oven that i love love because it gives back to me meat that falls off the bone in easy cuts until we finish it all.
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""
It's the aloneness.
He moves away from me in this month. I am still in his life but here, though he is with us more than in NY where he is always working always and every day, but here he moves closer into the community of Muslims of which I am not part. It's not just ALgeria. We are all here. It's that he is in a rhythm that I don't take part in; more so than in NY, more than here in other, normal days of summer in years before when Ramadan fell outside the summer.
He stays up all night with his brother, his nephews- those who are fasting and leaves me alone.
We lose intimacy.
We lose connection.
It makes me cry.
How do I explain this, right?
Ramadan is so much in the sharing: sharing in the ache for food, the longing for cool icy water they go to the mountail spring to bring home to me to cook with. The meal I eat with them. But I have been eating bits and pieces all day. Leftover harira soup, fresh coffee, apples and white peaches, perfect in their crisp sugar. So, when I eat with him, I am not having the same meal.
It cannot be the same meal that he eats, when he has had nothing in his stomach all day, nothing in his throat to clear away the heat and dust that Algeria drives down your throat each day.
Of course, it's my choice not to fast. I tried, years ago. A panic set in and I broke it mid-day. For a woman who is almost never without a spare apple and water bottle in her purse, for a woman who seldom goes without food for more than 2 hours, it scared me. Primally scared. In my bones I wondered if that was it, if I'd never eat again, no matter if my head told me different. If I had gotten through one day, I might have been able to do it. But, no.
L doesn't encourage me to fast. God won't love you more if you do, he tells me.
In other words, convert first. Fasting is a requirement for Muslims and since I am not, why bother. It does not earn me grace and baraka. I would still be outside the flock even if I fasted.
But it takes him away from me. Not just because he sleeps late while I wake early. Not just that he goes to the mosque each night as they work through the Quran, bit by bit each night, and I am home with the dishes. He is more tired, focused on getting through the day without killing himself fasting, not on chatting with me about what I have on my mind.
And then it's sunset and we eat, all together with his brother who is always with us, like L's shadow. Then off the mosque and I set to washing the piles of dishes and the kids leave with their older cousin to do the insane bumper cars that spark and snap above ther kids heads' and set a deep panic in me every time I see them. They pay 20 cents a ride and stay for hours with their older cousin who has come to stay with us from Sig, crashing into each other and jarring their car off the metal net it is hooked to above their heads. A man always with a cigarette hanging from his lips jumps into the ring to set the hook back up into the mesh above and they are back on again. I prefer not to see this and have stopped going with. I can only have so many jumps of my heart before I am ready to dive in amongst the cars and pull my kids bodily out. Like I have said before, I am trying to let my children have space to live a life full of childhood, not just a mother's protection but joy and spitting fun, as well.
I can't ever love Ramadan. Not unless I become Muslim, I guess. But is love enough a reason to convert? To be closer to your love, to further join his rhythm, to weave your life closer within his?
Cucumber salad and Billy Holiday, onions red and so juicy I tear and tear, garlic still red mud caked to it, dried in violet-tinged sleeves. 8 zucchini, must be almost a kilo/
Leg of lamb I marinate and cook this way: cut slits into its side. ignore that there might still be a hoof on the leg. push slivers of garlic into slits. rub all over with local olive oil, ras el-hanout spice mix, sqeeze lemons bought from algerian farmer all over. made a bed of grated onion and more garlic, always more garlic, in the pan that can go on the stovetop first then in over with the light i can press on and off after.
into the bed i put cilantro with flowers blooming on it's tips set gently over (i do not slice the flowers, it might bring about my ruin if i do), i put a few stalks of mint. I find two fresh figs that have been smashed in the sky blue bag that my husband brings everything home from the market in. i set the lamb into the bed of onions and so on. i cut just 3 slivers of butter that still has the tinge of buttermilk that came from the 'lait cooperative algerien.' this goes on top of the meat then dribbles of honey stolen from starbucks to give to my brother-in-law who loves that honey the best and then taken back from him for cooking. then the figs that have been smashed go on top. then thin slices of lemon. just the ghosty bits of tomato i have parted from the whole.
cover with tin foil. cook first stovetop then oven that i love love because it gives back to me meat that falls off the bone in easy cuts until we finish it all.
