Thursday, November 30, 2017

On the Way to the Sahara

We wouldn’t have stopped if it weren’t for the donkeys.  There were a dozen or so in the pick-up truck, braying, their heads sticking from the sides.  If it weren’t for the donkeys, we would have kept going.  And then I wouldn’t have seen you again.  “Stop,” I shouted to my husband, Larry, who is accustomed to my sudden detours.   He maneuvered into a parking spot right next to the truck so that I could get a picture. I didn’t notice that we were across the road from a huge outdoor market or that the smoke of grilled meat filled the air.   I didn’t even remember that this was the town where you said you’d be.  All I was thinking about were the donkeys.
Then we heard someone shouting, calling my name.  I turned and there you were.  You were eating kebabs and grilled lamb and you started waving.  “You must join us,” you all shouted.
We had met only hours before at a rest stop on the road south of Fez.  We were headed to Merzouga on the edge of the Sahara.  You were heading south as well.  We’d be taking the same road.   I’m not sure why you started speaking to me.  Perhaps we smiled at one another.  Two women on the road.  Or perhaps it was the children playing with some puppies and I was watching them.  “Do you speak Arabic?” you asked.
I shook my head.  “Do you speak French?”  You shook your head.  “English?”
Then you asked, “Italian?”
I do speak Italian but I was surprised to hear you ask me there on the road to the Sahara.  So we found our common language and chatted as any two women might.   I told you that we were from America.  You were from Erfoud, but you had been living in Genoa for a long time.  “Why Genoa?” I asked.   Your husband had found work in Genoa in a metal factory you told me.  For some reason I assumed that the older man who sat in the front seat of the car that was stuffed to the gills with suitcases and toys was your husband, but I didn’t ask.  I told you my name and you told me yours.  “Latifa,” you said.
I couldn’t resist. “Queen Latifa?” I asked and you got the joke. We laughed.  You asked if I had children.  I told you I had a daughter and you told me I was smart as you pointed to your three who were chasing the puppies near some shrubs.  You worked as a nurses’ aid.  I was a teacher.  Neither of the men nor the children spoke Italian.  It was as if we’d found a secret language of women like Nushu, that written language of Chinese women that men cannot decipher.
And then I asked if you knew a place for lunch along the way.  We had at least a six hour ride ahead of us.  And you told me about a town called Zaida and you said there were restaurants, but as it is sometimes when I ask directions, I didn’t really listen to your answer.  I vaguely recalled the town.   Then we were ready to get on the road again. We said our good-byes the way travelers do.  Maybe I’ll see you in Zaida, I said.  And you said, yes, you must join us for lunch, but of course we knew we never would. We were just two travelers, coming together at a rest stop on the road.   We both drove on; we passed one another once or twice.  Then Larry and I stopped by the side of the road for something – a photo, I don’t recall.  And we didn’t see you again.
And now in this town where we’d stopped because I had to take a picture of a truckload of donkeys, you were shouting my name.
The five of you were seated at a wooden table.  There were dozens of these tables and grills going with all kinds of meat and the older man grabbed two chairs and you made space for us.  You didn’t hesitate and suddenly there was shouting and more food was added to the grill.  More lamb and marinated chicken and kebabs.  So much food it was hard to make room for it all.  The meats grilled to perfection, yogurt and flatbread and bottles of orange soda and pop, and olives and onions and we were all eating, scooping up the food. 
The older man, I soon learned, was your father and he had driven all the way to Tangiers to get you.  I was stunned.  That is a very long drive and he was an elderly man.   He and I spoke in French and somehow we all made ourselves understood.  Your father told me loved his garden.  I told him I loved mine.  He had been a teacher.  He had six children and they were all educated.  He loved them all. 
We ate the lamb with bread and our fingers.  You asked about our daughter.  I complimented your kids.  We were mothers and travelers and that alone gave us much in common. Then your father excused himself and disappeared.   He did not return for the rest of the meal.  When I needed to go to the bathroom, you pointed to some stairs and I went up.  On my way to the ladies room I passed a carpeted hall and there was your father with perhaps a dozen other man, prostrate in prayer.  For a moment I paused.  He was so tall and lean and silent, stretched out on the floor.
I made my way to the bathroom, then back down to where you were.   When I got back to the table, your father had returned as well.  We asked about the bill and our hands were pushed away, our money stuff back into our pockets.  You would not hear of it.  “C’est tout fait,” your father said.  It’s all been taken care of.   We exchanged addresses and said our good-byes. 
“Come see us in Erfoud,” you told me, but we would not be going back that. 
“I will call you when I come to Italy,” I promised and I believed that I would.  We drove until the road turned to sand and the GPS kept telling us to turn around.  But it was the only road.  All the way I kept looking for you, Latifa.  That night in the Sahara we arrived at our hotel, a rather sad place that had seen better days.  We were its only guests. “It’s about the terrorists,” the owner told us.  “No one wants to come here any more.”  Around the moon there was a strange white circle and before us nothing but sand. 
Years later I was going to Genoa and I remembered that you lived there.  I was sure that I had written the address down in my journal. I went through everything.  Every scrap of paper I’d saved from that trip and I never found your address.  That was when I realized that I’d never see you again.  In that brief moment when our lives intersected we had become friends.  During that week in Genoa I walked the city, thinking I’d find you.  Perhaps we passed one another on a crowded street, in a marketplace, but I’ll never know. I wanted to tell you that I don’t think I’ll ever eat a meal that good again.





