AKA I'm Cold

Sometimes the wind blows outside like it's trying to break in. Once I stared outside and imagined a woman scratching at the glass, shrieking and howling like a ghoul. It reminds me of Ireland, especially when it's also raining.

Already this place with its moody skies and sullen clouds feels suspiciously like home. I have come to know the cold winds that blow like spurned women, and the emerald grass that grows stubbornly despite the snow. The sun comes out from time to time, and suddenly sweaters are pushed up past the elbows. People wear shorts in 50 degrees, which is so strange to me.

Those are the good days. Sometimes weeks on gray weeks go by and I feel that a part of me withers as it shivers. The cold and snow really aren't that bad, although they tell me that this Winter has been uncharacteristically mild (woe is me), but snows have a way of making me forget how to speak. It blankets the persistent grass, and it blankets my mind. Curiously, softly, languidly.

I do like bursting through doors and unwinding my scarf, unbuttoning my coat, shrugging it off. I like to bring the clean scent of cold in with me, letting it roll off me in waves, smelling it cling to my hair and my hands. Days like these, I can feel my face growing longer, my skin shrinking from exposure.

I do not welcome this. And yet it touches me. This incessant gray moves me strangely, and not like the glass-shard gray of Irish seas. I go numb here, I think.

It is good I am here. But someday I will be always beneath sun and salt.

Budapest

I think little girls aspire to be princesses because they have an idea of power manifested as beauty, grace as elegance. To be a princess is to be revered. Exalted. Worshipped in the heaviest, earthiest sense of the word. Worshipped in a manner that defies the most sanctimonious braying of clerical authority. Worshipped for belonging to not only the cult of woman, but the race of deity. Somehow, all this is made vastly clear to a girl, a knowledge lost as the world's reality is impressed upon her more and more each day.

I had almost forgotten myself. I have not been a little girl for a long time. Like two weeks, at least.

I heard, after we descended the bus and began searching vainly for a taxi, that Budapest is most beautiful in the Summer. Imagine the city beneath azure skies, a sensual sun glinting off jewel waves, a warm breeze sighing in verdant leaves. 

It was December. We had come from Prague. Prague, that lovely city who wears a wintry morning like a lady wears a silk scarf. But Budapest is the morning, declining cover. Strange, how demure and yet brazen with nakedness. That is Budapest.

I was remembering thrones made of air and diadems of moonstones on the ruined walls of an old Hungarian castle. The view was a UNESCO world heritage site, which is silly somehow. But it keeps skyscrapers from popping up and ruining the skyline. 

There, the Danube flows beneath the Chain Bridge. There, the old quarter of Buda, with its winding boulevards and ancient winds. There, the Parliament building, with its flying buttresses. There, where we stayed in a beautiful Airbnb near the city center.

And I felt royal. The day was cold, and the scarf wound around my throat suddenly became chased with silver threads, pinned in place by mother-of-pearl clusters the size of my pinky fingernail. The cheap coffee in my hands became the richest, smoothest blend. It was all very romantic, I assure you.

Ah, Buda Castle. I dreamt about it last night, actually. And the silvery grayness of the sky, the cover of clouds, offsetting the sea of red rushing up that big hill with the statue of a lady holding a leaf/branch/thing like Rafiki holds up baby Simba that is supposed to remind people of their freedom. It is a funny story that Norbert told us (our tour guide, who introduced himself as Norbert the Hungarian, like the Hungarian Horntail named Norbert in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). It didn't feature in my dreams, because Soviets rather ruin the illusion of royalty. 

btw, that's a smudge, not a UFO

But for your information, that statue was erected by Soviets in 1945, to celebrate the Hungarian people's liberation from the Nazis and their gratitude to their Communist liberators. Then, after the fall of Communism in 1989, the city wanted to tear down the very kitsch reminder of Soviet influence, only the statue was so darn big that it would have cost an enormous sum to tear down. So, Norbert said, tapping his nose knowingly, the city came up with an ingenious plan to circumvent such obstacles: they covered the whole thing up with a big tarp, waited three days, and unveiled it as a new statue.