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""
It's the aloneness.
He moves away from me in this month. I am still in his life but here, though he is with us more than in NY where he is always working always and every day, but here he moves closer into the community of Muslims of which I am not part. It's not just ALgeria. We are all here. It's that he is in a rhythm that I don't take part in; more so than in NY, more than here in other, normal days of summer in years before when Ramadan fell outside the summer.
He stays up all night with his brother, his nephews- those who are fasting and leaves me alone.
We lose intimacy.
We lose connection.
It makes me cry.
How do I explain this, right?
Ramadan is so much in the sharing: sharing in the ache for food, the longing for cool icy water they go to the mountail spring to bring home to me to cook with. The meal I eat with them. But I have been eating bits and pieces all day. Leftover harira soup, fresh coffee, apples and white peaches, perfect in their crisp sugar. So, when I eat with him, I am not having the same meal.
It cannot be the same meal that he eats, when he has had nothing in his stomach all day, nothing in his throat to clear away the heat and dust that Algeria drives down your throat each day.
Of course, it's my choice not to fast. I tried, years ago. A panic set in and I broke it mid-day. For a woman who is almost never without a spare apple and water bottle in her purse, for a woman who seldom goes without food for more than 2 hours, it scared me. Primally scared. In my bones I wondered if that was it, if I'd never eat again, no matter if my head told me different. If I had gotten through one day, I might have been able to do it. But, no.
L doesn't encourage me to fast. God won't love you more if you do, he tells me.
In other words, convert first. Fasting is a requirement for Muslims and since I am not, why bother. It does not earn me grace and baraka. I would still be outside the flock even if I fasted.
But it takes him away from me. Not just because he sleeps late while I wake early. Not just that he goes to the mosque each night as they work through the Quran, bit by bit each night, and I am home with the dishes. He is more tired, focused on getting through the day without killing himself fasting, not on chatting with me about what I have on my mind.
And then it's sunset and we eat, all together with his brother who is always with us, like L's shadow. Then off the mosque and I set to washing the piles of dishes and the kids leave with their older cousin to do the insane bumper cars that spark and snap above ther kids heads' and set a deep panic in me every time I see them. They pay 20 cents a ride and stay for hours with their older cousin who has come to stay with us from Sig, crashing into each other and jarring their car off the metal net it is hooked to above their heads. A man always with a cigarette hanging from his lips jumps into the ring to set the hook back up into the mesh above and they are back on again. I prefer not to see this and have stopped going with. I can only have so many jumps of my heart before I am ready to dive in amongst the cars and pull my kids bodily out. Like I have said before, I am trying to let my children have space to live a life full of childhood, not just a mother's protection but joy and spitting fun, as well.
I can't ever love Ramadan. Not unless I become Muslim, I guess. But is love enough a reason to convert? To be closer to your love, to further join his rhythm, to weave your life closer within his?
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Ramadan Day 10: Back where I am in charge of my own FUCKING KITCHEN
Home again,home again, jiggety jig.
Back in Oran in my very own apt., with my very own clean underwear and toilet that flushes every time you push the button, where I can spray away any odor my child dislikes with a fancy, all-natural orange oil spray that lights up my life. Where I am in charge of the fucking kitchen and no one else.
When I spend the afternoon by myself I forget it's Ramadan. L. takes the kids for an adventure (egg chocolates and the beach, where L will wade in with little Z but not go under water, head and all). I am left with my ipod playing fionna apple and laundry in my washing machine that sings a pretty song when it is finished working for me. Would it be that all things in life could be such.
