Smoke

I just put Annabelle for her third nap of the day. I think tryptamines must be trickling into my milk supply after our annual turkey gorge yesterday because she was still grinning drunkenly with her eyes closed and muscles jellified when I laid her down in her crib a couple minutes ago. Either that or she is finally relaxing after weeks on the road. We are in Mandeville, Louisiana at Bryan’s sister and brother-in-law’s house. I am sitting in the dining room typing listening to Bryan and Logan yell over the drone of cheering and sharp whistles humming out of the big-screen TV. My father-in-law dozes in the big leather chair next to the Christmas tree that Christina is dressing like a tall green bride, pinning gold beads and ribbon into her starlit gown. Elaina totters between furniture and outstretched legs with fistfuls of cereal and little dolls that she periodically makes kiss each other. 

This is my first time to Louisiana, and so far, I’m a big fan. On Sunday night Christina and Logan took us to an outdoor concert where Kermit Gruffins and the Barbecue Swingers jazzed out under the stars. It was the kind of concert where pregnant ladies danced with toddlers in front of the stage and young couples drank wine out of plastic cups while stretched out on quilts in the grass. Kermit, in a fedora and pin striped suit garbled about “dem Saints” before sharing his microphone with a tall girl in a red scarf and ankle boots with a voice as smooth and brassy as one of the Barbecue Swinger's horns. On Wednesday we ran on a trail along the edge of Lake Pontchatrain, pushing the babies in strollers while we sweated in the sultry November air. Pelicans flew out over the grey-green water combing their feathered bellies on the teeth of a long narrow bridge that disappeared over the horizon. It almost looked like a bridge trying to span the ocean but the distant prickle of the New Orleans city skyline gave the far side away. Later that day we drove into the city and walked around the French Quarter, listening to street musicians and perusing little art galleries splashed with brash colors and liquidy shapes looking for all the world like framed music. For lunch we ate things with names like etouffe, cochon and court bouillon then topped it off with pistachio gelato as green and melty and the expensive art in the galleries. And last night, after the flurry of shuffling around a kitchen steamy with the smells of holiday and then stuffing ourselves silly with dressing, black-eyed peas, sweet potato soufflee, spinach salad, rolls, pies and a massive golden turkey, we moved to the back yard and sat in lawn chairs around a small fire in a grated fire pit and listened to my father-in-law tell stories of Vietnam and Germany. Some of the stories made us quiet and reflective and wonder what to say. But most of the ones he told last night made us laugh out loud and look at each other in the flickering light with shocked amusement. We laughed until we disturbed Gigi from her fluffy sleep in Jean’s arms, making the little bells around her collar titter in irritation as she resettled pointedly into a more comfortable position. 

We didn’t go to bed until well after midnight, tired and still full. When I rolled over into my pillow this morning my hair still smelled like night time and smoke.

Walking with Papa, Aunt Christina and Cousin Elaina...

Being a tourist in the French Quarter...

 Dancing with my babies at an outdoor concert...

This Side

I started the run grumbling inwardly about the clingy chill in the air and the still-dark sky even though it was after seven in the morning. I started into a stiff trot earlier than I might have otherwise, eager to push blood down into my already tingly toes and shake off a travel-weary lethargy that dug its heels deep into the tidy sidewalk as it pulled against me, begging me to turn around and crawl back in bed. I didn’t, though not because of some great self-discipline but only because I was miserable after a frustrating night with a teething jetlagged baby and the achiness of grief and second to sleep, exercise is what most improves my outlook on life. So I pulled on my tennis shoes and a borrowed beanie cap with a bad attitude and set off on the first run I’ve had in a long time. One of the first since the trail by the small mountain behind my house in North Africa months ago. 

