Change for Gas

Sometimes when I lay in bed at night, after I have already drifted out of full consciousness but before I have completely crossed the threshold of a dream, I walk through our home in North Africa. I think I am so desperate to remember, to cling to a reality that is already fading around its edges that this practice  brings me comfort. I usually start on the front stoop and spend a moment with my hands on the wood frame of the door feeling the grainy arch of the incessant termite tunnel winding up the wood under my fingertips. It’s mid-afternoon towards the end of the rainy season so the air is still and hot, but already beginning to hesitate a little at the approach of evening. I gaze up at the hill to my left and watch a herd of goats lazily make their way towards the top. In the splotchy camouflage of the hillside I can’t find the small boy tending them from some shady perch, but I hear the small stones he tosses clatter pleasantly down towards our back fence. A hawk soars overhead motionlessly. I watch it for a moment and then turn and walk through our living room, my bare feet making sweeping sounds as they graze the cement floor. I notice the disarray of our bookshelf and make a mental note to organize it sometime. A lizard scurries across the wall and disappears behind a big clay water pot propped in the corner which holds up the leather-sheathed sword that Bryan bought from an old man on the streets of D___ one day. Nimir flicks his black ears in the direction of the lizard but grants him a reprieve and stays reclining on the couch. I move into the kitchen, past our green gas refrigerator, its pilot light buzzing quietly behind it. The long sheer blue curtains I asked a tailor in town to make out of a tobe to keep the dust off my pots and pans stirs very faintly as I walk past my cabinets. They don’t keep the dust off of anything. On the island I see my cracked wooden cutting board and a pile of inverted lime halves in a sticky puddle, the byproduct of the limeaid now cooling in the fridge. My cookbooks slump on the counter (I confess, Better Homes and Gardens looks a little incongruous in this particular kitchen) and near the stove is a tiny Arabic coffee cup full of singed matches used to light my temperamental oven. Above me I hear birds waddling across our tin roof, their claws scratching loudly as they click-clack overhead like fat women in high heels. I’m at the back door now and I pause in the doorway again. The porch is dotted with a few empty basins, a bar of soap flecked with ash and two wood and rope footstools from the market. Just beyond the porch is the path to our shower and beyond that our sloping bamboo fenceline. In the distance I can see out over the tall grass to the stony path that winds around the hill, a shortcut to the main road. But at this time of day no one is on it. 

I inevitably fall asleep before I ever make it off the back porch. Somehow this nostalgic taxidermy of memories is soothing to me and I enjoy, even if a little sadly, the process of not forgetting. But if remembering a place and familiar things is what puts me to sleep at night, remembering people and imagining where they might be is what keeps me up. I try to keep my thoughts in check, balancing full-hearted prayers with senseless fear mongering in my mind. But sometimes I let go a little bit and imagine familiar faces and where they might be right now. I see Aisha sitting with her small children under a scraggly tree with dozens of other women, all waiting for the UN food distribution for the day. She is thinner than I last saw her, though still beautiful which makes me uneasy for different reasons. Without her husband here she is vulnerable. All the same I am almost guiltily glad for the marriage problems earlier in the year. There is another tree in the distance where women with swollen feet wait for the pains that will bring their babies into this difficult world. And for now, she does not sit among them. I think of Daniel too. He is scavenging for plants and abandoned sorghum to feet his grandchildren hiding in the bush, his gnarly hands still as strong as men half his age. The days are cannibalistic, each twenty-four hours eaten up in a search for enough food and water to survive another twenty-four. The family occasionally sees others hiding in the scrub brush and they exchange small pieces of news or messages from a relative. But mostly they keep to themselves. They cannot risk attracting the attention of the antanovs overhead.