Organizing toys we sent over in a container a friend of L's sent to algeria via ship last year. Stashing toys in our cabinets, drinking Mouzia bubbly water, brewing another pot of coffee YES! And I forget that outside the city is quietly biding it's time, using energy sparely, staying mostly inside out of the sun, drawing the blinds and waiting for the sun to go down, when the party will begin.
I forget Ramadan and turn to other things.
My biggest fear as a mother is this: my regrets will outweigh what made me proud of the way I was with them: my two brown-eyed boys, is what I give you, will give you enough? What I did and still will do to damage them, will that be what they remember?
And it's true, I am most patient with babies. Their potensial, the secrets they hold that will unfurl. When he gets older, and his bad habits rub on me and I nag and nag and feel myself looming bitter and creeky over him.
When did I become a woman who would rather order than the chaos that tug a war brings? Lord help me, I am she.
Will you PLEASE stop snatching from your brother? Will you please flush the toilet after you do kaka? It is nasty, S, nasty and I am sick of doing it for you!
I am never afriand, in writing, to reveal my pale and hideous underbelly; and this is it. I lose patience. I loose my mind. I become a nagging, old bitch who only craves calm and quiet and order, not fun and sponteniety and rough-housing and craze that makes up the best moments of a child's life.
Am I destroying their lives? Alright, dramatic, I know. But I sometimes feel I need a big house so that they can go off to another room farther from my hearing and live out the life that they should have. That with me in our small NYC apt, they get no relief from my monitoring gaze. At least, here, in Oran their father takes them away from me and let's them run wild along the beach, drag their skinny butts up the mountain's edge through the dust without holding their hands. He lets them be where I overlook and push in too quickly. This is going to make me cry, facing this possibility.
Maybe this is why I feel my older son's love slip a bit and fall over to his father. Not that there isn't enough for us both, but I have become the toothbrush nag, the cencor of food, the cautious mother holding him back and his father is one mad adventure after another and he come home more in love with his father each time.
Back in Oran in my very own apt., with my very own clean underwear and toilet that flushes every time you push the button, where I can spray away any odor my child dislikes with a fancy, all-natural orange oil spray that lights up my life. Where I am in charge of the fucking kitchen and no one else.
When I spend the afternoon by myself I forget it's Ramadan. L. takes the kids for an adventure (egg chocolates and the beach, where L will wade in with little Z but not go under water, head and all). I am left with my ipod playing fionna apple and laundry in my washing machine that sings a pretty song when it is finished working for me. Would it be that all things in life could be such.
Organizing toys we sent over in a container a friend of L's sent to algeria via ship last year. Stashing toys in our cabinets, drinking Mouzia bubbly water, brewing another pot of coffee YES! And I forget that outside the city is quietly biding it's time, using energy sparely, staying mostly inside out of the sun, drawing the blinds and waiting for the sun to go down, when the party will begin.
I forget Ramadan and turn to other things.
My biggest fear as a mother is this: my regrets will outweigh what made me proud of the way I was with them: my two brown-eyed boys, is what I give you, will give you enough? What I did and still will do to damage them, will that be what they remember?
And it's true, I am most patient with babies. Their potensial, the secrets they hold that will unfurl. When he gets older, and his bad habits rub on me and I nag and nag and feel myself looming bitter and creeky over him.
When did I become a woman who would rather order than the chaos that tug a war brings? Lord help me, I am she.
Will you PLEASE stop snatching from your brother? Will you please flush the toilet after you do kaka? It is nasty, S, nasty and I am sick of doing it for you!
I am never afriand, in writing, to reveal my pale and hideous underbelly; and this is it. I lose patience. I loose my mind. I become a nagging, old bitch who only craves calm and quiet and order, not fun and sponteniety and rough-housing and craze that makes up the best moments of a child's life.
