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.