The motherbaby

 

This sculpture at the Art Gallery of Ontario made me think of the idea of the motherbaby, which I had come across in one book explicitly, but in many places implicitly.

Names

canım benim          my darling/ my dear/ my spirit

yavrum          my little baby animal

aslanım benim         my lion

hanım kızım          Miss my girl

Merve / Maryam

These are the names that my 75 year old Turkish granny/supervisor calls me while we are working in the mulberry orchard. It's kind of awesome.

Life here yani

Driver pulls over. Ben Suri. I'm Syrian.

Riding shotgun down the highway smoking a menthol cigarette.

Içmiyorum 'I don't smoke'. Ama 'but' nane 'mint'...nane... ok.

Kadir is belting Arabic ballads with the radio... kalbim 'my heart' why are you going?

I'm snapping my fingers high on nicotine.

Seat belts are fastened behind our backs so the car won't complain.

It's all Turkish mixed with Arabic.

Iki sene 'two years' in Turkey. Savaş 'war'.

He just dropped his brother at the airport. Sud Arabistan. Riyadh.

Hayat 'life'.

Hayat zeyn! Life is good!

I'm 28. I'm 23. So young! But you look like you are 20. I know I know. 

I'm on the phone with his sister now. Merhaba. Iyi misin? Maalesef arabi bilmiyorum. Mafi arabi. Zeyn. Zeyn. Inshalla görüşüruz.

He's on the phone now. Sadiqa arkadaş kız binit mn kanada kanada.

Is it the cigarette? I can understand everything.

Kadir takes off his sunglasses. Oh he is 23. Baby face. Those black lashes.

I point out my street. He drives past it. Kidnapped for tea. His mother insists. I insist more. My coolness ends here. 

Phone number written on paper. Turkish girls staring when I get out of the car, sunglasses and hiking poles, shouting goodbye at this car driver in skin-tight white and matching capris. 

What a life. This funny city near the border of chaos. These interactions.

Woman on a Bicycle

Last night in the park I saw a woman on a bicycle. She had a long blue skirt and a white headscarf that stood out in the darkness of the walking track.

Here in Urfa I have never seen such a thing. In six months in Turkey, actually, I haven't seen such a thing–a local woman on a bicycle.

This woman braked next to me as I was walking laps. I immediately told her how wonderful she was. Was it her bike? Yes. I said that I too had a bike, in Canada. Did she ride it often? Yes. Every Sunday night. She likes it and is losing weight. The woman said that riding a bike was more fun than walking, and did I want to take it for a lap? I said no (it looked small), but encouraged her to continue. We grinned at each other every time we passed.

In stopping to talk, she interrupted a chain of thoughts about what I did and didn't do in Urfa. There is no expatriate culture here, at least that I know of, and I felt an immediate keenness to fit in and have a low profile. I dyed my hair a darker colour and dressed more conservatively. I wore a flat expression and saved my smiles on the street for women. A friend mentioned I could buy a bike in Urfa, but I immediately dismissed the idea as not only physically dangerous (where would I ride it? there is no such thing as a bike lane here) but also socially unacceptable.

Socially unacceptable how, though? No one would stone me. No one would tell me to get off the bike. I didn't want to make a scene, is the real reason.

When I'm abroad, I like to blend in. It kills me when visitors speak loudly on the bus (don't they notice how reserved everyone else is?! don't they hear how much English stands out?!). Of course I will never blend in–at least not in this region, where I don't look like any of the ethnic groups–but I like to do what I can.

This may be a weakness. A savvy international type (I still don't know where he's from or what his first language is) once told me I was the worst kind of traveler. I adapt. I avoid causing friction or conflict. What a disservice I was doing, he said, to the people in the places I visited. They might never travel widely, physically or through books or movies or discussions, and my interaction was perhaps their best shot at being shocked into considering other ways of living.

One counter-argument is that there are subtler ways to broaden people's ideas than explicitly going against the grain. But let's save the counter-arguments.

I didn't get a bike here. I kind of wish that I had.

Whose job is harder?

The person trying to speak a new language, or the native speaker who has to adapt?

Last night I was hanging out in Turkish with someone who was skilled at slowing down, choosing words I would probably know, and repeating ideas in different ways. It was great. It was like being bathed in exactly the right temperature of water.

I think his job was harder than mine.

I thought back to times when I was the native speaker, as an English language teacher and as a friend and roommate to people from different languages. I remembered the strain of trying so hard to always phrase something in a way that would be understood.

But maybe it depends on how hard the person is willing to work. Some native speakers are useless, and make their jobs easy by essentially not doing them. That is, they don't adapt their language at all, and when the communication fails, they blame the learner.

