Soul Food

I read the other day that my baby is practicing swallowing. He or she is sipping away on his or her amniotic fluid (yum) and, most interesting to me, while working out all those developing esophagus muscles he or she is also getting a tasty sampling of everything I am eating. That’s right. Baby is tasting everything I am tasting (albeit with a distinct hint of amniotic fluid flavor I suspect). This thought amused me the other day as I reflected on the assortment of culinary oddities I have been passing on.

One of the few items in our house that treads the fine line between luxury and necessity, thus earning it a place between layers of underwear in our 15-kilo bags on bush planes carrying us back from East Africa, is nam-pla, a fishy sauce from Thailand that pervaded the kitchen of my Bangkok-raised mother throughout my childhood. And now, even though I have spent no more than a week or so in Thailand in the course of my own life, at least once a week my own little kitchen in the middle of arid North Africa is filled with the balmy smells of limes, hot peppers, garlic, coconut milk and onions all delicately strung together with salty nam-pla rationed out greedily from a tall glass bottle. And when I sit down to a steaming bowl of neu-pat-prik tumbling over a mountain of white rice, I imagine my unborn child smacking his or her lips and daydreaming about the summers he or she will spend savoring curries at his maternal grandmother’s kitchen table.

But my mother-in-law has been here with us for the past couple of weeks and the smells emanating from my little kitchen have plucked me right out of tropical Asia and plopped me into the heart of the humid antebellum South. The mouth watering stench of turnip greens bubbles from a huge pot on my gas stove supported gently by the buttery warm scent of baking cornbread. Black-eyed peas are soaking in a pot on the floor nearbye. And when I sit down to a glass off ice-cold sweet tea and a bowl of salty wet boiled peanuts (“bolled” I’ve been informed, not “boi-led”) I imagine my baby savoring that taste of Georgia and daydreaming of the Easter Sundays he or she will spend at his paternal grandmother’s house stealing spoonfuls of purple-hull peas.

When I eat these foods I feel like I am doing more than just getting full. I feel like am ingesting memories and emotions and traditions. I am eating a heritage. And I wonder if my baby can taste those things too - the complex beauty of one, the warm comfort of the other. Bitefuls of the people who already love him or her so much.

Yesterday afternoon I felt the baby kick for the first time. Not just a suspicious swish or a vague bubble-burst like I have been. I felt an all-out kick, a tiny heel shoved into the palm of my hand resting just right of my belly button. And it made me smile. Which one was it, Baby? The green guava dipped in sugar and hot pepper or the leftover piece of pecan pie?

French Toast Breakfast

We ran into one of the officials from the local government office on Tuesday at the airstrip when Bryan and Mama Dona flew home. Seeing our happy reunion, and no doubt considering the Eid celebrations ahead, the official told us not to worry about registering Mama Dona officially at his office that week. “I’ll just come by the house to get her name and paperwork tomorrow,” he said and waved us off.

He popped in the next morning as we were finishing up a jet-lagged breakfast amidst the detritus of new clothing tags and stray Starburst wrappers. As Bryan went to fetch her travel documents (“legal” travel here is still carried out under a rebel movement stamp of approval), Mama Dona welcomed our government official friend to a plate of French toast and a cup of tea, her big Southern hospitality both jutting oddly out of place and yet simultaneously melting in perfectly. As the official carefully worked the sticky slices onto his fork my mother-in-law began to ask him questions. What is your name? Where is your home? What is your language? How many languages do you speak? Her happy curiosity about this new part of the world spilled out in an eagerness to learn as much as she could all before breakfast was over. Each question was answered concisely in concentrated English, though often accompanied with a subtle smile. At one point, after lamenting the fact that her babies have chosen to live so far away, Mama Dona patted Bryan’s hand lovingly and pointedly asked our guest, “Now where does your mother live?” The official swallowed the bite in his mouth and then answered matter-of-factly, “My mother was shot during the war when all of our people were trying to run across the border.” Bryan and I exchanged glances while Mama Dona took this new information in. “Oh. And how old were you when this happened?”
“I was eleven.”

“I…I’m so very, very sorry.”