Thursday, November 16, 2017

TALKING TURKEY



Thanksgiving is approaching and it’s time to answer that question you’ve been asking yourself all these years.  What is the origin of the word “turkey?”  Turkeys are indigenous to the New World (i.e. not Europe) so when the early explorers arrived somebody had to name them. 
Here is the theory that I ascribe to in my new novel, Gateway to the Moon (to be published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, April 2018).   While there is no historic proof, this is at least a good story.  What is fact is this:   In 1492, as he was preparing to sail and discover his sea route to China, Christopher Columbus hired a man named Luis de Torres to be his interpreter.  De Torres spoke five languages, including Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic.  His real name was Yosef ben Ha Levi Halvri (Joseph, Son of Levi, the Hebrew).  He was a converted Jew and, many believe, a secret or crypto-Jew.  Crypto-Jews were those who continued to practice what the Spanish Inquisition called “the dead Law of Moses” at great risk to themselves.
Columbus believed he was soon going to enjoy the grand palaces and riches of the Great Khan.  Never mind that Columbus was basing his plan on the writings of Marco Polo, who narrated his tales to a French romance writer in a Genoa prison.   And that the journey of Marco Polo had happened two hundred years before Columbus set sail.  Columbus was determined to become famous and get very rich in the process.  But he needed an interpreter to speak with the Jewish and Arabic traders he would meet along the way, who would lead him to the Great Khan.  So he hired de Torres and on August 3, just days before the Jews who failed to convert to Judaism were to be expelled from Spain, de Torres sailed with Columbus on the Santa Maria. 
Some eight weeks later when Columbus and his men arrived in the Bahamas, expecting to be greeted by the entourage of the Great Khan, with offerings of gold, they were met instead by the naked native Taino people who spoke Arawak, and offered them trinkets and parrots.  Columbus was certain that he had arrived in Mainland China, then known as Cathay.  After days of waiting for the emissaries of the Khan to come for him,  Columbus sent de Torres and another man named Rodrigo Jerez inland to find the palaces.  Instead de Torres and Jerez came to native encampments where they took smoke into their lungs via burning leaves stuffed into a pipe.  They are said to be the first “white” men to smoke tobacco – a practice that did not interest Columbus at all.   It is also said that de Torres feasted on a large native bird that was sweet and delicate.
Now this is the part that may or may not be an invention, but de Torres did not know what to call this fowl.  He could think of no other name so he called it tukki which is the Hebrew word for parrot.  So it is possible that the bird that we will be brining, stuffing, carving, gobbling, and in some cases (in a tradition that I find rather creepy) “pardoning” is actually named for the tukki.  Though I can’t really imagine eating a parrot.  I have a pet parrot, and she is very intelligent.  I don’t think I can eat anything that talks.
But whatever you do or whatever you devour, have a Happy Thanksgiving.  And when the conversation lags or the L-tryptophan makes everyone sleepy, you can share this juicy tidbit around your holiday table and get a lively conversation going.     

turkey painting by MM  Nov. 16, 2017




Me with Tigers


Monday, November 13, 2017

First and Last: For Larry. Two Poems

The first poem, "Final Approach," I wrote while sitting in LAX almost thirty years ago in 1988 waiting for my then boyfriend, Larry, to arrive for a visit.  I was skeptical and full of doubts.  I felt certain that nothing would work out for me, and that this would just be another disappointment.  The second poem, "You Were A Fisherman," I wrote last month in Portugal while we were on vacation.  These seems to go together.  