I am grateful to have found people willing to make the effort.

So there's a Berber, a Suryani, and an Armenian

The famous view from Mardin of the fields leading to Syria

Sitting in a small wine shop in the dark–there has been another power outage in the old part of Mardin–are three men, laughing and laughing. Two are arguing in Arabic while the other listens. Oh, they are funny. One, handsome in a devilish way, has a black coat and a beard straight out of the movie 300. The beard is coppery red and his eyes are light. With a grin he waves his hands in mock dismay and threatens to throw a tea spoon at his friend. I am to learn that he is a devout Muslim and a Berber, which explains the hair colour. The oldest man of the three has light skin and no beard. He seems like a wise, bemused grandfather figure. I learn that he is Suryani, which in English translates not to Syrian, but Assyrian. With laughing eyes he gives me advice in Turkish about men, which I cannot understand. They continue discussing the upcoming election and the local political parties–apparently there is a woman running in one of them–and then wish me a good evening.

I am now alone with the man who runs the wine shop. In addition to making and selling local wine, he works as a pastor and leads a prayer group in town. He mentions Armenian background and something about Bitlis. I tell him how nice it is to see three people from different backgrounds not just talking, but really laughing. Later, out of ignorance, I ask something about when he lived in Bitlis. He shakes his head.

Orada hiç kimse yok.
There's no one there.

Bitti.
Finished.

Now I am on the Wikipedia page reading that in 1915, "Turks and Kurds, led by Jevdet Bey Pasha, massacred some 15,000 Armenians in Bitlis." The pastor had been talking about his cultural past, not personal past. I am still so uneducated in the history of this region (ok, history of every region), that I am continually mis-stepping.

The pastor asks what I think of Urfa. Before I can answer, he describes it as 'Zor' (difficult).
'Kapalı' (closed). He holds his hands like blinders on horses, and pulls them in to indicate narrow-mindedness. This is a pretty universal assessment of the city. I have yet to hear anyone praise it. At least I know that Mardin is a mere bus ride away for cultural relief.

"Tenemos una problema con los pajaros"

Birds in vents, like bugs in dates or ants on the counter, are the little things that make expatriates throw temper tantrums. The housewife calls her husband in tears--"I'm not fucking living in this hellhole anymore!"--not because the new culture denies her opportunity to work, or requires her to cover her head, or takes her away from friends and family, but because there are weevils in the flour, which she discovered when she went to make cookies that morning.

I woke up to birds in the house, again. It's been a week-long saga, women vs. birds. It began when Alaina found two dead under the window; while we slept, they had battered and exhausted themselves in their efforts to escape. "But where did they come from?" we asked. Alaina identified the source--the vent in the kitchen above the water heater, which connects to the great outdoors. They had built a nest up there. Since then, one or two fall down the vent each day and must be guided out through a window or door.

It took a few days for an action plan to emerge. Alaina talked to The Haj, our neighbour. I haven't been keen on The Haj since he told me in Spanish that I didn't speak Spanish ("Pero..."). I've come back around, though, because we both agree on siestas. Anyway, Alaina and The Haj together bought a metal contraption to block the birds from entering from outside. Before we applied it, we had to to get the man who delivers the gas tanks to come up and clean out the nest.

As of this morning, the man who delivers the gas tanks had not come. Two birds had fallen through the vent and it was not even 11AM. I knocked on The Haj's door. "Tenemos una problema con las pajaros." He saw the wildness in my eyes (Plus, having woken to birds, I had not brushed my teeth or brushed my hair). He jumped into action.

And here is where the weevils and bugs and ants and birds are balanced by the humanity of dealing with such problems. In North America, getting someone to come and fix something for you requires a phone call, an appointment, maybe half an hour with customer service, and then a wait. The Haj went downstairs, found the man who delivers the gas tanks, and came back up, bringing his own ladder. Fifteen minutes and two full bags of nest later, the metal contraption was in place and sanity was restored to our home. The Haj suggested I tip the man who delivers gas tanks 10 dirhams ($1.10), which I already had in hand for the occasion. Bueno.

"So, what's your story?"

An American visits our printmaking class. He is the guest lecturer for Tetouan's "poster festival." He speaks no French or Arabic, so he inevitably gravitates toward me, the only English-speaker in the class.

"So, what's your story?"

And you know what? I tell him, with ease. Some things will be very hard in North America, but chatting--this will be easy.

"Muslim?"

"Alaina, here it is!"

"What?"

"Remember I told you about that Spanish woman, the one that interrupted my Arabic class, spoke crappy Arabic, then asked Fatima if I was Muslim?"

"Yeah."