There was a moment’s silence and then Bryan explained that our guest had spent almost twenty years in a refugee camp and had only returned to his childhood home a few years ago, when the peace agreement was signed. “But I was very lucky.” Our guest went on casually, wiping his face with a napkin and giving the travel documents a cursory glance. “I learned English there and received an education. Now I have this job.”

Bryan eventually walked our guest back out to his motorcycle at the gate and I begin stacking up syrupy plates. Mama Dona stayed sitting in her chair at the table and then said in a voice as monotone as the departing official’s, “Okay, I am going to have a good cry now.” She then picked up a paper napkin, delicately unfolded it, put it to her face and began to sob. I put down the dishes I was holding and wrapped my arms around her, a few of my own tears sliding into her silver blond hair. Through her fingers I heard a mumbled “Oh God why? He was only eleven…” and then later, “I knew this happened. We all knew it was happening but it was so far away.”

We sat like that for a while. And I watched as many of the emotions I have experienced in the past year and a half – the guilt and grief and gratitude – all bound themselves up in one conversation, one face, and one story all around my table in one morning over breakfast.  

   

Greek

Thing 57 that I like about living here: the frequency with which simply grocery shopping intersects with sheer unexpectedness.

Often it’s a newly available product. It may be grapes or it might be goat heads. Each is equally unexpected in its own way.  Other times it’s an unexpected event. The local crazy woman gets in a fight with the local crazy man and you duck behind a mound of potatoes to avoid being hit in the head by a flying rock. Some days it’s just the weather. A surprise thunderstorm, freak wildfire or sudden dust storm creeps up without warning. You just never know if your trip to the market is going to a regular ol’ stroll through outdoor aisles of cabbages and tomatoes or something brand new that you walk away from saying, “Well, I have never seen (smelled, tasted, felt, heard etc.) that before.”

A few days ago my meeting with unexpectedness came in the form of a person.

I first noticed him while I was assessing cucumbers at my favorite vegetable stall. He was on the far end of middle aged, short, heavy set and dark haired. I couldn’t see his face but his arms and profile were dark brown – much fairer than most people in the market and much darker than me – “normal colored” as Bryan and I like to say, using a somewhat un-academic term for the complexion of most of the world, as first introduced to us by a Central Asian friend. Someone could have easily convinced me that the man in the market was a citizen of anywhere from Morocco to Mexico and many places inbetween. I had never seen him before and he didn’t seem terribly familiar with the market, though he certainly wasn’t completely out of his element. As I walked away I heard him speaking to the vendor in flawless Arabic.

A few minutes later at the bread stand the stranger passed by again and this time we made eye contact. A Khawajia in a head scarf is of occasional interest to non-locals so I wasn’t terribly surprised when he waved and turned towards me. As he approached I made a quick scroll through my mental rolodex of categories of people in this area, his loud English greeting narrowing my quick search. UN affiliate? Flip-flops and a light button-down shirt that looked well hand-washed: Probably not. Businessman from the North? Gaudy jade crucifix dangling around his neck: Unlikely. Very, very lost tourist? (Insert new category into rolodex) Effortless navigation of language and goats in the road: No. As he shook my hand warmly and started into an overflow of friendly questions well-seasoned in an accent I couldn’t quite place, I was drawing a blank. Who was this guy and what was he doing out here?

After I satisfied his similar questions with a brief introduction, he returned the favor with gusto. “My name is Antonio. I am ethnically Greek,” he said proudly, as the accent I now recognized from a movie about a wedding clicked into place, “but” he continued with equal pride, “I am a national of this country!” My expression must have shown the mix of the confusion and interest I felt because for the next five minutes in the middle of the sandy road, he colorfully narrated a very condensed version of a fascinating story, pieces of which I had already heard from locals but had only chalked up to urban legend, (or in this case, rather rural legend actually).      

The man I met in the market is the son of a Greek merchant who moved to this tiny town in the 1960s, right after the British, Egyptians and Italians had all been politely asked to leave the broader area. Why he chose to move here, I still don’t know, but he opened up a shop, built a house, dug a well, raised a bunch of kids and eventually died and was buried just down the road. His kids grew up, moved a few miles away to the state capital, got married, built homes, opened up shops and are now raising kids and grandkids of their own. And on this particular day, I stood talking to one of those sons who had returned to the town of his birth to visit his father’s grave. Of all the people I might have imagined this man to be, it wasn’t a Greek North African coming back to visit his roots.