I set off down the quiet empty streets of this pleasant unfamiliar neighborhood. The perfectly laid sidewalk was marked with lines in the cement just beyond my stride so that my sleep-starved brain went into OCD overdrive counting footfalls in each section and on each crack. One, two, crack. One, two, crack. One, crack. One. One, two. One, crack. Quickly irritated by my own compulsion though I pulled my head up and tried to take in my surroundings instead. Beautiful brick houses stood at attention, their broad entryways adorned with American flags or pumpkins. Sprinklers hissed rhythmically, spraying arches of water across wide greenish lawns; in front of one or two less modest homes ornate fountains bubbled crystal clear water over carved stone and I had a fleeting image of women bringing jerry cans to these front yards and dipping dirty plastic into marble basins full of decorative water. Imagining the look on the faces of whoever stepped out of their front door to see women fetching water from their fountain made me laugh inside, in achy sort of way. I rounded the corner of a block and found myself at the edge of a beautiful park. There was a playground and park benches and a trail that ran over a bridge and around a pond. The sky was flushing pink at this point and geese honked overhead in flight, a very different sound from the hornbills that fly raucously over our house far away. Something about the moment struck me as lovely though and as I took in a deep breath and enjoyed the pang of cold air in my hot lungs I picked up my pace a little. My footfalls landed with hollow thuds across the wooden bridge and I savored the loneliness of the moment and the fact that there weren’t a dozen small children trotted alongside me crying out Khawaja, khawaja! Adini saa! The only children I could see were climbing into big cars with school backpacks on their backs and paid me no mind at all. I eventually passed two women in brightly colored athletic gear walking small dogs in tight jackets. They said a friendly hello and I wondered if they wondered if I was new to the neighborhood or not. (Yes, I thought. Very new.) Seeing their dogs reminded me of a conversation I had just had with a dear lady who has shown us incredible hospitality in the time we have been back. She was sharing the recent heartache of losing her golden lab to cancer, despite all their best efforts to extend his life through treatments. At the time I had perked up at her story. In a season when my life feels so disconnected from those of my peers, I jumped at the opportunity to engage in commonalities. I know how you feel! We recently lost a pet dog too. It’s so hard! But when the friend asked me what had happened to our dog I balked at what I had blindly stepped into. Uh, well…he started killing our neighbor’s goats so the police had to come put him down.

Oh no! They put him to sleep?

Sort of. They were going to shoot him but because of the war in our area you can’t just go around firing guns, so they tied him to a tree and beat his head in with a metal rod.

Oh.

It was really quick. 

After a couple laps around the park I veered back off into the neighborhood down a street called “Twelve Oaks.” The street ran on a slight incline and as my breath became deeper and my strides slower, the houses all blurred into periphery and my thoughts pushed their way back into sharper relief. I thought about stuff a lot. The stuff that we had to leave behind, the wedding presents, the books, the picture frames and clothes and a really awesome lime squeezer that I had some unexplainable attachment too. All gone. And I thought about all the stuff we have been given since we have been back in the States. The clothes, the cosmetics, the car seat and toys and mountains of baby clothes (Annabelle could change clothes three times a day and I would still not need to do laundry for a couple months.) People have generous beyond my ability to comprehend it. We have new stuff. Lots of new stuff. I thought about the predicament of grieving both the loss of old stuff and the acquisition of new stuff. I tried to figure out how to explain that, both to others and myself.

Just like always I sprinted the last stretch home, trying to extend my stride enough to have just one footfall in each sidewalk square. I finished my run just as the sun was climbing over the rooftops of the red brick houses and warming up the pavement below me. I doubled over for a moment trying to catch my breath and savored feeling good. Tired but better. A run did improve my outlook on life and I was happy to be neither sleepy nor achy, at least for a while. I walked the last block back to the house feeling hopeful. But I confess, for a moment, as I walked up the drive smelling Fall and hearing a distant train, I would have done anything for a whiff of breakfast fire smoke and the sound of little voices calling from behind me, khawaja, khawaja! Adini saa..     

Far Away

Ten minutes ago I sat down on this white carpet in the bedroom of this tall red brick house. I could hear the heater humming over my head and could see the trees blowing outside in the dry, cold wind but nothing around me stirred. I couldn’t even hear the wind. Seeing the trees shake and stir in the frame of the window was like looking at a muted TV screen. Outside. Inside. They are very distinct things here. They keep to themselves, not bleeding into one another intimately.

I sat down on the carpet and thumbed through pages - Facebook, e-mail, blogs. And then I checked the news like I always do, half holding my breath as I click the “Africa” tab of the red BBC homepage, fully expecting to let it out anti-climactically as stories of someone else’s war or election or despot filled up the front pages. But today the headlines jumped off the page and smacked me right across the face: “Army Seizes Rebel Stronghold in BN State.” Finally, it has come to this. For how long now have we been waiting to hear this news? Almost two months, I guess. Every few days or weeks some exhausted bit of well-worn information would worm its way out and gasp of armies closing in, battles lost or won and civilians fleeing. We knew where this was heading. And yet when I finally here that the army has captured the town we lived in for two years, I experience a wave of shock. My mind is calm and collected, “We all knew this was coming.” But my heart is reeling. “Oh God, please, no…” 

The articles have references to chemical bombs, to armed militias chasing down civilians, to women and girls being locked up in abandoned schools and gang raped. An army representative was quoted as saying, “Our troops entered the town of K, expelled the insurgents and killed and wounded many (of them) and they are now cleansing the town." Cleansing the town. It makes me shudder. Names and faces are flipping maddly across my mind, Where are they? Did they get out in time? Are they safe? Where are their daughters? Their wives? I can see the sandy streets I waddled down eight months pregnant with a basket full of mangoes and potatoes, greeting shopkeepers and women in brightly colored tobes. I see tea shops under broad neem trees where old men cradle porcelain cups full of ginger coffee in the sockets of their palms while they watch people walk by. I see restaurants selling stacks of hot kisra and weka and school children in uniform and motorcycles zipping miraculously between donkeys and boys pushing wheelbarrows. I see things that I know aren’t there anymore. I can’t bring myself to think of what is.

