How to avoid the subjunctive

Now is the time of Jujubees and millet. Now is the time of cold, of windy skies and hazes.

The greenery is being picked clean, the remaining shoots of desert peanuts, the brush-like weeds, the green skin of the poisonous turga. So it follows that the milk has begun to dry up as well; we don't drink it anymore, in big, plentiful gulps from metal bowls. Sometimes we have it with our nightly cous-cous, (poured and mixed with the hand, into a soupy glob that you slurp from your palm - it is incredibly good) And sometimes not.

As the green goes further and further away, the Tagant comes to resemble ever more the surface of a distant planet. No kidding - it's just plains and plains of rocks and reddish sand and mountainous, impassive cliffs. The inhabitants are, at times, just as alien to me as the scenery.

And then, many times, and without warning, they simply aren't.

In fact, it's surprisingly easy to forget that all my interactions with people, and therefore all the relationships and events that make up my days, are in another language, as if they happen in a place a few inches in front of my nose, instead of behind it. That fact is simultaneously unremarkable and continously astonishing. I remember how, months ago, landing in Casablanca, -a stopover on the way here- I felt mildly terrified at the loss of my language. It was my first time out of the country (Oh! dear, sweet bumpkin) and suddenly, something that I had always taken for granted, something that I had always been blessed to have in easy abundance (English) was no longer available. Just like that.

Now, I have to try hard to hear the constant jibbering around me as exotic, to hear it like I used to, as an unintelligable collection of foreign syllables.

Which is not to say that I'm no longer confused. I'm always at least somewhat out of the loop, and more often than not, I'm left staring off into space, with a wrinkled brow, thinking about hamburgers...

Nevertheless, the clueless westerner does have at his disposal a few tools. One that has served me especially well is the classic, non-commital utterance 'Mmmm', which straddles the boundary between 'yes' and 'no', and accordingly takes on whatever meaning the questioner secretly wants to hear. It's outrageously successful, and works like this:

Q- Cheikh-Akhmedou (that's me), do you want me to bring you some cous-cous?

Me: Mmmmm....

Q- Okay, I'll be right back.

(Actually, this example is misleading, because no one ever offers to bring me anything)


Another option is of course ignoring the question altogether, or changing the subject with some left-field non-sequitor like:

'Your shirt is dirty'

or

'My head hurts'

or

'Get that chicken out of my house!'


One which sometimes works better than others is the stock answer I'm not a muslim. Surprisingly, it applies to more situations than one might hope, though not always.

'But I'm not a muslim!' I'll answer a bit frantically to some perceived question.

'Ok-aay,' they'll say, 'but I was just telling you that you have rice on your nose'


The point is, one gets by. One rediscovers day after day what lives at the place where words end, and how to push forward through it like a new neighborhood. It helps to be clever, honestly. It helps to be fearless, or at least to tell yourself that you are. It helps to recognize value in the language of gestures - an icy stare, or a well-timed poke in the ribs, or an impromptu bout of arm wrestling can speak volumes. I like to think that good will can be exchanged through the skin of the fingertips. What mine says is something like 'I can't understand you because we are worlds of words apart. But lets hold hands'.

Some things though, need no translation. The other day I was helping my friends Bobo and Taleb make bricks from sand and cement in a square near the market. We had stopped for tea and biscuits when across the way we saw a little wandering donkey poking his oversized head and mangy ears through the entrance of their family's boutique. Donkeys almost always behave so much like nervously maladjusted people that its impossible not to personify them. This one seemed to be running low on sugar for tea, and had popped out to re-up. None of us mentioned it and only smiled, though it was nice to be sure that for once we were all on the same page.