"Ok, listen. It's funnier than I thought."

[Garageband playback:]

[1022] Mary: Keifantina? Ana Maryam. [How are you? I'm Mary.]

[1023] Fatima: [pointing at Spanish woman] Selma.

[1024] Mary: Selma? Minsharafin. [Selma? Nice to meet you.]

[1025] Selma: [to Fatima] Muslim?

[1026] Fatima: La.

Best thing about showing Avatar in class

The movie ends. My Beginner 5 students are packing up.

"Teacher?"

[I turn]

"Yes, Ismail?"

[Ismail, now gazing into my eyes:]

"I see you."

Ouch

"And what languages do you speak?"

"We're speaking it."

The only person in Morocco with such an answer: The US ambassador.

It was a snotty question, as I knew he didn't speak French or Arabic. An American friend had mentioned it in dismay a couple months ago. I had to do it, though. Especially because of the irony--he was standing in a classroom of Moroccan students, busy crowded around a table where they were producing a set of flash cards with the 100 most common expressions in not just two languages, but five! Houria wrote the expression in English; Aya wrote the French; Farouk wrote the Spanish; Ayman wrote the Darija; Zakaria wrote the transliteration version of Darija; and Mohamed wrote the standard Arabic. Sarah and Assia were on quality control.

I told the ambassador that when we finished our flash card product, I would be sure to send him a set.

Club Athletica

Hatha rajul mezyaaaaaan.

This man is goooooood.

Said the drunk man, clutching Peter. I concurred. From across the bar, a Spanish man bought us two more gin and tonics. Mohammed resumed his rant on the importance of his wife being intelligent, if only for the sake of his 10-month old son. Karim, the owner and manager of Club Athletica, which I now understand to be a private drinking establishment and not a gym, introduced himself and said that I was welcome any time. The pleasure of the Tetouani bar experience, however, came largely from the novelty.

Doing things with language

There's a fruit stand on the corner two blocks away where they charge too much, but people pay, because the shop is right downtown, as much as anything can be downtown here. If I'm in a rush, I buy things there. Yesterday, in the rain, I bought half a kilo of tangerines and some apples and bananas. Usually I pick the fruit myself, but I was already carrying a box of cookies from Avenida bakery. The man behind the counter picked and weighed the fruit for me and handed it all over in a plastic bag. I hurried home.

Three of the tangerines had started to rot! 

The man knew they were rotten when he chose them for me. He had touched them with his own hands. He had abused the situation to sell me bad fruit. What to do? Thoughts: I could stop buying fruit there. I could buy fruit there, but always insist on picking it myself. These options were so negative, though, based on punishment and mistrust. This morning, after French, I wrapped one of the rotten tangerines in a plastic bag and walked over to the corner. It was a different man than yesterday.

Me: Salam aleikum.

Man: Wa aleikum asalam.

Me: Labes? Bighair?

Man: Labes, bighair, alhamdulilah.

Me: Alhumdulilah. 

Pause.

Me: Amss, ana kuntu hinaya, wa nus kilo mandarine... [gesture] lakin, talata mithal hatha [holding up the bad one]. (Yesterday, I was here, and I... half a kilo of tangerines, but three are like this.)

Man: Talata? Fi kilo? [talks about how it's normal to have one or two bad ones in a kilo]

Me: Talata fi nus kilo! (Three in half a kilo!)

Man: [He thinks for a moment. He looks at me and the rotten fruit dangling in the air. Then he apologizes and fills a bag with three of the biggest, shiniest, unscarred tangerines.]

Me: Shukran bzef. Bslama.

Man: Bslama.

YES!

Things that get said

“And I was kind of pissed, because he was playing with my ball and his dick at the same time.”

--Anonymous for now

Questioning a Parisian

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No, not now.”

“Can you make any generalizaitons about Parisian men?”

“Buhf…they want a girl for the night. And all the good ones are taken. There are so many pretty girls…”

“Maybe when you’re traveling you’ll find someone that suits you better.”

“Yes, that’s the other thing. I know in a year I am going, and he will not follow me, so…”

She wants to escape Paris, where she has lived all her life, but she's trapped by student loans. University is free, but business school, where she went for five years, is about 7,000 Euros a year. She hopes to save enough this year to make a break.

Twenty-neuf

Alvaro from Chile had been studying cooking in the north of France for six months when he met me in Barcelona. He opened his mouth to speak English, which he had studied and spoken for years, to find that it was tangled in French. I told him to use whichever word came first. And so he continued.

When I was petit…

Barcelona hostel

An Argentinian guy talked to me on the balcony in Spanish. He had a nice scarf and didn’t fully fit the scene.