I want to stand in the front yard and weep. I feel like for a moment I better understand the mobs of wailing women I have often seen in African funerals. The showy communal loudness always makes me uncomfortable but right now, in this moment, it makes just a little more sense. Maybe sometimes one person’s quiet sobs aren’t loud enough. To express the depths of injustice and pain in this world you need wailing. Lots and lots of wailing.

 

But the tears won’t come tonight. Like that crazy Leonardo Decaprio movie “Inception”, Kenya feels like a dream away and North Africa feels like a dream buried inside a dream. I feel so far away. I am warm and overfed and surrounded by absurd numbers of people who love me. I am so happy. And so sad. An achy, hollow far away sadness. Like the lingering heartache from a dream that is fading but whose footprints are deep.  

Traveling Shoes

Annabelle is resting up for her big travel night and Bryan just ran out on one last errand so I am indulging in quick guilty pleasure is the midst of the madness and jotting down a few thoughts before we run out the door to catch a plane. Our room is flooded with folded piles of clothes and stacks of Christmas gifts for friends and family spilling out of suitcases yet to suck in their guts to be zipped closed. I have laughed at myself so many times already as I get ready to travel overseas for the first time with a baby. It is a completely new ball of wax. In college when I would fly home on school breaks I would deliberate for weeks on what to wear through the airports, usually settling on something comfortable but stylish, complete with cute shoes and dangly earrings. I liked traveling light and enjoying watching people around me, making up stories about who they were and where they were going, and inevitably having some flirtatious interaction with tall, dark, handsome strangers (at least in my mind). But now I am looking at the worn blue jeans, fleece and sensible flats laid out next to the massive diaper bag stuffed silly with sippy cups and applesauce. Instead of a John Le Carre novel in my purse there is a copy of "Good Night Moon" with teeth marks in it. I managed to slip some lip gloss into an outside pocket of the diaper bag to have on hand when I need it, but who knows if I will ever find it mixed in with the hand sanitizer, baby lotion, baby powder and baby shampoo. I can already see all the nice people buckled into their seats politely avoiding eye contact as we come lurching down the aisle thinking, "Please, please don't let them sit next to me..." As a matter of principle I have refused to drug my baby with Nyquil (though my principles my change dramatically after tonight) so I am anticipating long conversations with my insatiably curious six-month old as she babbles on about all the new things she sees and hears and what precisely she thinks about them.

And you know what? I can't wait. To the utter shock and disbelief of a younger version of myself, I don't give a rip what everyone else is thinking when we board that plane and am even looking forward to the delightful messiness of traveling with a baby. If midnight finds me pacing the aisles and singing lullabies like a fool in front of 400 other people, I gladly accept the honor of sharing these new experiences with my daughter. If she loves every minute of it and travels like a pro, I am proud to be her travel companion. If 24 hours in the bright sterile world of airplanes and airports is a bit much for her, than I am happy to be the shoulder she cries on. I may not be the most chic traveler in Heathrow airport tomorrow, but Bryan has promised to flirt with me all I want, and I suspect I will be one of the happiest.

Termites

For the past several days it has been raining steadily here in Tanzania, a slow, chilly drizzle only occasionally perforated with diluted sunshine. It feels so calm compared to my last memories of rain. In North Africa it seemed that rain almost always came in on a storm, heavy-handed and insistent. This rain is far quieter, less exciting (for one, there are no floods to hold back under the door with towels, no basins and buckets lost off the back porch to the crazy wind). It’s more of a temperament that a mood and every morning that I wake up to grey light and gentle drumming on the roof, I feel thankful. That probably seems a bit odd, but I have always felt that way about rainy days. They come with a certain leniency. 

Last night as twilight eased in, we sat on the back porch and watched the end of a lull in the rain as a cloud grew too heavy to move on and began shedding its load. As the first drops began to fall, a space in the grass a few feet in front of us opened up as though in response to some unheard password and thousands of termites that had been hiding below the ground began to pour out on new wings. They rippled out like bubbles being blown through a ring and gave the sky dimension and depth as they scattered slowly upwards. It felt like we were in an upside-down snow globe, a little plastic family sitting on the porch of our little plastic house while glittery snow-termites showered upwards. We watched them until they disappeared, presumably settling gently on the roof of the glass dome above us all.