Final Approach

As I sit at the airport,
Awaiting your flight
I think of how many before you
Have come and gone.
How many gates and terminals
Others have crossed
Moving in and out of lives.
I have kept vigils before
Over those who come close
then disappear.
Like a specter, drifting away,
and I have my own version of this.
Leaving without a word.
Touching down and taking off.
In my heart I go close,
Then fly off to other lands - 
Islands where silver fish
Feed out of my hand -
and I have seen you come and go
A Million times or more,
In disguises of beasts,
Pirates and wizards,
In the night like a stalker
You've landed in my dreams
And planted memories of moments
Yet lived my nights restless
With your promise.

But they have just announced
Your final approach
As I hurry to write these words
And wonder if this won't be
for the last time.
There is talk of fog,
A radar landing.
Remote control bringing you in.
But a calm comes over me
As if this were my last moments
Alive on this earth
and I am at peace
with all I have done.
I feel you touch down
In perfect visibility,
and I spread my wings
To take you in.





You Were A Fisherman

It came to me this afternoon
At lunch in Nazare.
What I hadn’t understood
In all these years.
Gazing into your sea-green eyes.
How else to explain
Your fear of water?
Of the ocean’s depths.
How you have felt the tide
Tugging at your toes
And so none of us drowned.
It was in your other life
That you were a fisherman.
You sailed the Atlantic
Your hands slimy with fish;
Your briny breath.
You were a fisherman
As you stood above the dark swirls
Just before I pulled you down
As you caught me
In your web,
In your tangled nets. 

Porto on Paper


For years I've kept travel journals.  They used to be just writing but in the last fifteen or twenty years I've begun adding a visual component.  I sketch and draw in them.  And for many years I never was able to do any painting or drawing that didn't happen inside the pages of the journals.  But lately I've started to feel constrained.  I've been wanting to go beyond the journal.  And yet for some reason I seemed afraid of paper.  As a writer I rarely have that dread of the blank page but as a painter I did.  Some of my concerns were practical.  What if I ruin the painting?   Then I've ruined the page.  And what should the painting be about?  As a writer I've never had a problem with the blank page.  I could almost always fill it and besides writing paper is cheap.  But good watercolor paper, let alone canvas, that was another matter.

But I've been digging deep.  Trying to take some risks.  I've been spending a lot of time for various reasons reading about Joan Mitchell and looking at her glorious work.

About ten days ago I put a large sheet of watercolor paper on my painting table and there it sat, staring at me.  But yesterday late in the day I had an idea for something I wanted to do and so I did it.  This painting of Porto.  It is big.  About 28"x 14" and it's on paper, not in the journal.  I feel a bit the way I did as a young writer when I finally opened the drawer where all my poems had lain for so many years.

I can't exactly explain why this felt so good.  Why it feels so good to not be afraid of paper, of mistakes.  Just letting it happen.

Again to repeat the Tahitians.  They have no word for art in their language.  The closest thing translates to "I'm doing the best I can."

Enjoy whatever it is you are doing.  There are no mistakes.  They are just steps along the way of learning.  

Saturday, November 4, 2017

Morning Fog in Porto

It was early when I took my walk
along the banks where gulls
cried but I could not see them.
Morning fog was everywhere,
Obscuring the river, the buildings, the road.
Yet this suited my mood.
My fuzzy head, my uncaffinated soul.
The worries that had kept me up
Uncertain of what lies ahead,
Regrets that lay behind.
But here on my morning walk
I could only see what was right before me.
What was ahead was cloudy and hidden.
What was gone, forgotten.
Across the river cyclists in orange vests
Shot out of the mist like flames
Flashing like a promise or a dream
Then they too are gone
and once more I can see
almost nothing at all.