Am I destroying their lives? Alright, dramatic, I know. But I sometimes feel I need a big house so that they can go off to another room farther from my hearing and live out the life that they should have. That with me in our small NYC apt, they get no relief from my monitoring gaze. At least, here, in Oran their father takes them away from me and let's them run wild along the beach, drag their skinny butts up the mountain's edge through the dust without holding their hands. He lets them be where I overlook and push in too quickly. This is going to make me cry, facing this possibility.
Maybe this is why I feel my older son's love slip a bit and fall over to his father. Not that there isn't enough for us both, but I have become the toothbrush nag, the cencor of food, the cautious mother holding him back and his father is one mad adventure after another and he come home more in love with his father each time.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Ramadan Day 9: Sit on the beach in my pink bikini, read Salinger and SIGH.
Look now, listen:
The ahdan is calling for prayer/ Wow, he sounds old, this guy. I always wonder who these guys are and if they drop in just at the time of prayer to call out, or if they spend the day there and have a little alarm clock that warns them to turn on the PA and let it ring out over the rooftops.
My son, S told me where L's mosque is today.
Can you believe I have been coming here, to this small town for 8 years and L goes once or twice daily to the mosque that I have yet to see?
There is a separation between my world when I am in this house and what he sees and does outside it.
I can't tell you the first thing about his mosque. It is at the center of his visits here, especially when we drive here from our apt. so he can go to the Friday 'Jumuah' prayer. Muslim men are required, except when traveling to attend Friday noontime prayer which is followed by a sermon by the Imam of the mosque.
L comes back to Sig so much just to go to this Friday prayter. It is the community he grew up into. The old men of the mosque all stop and talk to him. He had sat with them as a kid in the mosque and listened to their stories about how things were done in their day. He sees his classmates from gradeschool. His neighbors who have lived across the way all their lives.
I have slowly through the years pieced together this picture in my mind. But I have no place to go with it. No location. I just know it is close by and is one of the mosques whose ahdan i hear five times a day.
Today S told me how to get there. Not that I could take a stroll over. HA. Here in this place, in this family, that is not an option. And really, even if we were at our apt in Oran, I couldn't stroll into the mosque there, either.
First, I would have to something over my clothes that is loose and drops to my feet and to my wrists. Then I would cover my hair and cover my neck with a scarf.
I did that once.
Did I tell you? When we were married at the mosque in Astoria.
Oh. Back to swimming in Algeria. IF I swim in Ramadan I am declaring to every one around me that
1. I am on my period and not fasting (this being the best option for what they might think when they see me diving into the cool, blue waves.)
OR 2. I donùt fast and should be socially scorned, openly, perhaps.
Get past that part of the maze of social norms and you hit the following wall:
WTF TO WEAR???
My bathing suit is out of the question. Just forget about that lovely pink Juicy Couture pink nubbly number. there will be none of that!
There should be long pants or a dress that goes well past the knees involved, here; maybe both. And it can't be too light a color, say white, that would melt or disapear against my curves as the water pushes against me still; though I have pulled back away out of it.
Maybe my morrocan jilaba with short, slit sleeves: light cotton fabric I bought it in tangerine with bright heavy threads patterning the chest of it. It drops to my knees and lets in the breeze.
With pants underneath, yes. A pair of yoga pants underneath would do.
So, with all these questions to answer and prepare for, what to wear, what people will say and think in a place that it matters what people say and think (i long for my first days in NYC when i tore thru the streets annonymous not giving a flying fuck what anyone thought or said to me about my underwear as outerwear, how high i wore my platform boots. i was immune and had nasty comments for anyone who might approach to bother and question me. that life is worlds and lifetimes ago. maybe i am a little sad about that but life morphs and you aren't that girl anymore and you are more concerned, more aware of action/reaction.
So I just don't go to the beach. I stay at the house that isn't my own and take another 2 hour nap that I probably don't need and in another time and place I might chalk up to depression.