I struggle to write these days. The things I find myself wanting to articulate come out sounding melodramatic (Latest news says a total of 63 bombs have fallen on our town and 74 civilians are dead. Do we know any of those people? Would we recognize their faces as friends, acquaintances, or even strangers we sat next to in a tea shop one afternoon…?) to altogether detached (I made chicken alfredo for my dad’s birthday on Saturday and we played dominoes while Annabelle attacked piles of shiny wrapping paper. She is cutting her first tooth). I exist in two realities. In one I cook in the kitchen with my mama, play with puppies in the back yard with my baby and sleep safely next to my husband in a room full of things from my childhood. In the second I check the news with a sense of dread, pray for the safety of friends in North Africa by name and dream of a former home almost every single night. In one reality I am happy and excited about the future; in the other I am sad and mourning losses of the past. The two realities edge around each other tensely, like inflated egos in close quarters. The only thing they have in common is a very deep sense of thankfulness – thankfulness for what was and what was not; what is and isn’t. It is this gratitude that keeps them in check, creates a sense of balance. 

We’re getting ready to go back to the States for a visit in a couple of weeks, something that both thrills and terrifies me. It’s been two and a half years since we left. I have changed since then, as have the friends, places and cultures I left behind. Life goes on for all of us. Even so, I look forward to the little things that will bring us great joy in the weeks and months ahead. Watching Annabelle’s face the first time she sees mountains of shredded wrapping paper under a tree or throws old bread to ducks in a park with swings already makes me smile. I know that just as there will be things to miss on the road ahead of us, there will be things to celebrate too. As unexpected and simple as a sky full of termites in the rain.   

Thoughts on a Wednesday afternoon

So during the last air raid (that we know of) a bomb hit the Save the Children compound. One news source said the government is intentionally targeting humanitarian workers now, keeping foreign help (and eyes and voices) out. (But then again accuracy takes a big hit when you are just rolling your bombs out of a plane by hand so who knows what they were targeting.) The Save the Children compound is 200 meters from my living room. Two days before we evacuated Annabelle and I took a walk down the path that runs past their compound and down to the seasonal river with shin-deep water the color of chai. My plastic flip-flops were rubbing between my toes so I took them off. It had rained that morning and the skin of the earth felt intimate under my bare feet. We saw lots of red bishops along the way, their feathers so brilliant they looked like they were plugged in to a neon light.

All I have is my imagination now to give my emotions form. My made up thoughts fill the void left by memory or experience. I see the planes droning in high and small in the sky. I hear the bombs falling, making a silly whistle a la Wylie Coyote as they near the ground, followed closely by loud explosions and the hiss of shrapnel. In my mind all the women and children are gone by now but I hear men shouting in the spaces between the explosions. Or is there just jarring silence, awkward and unreal? And at what was once my house I see Nimir stretched out on an old mattress in our tukul, his black fur still shiny from a steady diet of rats and lizards. He yawns, caring as little for the chaos outside as he is by the fact that we have abandoned him. At least that is how I imagine it.

George Clooney’s satellite tell us all now that the government forces are much stronger than we thought and will likely be on the ground in our hometown sometime this week. Thanks George. This news is discouraging. Even our friend the doctor is pulling out and the hospital is left little more than a cluster of cement buildings full of injured soldiers left to contemplate life. I know the doctor would never leave unless he thought he would die if he didn’t. He has too many dying people still to live for.

I’ve imagined my house getting bombed a million times or even repossessed by the rebels for the advancement of the cause. But to be honest I haven’t really thought about government soldiers looting it or setting up camp in my garden. The scene is actually a bit comical, whether or not if ever actually happens. Rifle butts busting the locks of off our front door and rough hands sifting through unexpected things: a collection of Dr. Seuss’ best stories, a pile of pink newborn onesies, jars of Thai curry paste, a “Would You Rather?” board game, a heavy blue-bound copy of Norton’s Anthology of Literary Criticism (not my most practical choice for a round-the-world move but not one I have regretted before now). 

I wish I would have given my pots to Aisha before we left. If only I had known we probably wouldn’t be back anytime soon (my mind refuses to budge beyond that). They were a wedding present from my mother-in-law that we lugged around the world with us. How many times had Aisha held them up by their handles as she helped me wash dishes on the back porch, bobbing them appreciatively in her soapy hand? These are so heavy! You can’t get pots like this here. They must have been expensive. I’ll send you with some money when you go back to America to visit so you can bring me back one. Will 10 pounds be enough? Maybe I’ll send you with 15.They must have been really expensive! I can just see her squatting next to her cooking fire stirring sorghum mush in my stainless steel pot, grinning at how much nicer her kitchenware is than her neighbor’s. But as warm as the image is, it is silly. Even if I could have given her my pots she would never have used them. They were much too heavy for her to have carried when she ran away.