But yesterday we got an email that put to rest some of the darker of these daydreams, if you can even call them that. A friend from K___ wrote to say that our guard had shown up at the refugee camp across the border and wanted to see if we could get him some cash to buy fuel to drive our ATVs to the camp as well. The beautiful absurdity of the email made me laugh out loud. Hi. Just checking in to say we need some gas. The car still in a war zone. Hope you guys are good. Ok, well, thanks and hope to hear from you soon. My Lord, are your families with you? Is everyone ok? Who all is where? Is anyone left behind? And for goodness sake, how in the world do you have access to email? This is what I want to yell out in all caps across the world. But I have to be patient. The answers will come, though maybe slowly and in pieces. 

But I have something new to imagine now. I still don't know where Aisha and Daniel and many others are but I know where one family is. I see Abdul and Ibrahim and their families hanging out in the boonies with our, (I’m quite sure absolutely trashed) ATV waiting for some gas to get them all the way to the camp. I don’t want to make light of the horrors. I can’t imagine the conditions they must be in. But they’re alive. And they’re together. And Maslow would lead me to believe that if they are at all concerned about the future of this motorized hunk of metal and rubber, then they must be in at least some sense of the word, ok. This makes me very happy. And it makes me dare to believe that maybe someday I won’t have to imagine anymore but will get to see and taste and smell and hear and hug really, really hard all my future memories myself.
 

Date

It’s so intimidating to write after being gone for so long. Much like my body that has been plied with holiday sweets and then left to gel in the car for hours and hours of long road trips, my brain is out of shape and weary with disuse. I have weeks and weeks of backlogged things to write about but I’m sitting here at a complete loss of where to start. I’m taking a writing class this spring and I am a bit concerned that I will hardly be able to complete articulate sentences much less whatever else will be expected of me. But just like the Yoga video I contorted my stiff self awkwardly through yesterday, I guess my only choice is just to get up and get my mind moving again. Let’s all pray that, unlike my abs today, my creative muscles will be a little less sore tomorrow.

So, we’re back in Texas after a long pilgrimage from Louisiana to Georgia and Arkansas and back again. For reasons that are varied and complicated, the holidays were bittersweet – genuinely and deeply sweet, but with an underlying tang of heartache. But now, after three months of living out of suitcases that have been hauled from the trunk of the car to a relative’s guestroom half a dozen times or more, we are settling into a place where we can just be. We are sinking are toes slowly into a house that though not really ours, is kind enough to pretend to be so for a while. The pattern on the plates is unfamiliar, but the dishes offer up food I cooked and that tastes like a thousand memories of meals gone by. With each passing day, whether by my daughter’s toys drifting further across the house like flotsam on some quiet tide, or the new towels that smell less like Walmart and more like Bryan’s soap, the house warms to us. It’s a place where we can just be us, which in this season is a gift.

Last night Bryan and I went on our first date in nine months. Perhaps to the skepticism of a younger version of ourselves, we opted for the somewhat cliché black-dress-Italian-restaurant-lingering-dinner-and-a-glass-of-wine kind of evening. And it was good for our souls. We haven’t been alone over a meal in longer than I can remember, and yet just like my mother always said we would do, we spent the first half just talking about how amazing our daughter is. (I mean really, did you see how incredible those two little teeth are? She’s growing them perfectly, and all by herself! She’s absolutely brilliant.)

But somewhere between the bruscetta and the cappuccinos, practically midsentence, a unexpected lump welled up in my throat and I started to cry. In the past three months there has been a lot to cry about, happy tears and sad, but for some reason I have been mysteriously dry eyed. In moments of acute stress and deep joy I have been strangely composed, (at least on the outside), something downright bizarre from someone who can’t watch Tangled without a box of Kleenex on hand. But last night, a few notes in a song or a combination of flavors or a tone of voice pressed up against a place inside me that had worn a bit thin and I felt something give. And the tears came pouring out. Some tasted like grief and loneliness. Others like joy and intense gratitude. One or two still had a lingering hint of surprise from things no longer surprising at all. But they all tumbled out together. When I finished crying into my starched white napkin, smearing my eye makeup and making our waiter uneasy, I looked across into the eyes of a man who simply smiled and held my hand. He didn’t ask for an explanation or appear worried or hurt. He just let me take a deep breath and said, “It’s all going to be okay.” And I believe him.      

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.