I am full, I tell my brother-in-law, of the beach. I had my fill of the beach in Spain where I can sit on the beach in my pink bikini, read Salinger and sigh. Out loud a sigh and a stretch I can do with zero self-awareness and turn onto my stomach and maybe untie my top to better tan my back and no one gawks, no one says a word. No one cares because there are a hundred others doing just the same right next to me and all up and down Costa Blanca I so, so love.
The ahdan is calling for prayer/ Wow, he sounds old, this guy. I always wonder who these guys are and if they drop in just at the time of prayer to call out, or if they spend the day there and have a little alarm clock that warns them to turn on the PA and let it ring out over the rooftops.
My son, S told me where L's mosque is today.
Can you believe I have been coming here, to this small town for 8 years and L goes once or twice daily to the mosque that I have yet to see?
There is a separation between my world when I am in this house and what he sees and does outside it.
I can't tell you the first thing about his mosque. It is at the center of his visits here, especially when we drive here from our apt. so he can go to the Friday 'Jumuah' prayer. Muslim men are required, except when traveling to attend Friday noontime prayer which is followed by a sermon by the Imam of the mosque.
L comes back to Sig so much just to go to this Friday prayter. It is the community he grew up into. The old men of the mosque all stop and talk to him. He had sat with them as a kid in the mosque and listened to their stories about how things were done in their day. He sees his classmates from gradeschool. His neighbors who have lived across the way all their lives.
I have slowly through the years pieced together this picture in my mind. But I have no place to go with it. No location. I just know it is close by and is one of the mosques whose ahdan i hear five times a day.
Today S told me how to get there. Not that I could take a stroll over. HA. Here in this place, in this family, that is not an option. And really, even if we were at our apt in Oran, I couldn't stroll into the mosque there, either.
First, I would have to something over my clothes that is loose and drops to my feet and to my wrists. Then I would cover my hair and cover my neck with a scarf.
I did that once.
Did I tell you? When we were married at the mosque in Astoria.
Oh. Back to swimming in Algeria. IF I swim in Ramadan I am declaring to every one around me that
1. I am on my period and not fasting (this being the best option for what they might think when they see me diving into the cool, blue waves.)
OR 2. I donùt fast and should be socially scorned, openly, perhaps.
Get past that part of the maze of social norms and you hit the following wall:
WTF TO WEAR???
My bathing suit is out of the question. Just forget about that lovely pink Juicy Couture pink nubbly number. there will be none of that!
There should be long pants or a dress that goes well past the knees involved, here; maybe both. And it can't be too light a color, say white, that would melt or disapear against my curves as the water pushes against me still; though I have pulled back away out of it.
Maybe my morrocan jilaba with short, slit sleeves: light cotton fabric I bought it in tangerine with bright heavy threads patterning the chest of it. It drops to my knees and lets in the breeze.
With pants underneath, yes. A pair of yoga pants underneath would do.
So, with all these questions to answer and prepare for, what to wear, what people will say and think in a place that it matters what people say and think (i long for my first days in NYC when i tore thru the streets annonymous not giving a flying fuck what anyone thought or said to me about my underwear as outerwear, how high i wore my platform boots. i was immune and had nasty comments for anyone who might approach to bother and question me. that life is worlds and lifetimes ago. maybe i am a little sad about that but life morphs and you aren't that girl anymore and you are more concerned, more aware of action/reaction.
So I just don't go to the beach. I stay at the house that isn't my own and take another 2 hour nap that I probably don't need and in another time and place I might chalk up to depression.
I am full, I tell my brother-in-law, of the beach. I had my fill of the beach in Spain where I can sit on the beach in my pink bikini, read Salinger and sigh. Out loud a sigh and a stretch I can do with zero self-awareness and turn onto my stomach and maybe untie my top to better tan my back and no one gawks, no one says a word. No one cares because there are a hundred others doing just the same right next to me and all up and down Costa Blanca I so, so love.
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