I think that is accurate. I scribbled some notes down in the margins of my map of the city. 

I would like to return to Budapest, and see it when the weather is warm, but there is something regal about it when the sky looks like snow and the Christmas markets sell hot, spiced wine. And because I first began listening to him while writing a paper on the imposition of religiosity on ethnic conflict, James Bay to me is Budapest. When I hear "Hold Back the River" I think of the red wine our hosts left us, and the bluey glow of this laptop, and the sound of its keyboard. I remember wet hair spilling on my shoulders, the fatigue of my eyes, the pages of National Geographic that papered the walls. 

Budapest is a city that by day reminds you of days past, and by night, makes you feel old, and grand, and wise. It is a city of dreams without substance, sparkling like diamonds. Perhaps I will go back when I am older and wiser and it will not be so. That is likely, for like a mirror, it will show you yourself.

Go to Budapest. Take the waters in the Turkish baths leftover from days of Ottomania. The food is cheap and very good.

Thinking about, without actually, reading

Today the weather was fine. Never in my life would I have thought I'd ever think 59 degrees Fahrenheit "warm", but there you have. Compared to -15 it's beautiful.

 I have been thinking about reading recently. I don't have a lot of time, and I waste what time I have. Today, though, we spoke a little about Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, a throwback to freshman year of high school for most of us. It made me nostalgic, and now I am sitting in the quad because the weather is fine and because I want to be quiet and think about reading.

I am thinking about Winter nights when the sun went down sooner. Naturally, it didn't actually, but that's how I like thinking about it. I am thinking of the frost on my mother's car when she came in to pick me up from school. She used to smell like mint, if it was near Christmas time, because her old company used to hang garlands that smelled inexplicably of it. Some bizarre, likely carcinogenic air freshening agent, no doubt.

I am remembering how I used to be sprawled on my stomach, hanging upside down from chairs, or curled on my side, reading. I always pretended not to see her.

I am remembering the warm light in our old house, the way it was absorbed by the pages of a book. It was so wonderful to read about other people eating when I was skinny and hungry, and then go down and eat. I used to like reading at the table, something my parents never tolerated.

I am remembering also the shed in the garden, where I liked to repair to, with a glass of milk and a bag of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies. I read Pollyanna there, and Helen Keller's autobiography. I also read some book about a boy named Jeb, and his friend, Onion John. I can't remember what it's called.

It smelled so musty in there. It was always too warm, and I don't know why I liked hiding in there so much. Maybe it was that no one ever thought to look for me there.

When we spoke of To Kill a Mockingbird, I also thought of Pan, and Asta Solilja, and Per Petterson. I should like someday to go to Norway.

It is already 5, and the light has not gone. It was fine today.

Remembering Casablanca in Syracuse

Today snow fell in large clumps and it was strange. I am well used to snow by now, but still I ran and exclaimed jubilantly at the blemishes I made in what was smooth and white. We spun with our tongues out and roared when we caught some wayward snowflakes.


It is very late, so likely there will be less sense and more truth in what I am saying. I opened this document with the vague notion that I ought write about my experiences on my home campus, and also that I wanted to explain my little poem a little. It is not my intention to say anything against Casablanca, or Morocco, or Africa. My poem, however flawed, captures honestly how I felt in the moments after it all happened.

I did cry, and I did hate those men. I never thought of the difficulty of their situations, how the economic disparity created desperation that forced crime rates to rise. The iPhones they stole could buy groceries for months. I had 400 durham in the bag one man tore from my shoulder, but that is nothing. Forty euros, maybe. Funnily enough, I remember adding that little bag and its contents to my list of grievances. It cost me 9 euros, a not-quite-impulse buy from an H&M in Place Kleber. It was black, and the perfect size for going out. I still can't understand why its loss bothered me so much. It was as if the fact of taking it from me was stripping me of an externally imposed femininity that I held to nonetheless.

