Meditations

I've become a stone mason. Or rather, not really, unless a certain gross incompetance can be overlooked.

Everyone and their goat, it seems, is engaged in a project of building something now, a wall a house, it is the season for it. And since the building material is so abundant they literally just dig it up out of the street.

Finding opportunities to work with people is hard, for a lot of reasons, and so whenever I see one of my pals hacking up chunks of rock from a pit in the ground, I scurry on over there and ingratiate myself like the well meaning, grandmotherly-like busy-body that I apparently am.

Everyone always gets an enourmous kick out of seeing me carry rocks a few feet (usually all I'm allowed to do. 'Just one' Yusef says, and looks at me seriously, 'Kool-ton, just take one at a time') It's impossible to convince them without sounding haughty that the work is not actually that hard, and that I've been doing similar things since the age of like, eight. (on the other hand, now that I've lost basically all the flesh from my body, I do get winded disgustingly fast, but there's no way I'm letting them know it).

Once in a while, like yesterday, I get to help a little more- hitting a few things with hammers, holding an old rusty clamp, that sort of thing. Mostly I just sit around for a while and try to watch the work intently, and hope that that at least says something to them.

Why do I do this? One answer is that I absolutely can't tolerate letting people feel like they know me from the first glance, from all the usual sign-posts - age, race, sex, sexuality, education, etc. - even when (maybe especially when they happen to be right). I go out of my way to prove people wrong, who may or may not be in fact, wrong. I don't truly want to descend into a dark well to fetch someone's lost well-bucket, so why do I do it (over and over again)? I actually do get a little squeamish watching a screaming goat get its throat sawed off with Mohamed-Elamine's dull pocket knife as we talk about the heat, so why I am I determined not to show it?

Granted, I'm hardly the first person in history to act tougher than he is, for no apparently good reason other than to save ego, but it's also something more than that, something about the larger truth (the truth about Westerners, or about the central equality of all people, the truth about the power of good intentions). How the larger truth can't be enunciated merely through it's smaller constituent truths, but only through the artful addition of illusion. It's about something being more than the sum of its parts. My parts.

*******

Let's see, what else? The days just go and go and go, and I find myself in the middle of a long process of changing from one thing to another, where neither extreme is visible any longer.

Every night I eat pearl-millet cous-cous (this is not the stuff you buy at the store) with the family of Mohamed-Ali, my neighbors, who also happen to be some of the sweetest and most truly kind people I know here. The only son, Yusef, just about my age, is my best friend in El Qidiya, and being with him puts me at peace. He lives at home with his sisters, he is a stone mason (every third person will tell you this is their job), and he has taken the Bac (exam to go to University) three times, but failed. He showed me his notebooks from when he was a student, crammed full of Arabic and science illustrations. He wants to become President, but I tell him I think he should become a scientist, because there are always people who don't like the president. He has a gentle manner and wears a sullen scowl constantly, except when it is suddenly broken by his goofy smile, his small and even white teeth. His eyes glow - I've never met anyone who I could say that about before, but his skin is deep black, and against it they light up at night and reflect even the slightest illumination, from flashlights, or candles, or even the green moon.

When the weather was cold, I would come over and lie down on the dirty, threadbare rug inside the darkened house next to Yusef, and we would listen to the buzzing static of Mauritanian stations, the little blue glow from the radio's dial our only light.

Other times we would all be in the wind whipped khayme (tent) by candlelight. I remember once watching him pray - everyone does it differently, and since its not neccessarily rude to watch, I always do - I feel it says something interesting about their personality which is not otherwise revealed. Yusef prays precisely, like he wants to get everything right. He is lithe like a dancer, he bounces on the balls of his feet, his face is expressionless, his bows are swift. I am more to him than just and American, or a good-investment, or a novelty, and for that I am grateful.

My days go by so quickly, even though the heat has returned. It's hard to imagine where the time goes. I need to concentrate to remember the day (or the date). I've long since ceased to dream in English. I can go weeks without speaking a word of it.

In the mornings it is bright and cool, and I walk the half kilometer to the market to buy bread (soft, chewy loaves about a foot long and 2 inches thick) and mint for my tea, just picked and wrapped in cylinders of wet, brown paper, and dry little biscuits to serve to guests (there are always guests) and sometimes sugar and sometimes rice. I almost never buy anything else anymore. I no longer cook, which is just as well. All the pleasure I used to get from making food has been stunted by the lack of almost all ingredients.

On the bread I put stawberry jelly (awful, synthetic, unnaturally red and cheaply unnutritious jelly) which I've brought from the capital for this express purpose along with the equally chemical-tasting (and iconically West African ) Nescafe instant coffee which I drink with powdered milk and sugar and some cinammon, or maybe a little Nesquik chocolate powder. I used to listen to the BBC world service over breakfast, but Abdelai borrowed my radio a month ago and hasn't returned it yet, so now I just read or study or stare at the walls.

Lately, I've been going to the garden twice - once in the morning to putter around the nursery and worry my trees, and once in the evening to water and help Taleb carry buckets to the cows when they come back to drink.

Cows are fascinating creatures by the way - simultaneously so graceful and awkward with their slow lumbering on dainty feet, their giant, mysterious eyes, glassy and fringed, their vulgar mooing.

*******

Now the sky is blinding white. For 3 days straight the wind has blown nonstop, kicking the dust up into the atmostphere. Its nothing but a breathless haze that glows all day and turns eerie at twilight.

The thermometer climbs. At 2 'o' clock it reads 104 degrees in the shade of my house, and outside at least 20 degrees hotter, but I don't know for sure - the meter stops in sullen protest at 120. With a little breeze, a garwah, it is completely bearable, without it, life is considerably less pleasant, but what can you do?

My yard is a sterile wasteland of sand and rock shards and bits of garbage. I tried digging a few holes to prepare the ground for trees, but was admonished. I had dug them too close to the house. Everyone said, 'Dig them out there, near the wall'. We build giant stone walls to enclose vast tracts of nothingness. The wall is about 20 meters away. 'You can't put them here. This is where we live'. I forgot that we want the tree and its shade as far away as possible, while still being ours.

I tell them that in America we often like to keep trees close, and live under their shade and grace, but that gets about as much respect as when I tell them we build our houses from wood.

*******

What else? 2 more things.....

This is what I don't like about Mauritania:

The relentless, entirely accepted prevalence of uninformed, incurious and intolerant religious proselytism - a grave offense, a grave offense. Woe to all those, of all faiths who practice it.


This is what I love about Mauritania:

Seeing people, surrounded by the tangibly thick, chaotic, dirt-noise of Cinquieme market - cars and carts and animals, and filthy sandstreets, and random trash - harken to the evening prayer call as the sun sets and wash their feet and limbs, right there in the indifferent street, and, bowing, disappear for a moment, into a pocket of solitude, into the untouchable solemnity of prayer.

I don't know how to balance this equation. But for now, I just let it be, and sleep under the stars.