This man’s passport, memories, livelihood and family are all inextricably linked to this part of the world. I wonder how often he has been to Greece, if ever. Though he stands out, this country is his home like nowhere else in the world. But as he said goodbye he cradled my hand in both of his, smiled as greasily as his hair and said warmly, “I’ll be in town for a while. We should get together for a beer!” and I realized that, however North African we may turn out to be in the end, the influence of our fathers’ homelands doesn’t go away quickly. (Good naturedly inviting a married woman twenty years your junior to share a drink in an Islamic society just somehow seemed very…Greek at that moment.)   

I have seen this man in town a couple of times since that day though we haven’t spoken again. He is usually sitting with other shopkeepers and seems to be deep in conversation each time. I imagine they are talking about how this town has changed in the last fifty years and I would love to sit down and eavesdrop. But I just keep walking and think of the questions I would love to ask him if we ever do run into each other again. Like: What was it like to live here as a kid? Do you eat mussaka (sp?) or kisra at home, or both? Do your kids speak Greek? What do you think about the politics of this country? Does the well your father dug still have water in it?

What a fascinating world we live in. I love meeting people whose stories and experiences I would never have imagined up myself, people who don’t quite fit any category I’ve come up with yet. I love having to constantly add new entries to that mental rolodex of mine.

November

Stepping out of October and into November has felt like shrugging off the light cotton sundress you wear to spring picnics and pulling on that scratchy sweater that has been stuffed in an old trunk all year. Almost overnight the once cloudy skies have been bleached a dirty white and our cool mornings and evenings have been replaced with oppressive heat. Right on cue, the tall grass and lush leaves are all turning yellow-brown and the mosquitoes are in one last feeding frenzy before they die out with the evaporating puddles. Ash sifts through the air and settles on our laundry and drying dishes while the horizons burn with feral bush fires. My garden only has a few days of produce left, and everything I pick comes pre-cooked: my basil leaves are steamed on the bush; my carrots are baked before they come out of the ground; and my cherry tomatoes feel boiled on the vine. As vividly as I remember the intensity of the dry season last year, the sheer greenness of the rains washed all memory of the experience from my physical body which is responding like it has never been through this before. And as recent as the rains were, after only a week of their absence they already seem like a distant dream. It is amazing how quickly things change here. I can't believe I ever used to heat up my bath water.

Bryan is leaving for a week tomorrow – first to the Southern capital to work on government documents and then on to East Africa to pick up his mother who is coming for a visit. We are so excited about her upcoming visit. She is the first member of our immediate family to come here and we are so excited to introduce someone we love so much to other things we have come to love so much. We are not without trepidation though. North Africa could be considered an acquired taste and this is her first trip to the continent. Bucket baths and lizards may not be as charming in real life as they sound in emails. I am proud of my mother-in-law already though, even if this adventure turns out to be a bust. She is the least likely candidate in our families to come visit us in the middle of nowhere Africa at the beginning of dry season a month before a political brouhaha that could result in the world's newest nation. She isn't the mother who grew up overseas or the sister who wants to be a doctor in Congo. She isn't the father who served two tours in Vietnam or the sister who runs half-marathons. She is the retired math teacher from Georgia who loves her diet coke, is a little bit overweight, and is having a hard time leaving her hair curlers behind. She is nervous about the lack of air conditioning, sleeping under a thatch roof and trying out the sorghum and okra. And to be honest so am I, a little bit.

But a week from Thursday, she is stepping on that trans-Atlantic flight with a bag full of sunscreen and mosquito repellant (and if I know her at all, good things for us) and is coming to see her babies. And that, my friends, is true love. She has heart as big as the wildfire that will consume the hill behind our house any day now and a capacity for loving people regardless of who they are that I believe will overcome the overwhelming newness of life here. There will be hard days, but in many ways I think I may discover that she may not turn out to be as "unlikely" as I once expected. (And on the slim chance that I am dead wrong we will finish off the whole party with a safari and beach holiday in East Africa….)

The next few weeks will be an adventure for us all, one I am quite excited about. Mama Dona, we can't wait to see you!