The man was small and nondescript. I never even saw his face, although he took little care to hide it from me. He hit me across the ribs with his crowbar- hard enough to bruise, but I knew immediately that they weren't broken. When he saw that I wasn't fighting back, he grabbed the bag, gave a jerk, and took off, the cheap strap flapping absurdly behind him. I watched him go. I don't know why I didn't try to run. I turned and watched another crowbar descend on my friend. I heard the thud as it hit her between her shoulder blades. Michelle screamed.

It seems almost ridiculous now, as I sit in my dorm, miles and months removed from that day. I feel safe here, and already the room begins to take on the familiarity of home. I have never dreamt of that night in this bed. It is too comfortable, that bed.

Morocco was a funny trip, because Fez and Chefchauen don't seem to belong with Casablanca. I will write more about them later, when I am more capable, and again, when I return to Morocco. But Casablanca was so strange because I never saw anything of the city. Only the train station, the walk to the Airbnb, and the little streets around it. We bought wine in a corner shop, and bread that we were thankful for later. We had come by train from Fez that afternoon.

I remember that it was 10 when we finally left for dinner. I wore my friend Anna's green sweater. She wore it just the other day, and I could not stop looking at her in it, remembering and not remembering. We went to some Italian restaurant, because it was not too far. Still, we had to take taxis. When we left, some five men followed us back in a car. I suppose you can guess all that happened next.

To add insult to injury, we were all immediately and violently ill afterwards. Food poisoning. So we never saw the beautiful mosque in Casablanca, nor the beaches, nor the markets. Non-Muslims are not permitted to enter most mosques, but this one in Casablanca was an exception. However, we were sick. Terrible stuff. Police swarming the apartment, asking me questions in Arabic and then French, about our passports, and to recount again and again what happened.

I remember waking up the next morning unable to move, sweating profusely. My head hurt so badly that it took all my energy to turn it away from the light streaming in from the window.

I am leaving out many, many details. I do not want to paint a bad picture, and one day I will write a post that presents Morocco glowingly. It is a wondrous place. It is hard for me to remember it all here and now. It is also hard to keep from submitting to MENA stereotyping. You know, the lurid descriptions of the mysticism of the Orient, the enigma, the seductive, beguiling sands.

Sometimes I am afraid to walk alone, or at night. During those few days in San Diego, I saw a man in my driveway and I was afraid. I had bad dreams for a long time, but that's life. We were not seriously hurt, and it was a good lesson to learn.

Go to Morocco. Go safely, and do not carry too many valuables. Let the mint in the tea soothe in the heat of midday. Let the Berber talk you into buying their wares- they are beautiful and stoutly made. I bought a rug as a gift. Dyed saffron and poppy.

I can hear the snow. Isn't that odd? It shouldn't be possible.

Good Night.

Casablanca

They came in the night.
They'd lain in wait,
planning and brooding
on angry stomachs

as not even rats can.

Men.
two, three, five,
(or so we heard)
who grabbed for us
and brandished rusted crowbars
and a knife meant
for chubby, childish fingers.

We fled?
We must have. 
We fled into brick and mortar
that welcomed us 
like the board welcomes a steak.

Like a dream, it was.
Yet it was not a dream,
for Casablanca is warm in my dreams.

And I cried.
Not as a child,
not as a woman,
not as an American,
not as the daughter of a fortunate man,

But, my God, I cried.
Inshallah, a cry I knew and didn't know.

I cried because they took my phone and my money.
I cried because strange men grabbed me
and groped for more things
they could take from me.

I cried because I was small.
They made me little again,
a child wailing for her mama
because men bruised her
and flung her aside.

I cried because I was scared
and never thought to fight back.

I cried because I couldn't stop 
once I'd started.

And an evil part of me
wished their mothers could see
how
low 
their
sons
fell
so that they would cry too.

The terrible weight of mortality,
I remember,
balanced on the point
they held against
Anna's green sweater.

I cried 
because I didn't want to play 
at being grown up anymore.

But now I do not cry.
Maybe the cameras will catch them.
Maybe even the police will help us then.
But maybe not.
Maybe there's no one we can trust.
Not even the doorman
who asked me kindly to sit,
and offered me Café au lait.

We will leave Casablanca tomorrow.