A drunk—“I’m twenty-three tonight! Yeah!”—American kept cutting in, insistent on pronouncing the “h”. A-HOR-A…wait, wait…A-HOR-A YO…”

Laurence the Australian came to borrow my alarm clock, as he was flying early to Paris to see his sister and her Parisian boyfriend. He would be staying in a hostel, because the apartment was emotionally cramped.

Also on the balcony were Michael and his girlfriend, both from Duluth, Minnesota (Michael originally from Wisconsin). They loved studying in Prague, talked about the clubs changing at a certain hour and all the E-tards coming out to play. Michael offered around hash, which was not strong at all. The girlfriend told me about dressing sluttishly to get free beer. When guys wanted more than to give her beer, she would hail Michael. Michael at some point threw up off the balcony.

Two half-brothers from Kelowna, fresh from beer pong, could be heard in the room. They discussed pot, pot legalization, and the pot legality differences between Canada and the U.S.

Dan from Calgary had been traveling for two months in Europe. He asked me if I wanted to do some coke. He talked about meth destroying some town north of Calgary. He said Red Deer was nice, though. He said that people selling coke in Spain mixed white powder with Novacaine, so that it numbs your nose when you sample it. He said it lacked the coke smell, though. He said I was the only sane and normal person he had met.

Two girls from Melbourne slept through it all. We had breakfast together and they asked me about Morocco.

The receptionist was from Dublin. He was too old to be as eager a hostel employee as he was. He got drunk and said I secretly wanted to be Quebecois. He asked Laurence about being over the bridge or under it, and neither Laurence nor I understood. I left before he explained.

Alex from Florida worked the hostel bar. He asked several times how I was doing and how Morocco was treating me. I couldn’t tell if it was sincerity or habit.

Everything is different!

At a bar in Valencia, I meet a Polish girl. She says she spent one hundred euros and two full days on a bus to get there. 

“It is our first time outside our country!”

She smiles happily at her boyfriend and translates for him. She studied English at school, but this is her first time to use it.

“Do you understand me? Yes?”

When I speak, she leans in and stares at my lips. Her big, brown eyes search for the shapes of the sounds. She is unquestionably beautiful, made more so by her enthusiasm.

“Wait! Wait! Wait!” she shouts when she needs a word from her Polish friend, the one hosting her here.

“At first, everything was very weird for us. Everything is different!”

“For example?”

“The climate, the people, the city, the food…the hardest thing is that everything is so…Wait! Wait! Wait!”

“Late?”

“Yes! Late!”

I gesture to myself and smile. I arrived an hour late. She takes a photo of us together as a souvenir of her first conversation with a Canadian, and I spend the rest of the trip wondering what the world would be like if I had never traveled before.

Lechuga

numero

amigo

Marruecos

Francia

hablas

entender

Mauritania

la gente

sobrino

años

la vida

dura

el campo

lechuga

estacion

Two men from Mauritania sat in the otherwise empty bus station in Cartagena. It was midnight and freezing. They helped me use the pay phone to call my host. One spoke French and the other Spanish. I said I had never met a Mauritanian, so they showed me their passports and pointed out the work visas, which they now used to pick lettuce. They had driven taxis at home and used their savings to get to Europe, not knowing that they would spend all their wages on housing and food. Neither had a family. They laughed about ten years of hard work to end up in a bus stop at midnight.

Small victories

The two hippies from Normandie were so gentle in their French. We were walking in the same direction from the medina, along the cobblestones, in the afternoon sun. The guy began to translate his girlfriend's question, but I had already understood. Deux mois, I answered. Ça va? she asked. Ça va trés bien. Je suis trés contente ici. I led them to a bank where they could change money. Shukran bzef, he said. La shukran. They wished me good travels in France.

And yesterday my Arabic teacher elicited my most meaningful thought in Arabic so far. Well, it came out of a conversation as I was packing up my things.

Me: Al-an mada? (Now what? as in, What are you doing now?)

Fatima: Alan-an, dars. (Now, a lesson)

Me: Ma man? (With whom?)

Fatima: … something... (Two Spanish people)

Me: Limada yadrus alarabiya? (Why are they studying Arabic?)

Fatima: Liana …something... yaskununa fi Ceuta wa…something...  Maghrebi. (Because they live in Ceuta and interact with Moroccan people)

Me: Oh.

Fatima: Maryam, limada anti tadrusina alarabiya? (Mary, why are you studying Arabic?)

Me: Liana...ana... uridu an aamal ma ashkhaz… [here Fatima filled in ‘Arab world’] fi medinati fi Canada. (Because I want to work with people from the Arab world in my city in Canada).

:)