The Return of Orion

After all the guests had gone, I remembered that there had been a spillage on the table on our rooftop. I went up armed with paper towels and windex to clean it up. It was freezing out, the biting air of winter approaching slowly but surely. When I looked up, I saw that the night sky was filled with stars, and it took my breath away. A starry sky was a rare sighting in Philadelphia. And there was Orion's Belt! It had followed me all the way back from Iraq, each of its extremities safely intact. Orion was like a constant celestial companion- returning every winter without fail, wherever I may be, ready to accompany me on my latest journey. 

I've been back in Philly for nearly four months now, and really life couldn't get any better. I live in a house that has a roofdeck with the most amazing view of the Philly skyline stretching from end to end. My bedroom is like a giant tent with rainbow curtains for walls and one built of brick, and I get to share it with Sarah. Preparations for grad school are in the works, and aside from that, I've been really delving into the arts since my return, taking dance classes with some amazing instructors and shooting around the city with my brand new DSLR camera.

And best of all, I now have a special earthly companion (who's also often got a twinkle in his eye but for a very different reason) who has made me feel rather like Jasmine when Aladdin takes her for a magic carpet ride. I never imagined I'd be able to relate to a Disney character. From him, I received my first bouquet of flowers- giant sunflowers blooming with fresh scents, spontaneity, and romantic intentions. And to hear about all the things that he's done makes me, in turn, dream bigger than ever. Dangerous, I know. But anyway, besides the grand stuff,

Earlier today, when I went to the neighborhood grocery to buy a drink, I saw pumpkins sitting on the shelf. I should make something with pumpkin for the potluck, I thought to myself. 'Tis the season, after all. But what could I make besides the usual pumpkin pie? Normally, I'd brainstorm for a bit, then head home to google pumpkin recipes, find one, go back to the store, get the rest of the ingredients, etc. But this time I picked up my phone and called Adam. 

"How about pumpkin dumplings?" he suggested.

You can make dumplings with pumpkin? Who knew? Well they turned out to be more like fried pieces of gnocchi than dumplings, and in fact, it was the only food at the party that turned out bad. But still, as I hung up the phone, I thought about how nice it was that I could just call someone instead of going it alone all the time.

Poe, Edgar

All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.

I saw this line on a journal cover at Barnes today. It accompanied a mysterious, whimsical cover picture of a black (or silhouetted) cat pawing at a tree against a deep purple background. Sort of Halloween-ish. The line reminded me of the nursery tune Row, row, row your boat (...merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream!)

Here is the rest of the poem by Edgar Allan Poe (a Poet with a silent 't'):

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep - while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

The Sound of Language

I like how language turns into music when you don't understand it. That's how I found out my French was deteriorating, in fact. One day, I sat on the steps of Union Square in San Francisco listening to a French couple nearby chatting intimately in the language of windchimes and bells rather than defined words. 

...all the more melodious and rhythmic for their meaninglessness.

Coming to a Train Station Near You!

OH MY GOD, this clip makes me so happy! HAPPEEEEEE!!!!

Jersey Woods

Our campground in Jersey was a huge open field of neatly trimmed grass, surrounded by a circle of forest, and more campgrounds on the other side of the gravel path. We were a five minutes' drive from civilization. In the middle were four picnic tables plus a fire pit with stacked wooden planks for seating around the fire. The eight of us pitched our four tents as soon as we arrived, and proceeded to live out a most amazing weekend of uninhibited relaxation and ridiculous games, during which running around barefoot and neglecting hygienic duties became the norm. It's not something I could do for an extended period of time, but for 2 or 3 days, it's the most liberating experience ever. 

For two days, we drank, grilled manly meats and vegetable shishkebabs, played euchre and catchphrase, drew balls on passed-out victims like grade-schoolers, drank some more, played frisbee, had a dance-off to the choicest 90's techno and reggaetone music,...and so on. I adore Sarah's classmates from her BMB program because they're all so fun and interesting. I could go on and on about their distinct personalities, but I'll spare you. There is one, though, who was particularly fun to have on this trip. 

Matt is one of those people who will, when he's bored, think of the most random games, or else re-invent old ones. As soon as he arrived in the boys' car, he got out and started throwing his axe at a tree. It didn't take him long to figure out how to nail it consistently to the bark. Later, Sarah and I decided to give it a whirl, and I ended up nailing it six times. I won't say how many times I actually tried. Suffice it to say, 'twas enough for me to get six hits. And after doing a bunch of push-ups the night before the axe-throwing game, my right arm is seriously sore from the activity. 

On day two, we ventured into the woods to explore the sandy trails and gather firewood on the way back. We crossed a few shaky bridges and saw many different varieties of trees like holly and ones with serpent-like branches wrapping and curling around the main trunk. We came upon a lovely brown river (see, it wasn't blue!) that I wouldn't dare swim in, but still liked the look of it. On the way to the river, Yosh stopped me in the middle of my awesome rendition of “The Ants Go Marching One-By-One” (I was on five-sies. The last one stopped to eat-a-baked-potato-with-sour-cream-and-CHIVES)- 

“Shhh!” he hushed us. We all turned into stone (or pillars of salt, if you like), staring in the direction he was pointing in. It took me ages to see what he was seeing- a gorgeous, tan-colored deer with full-grown antlers staring at us from afar. I waved to it. It stared back with unblinking eyes. Then it bent its crowned head back down to continue eating, then quickly snapped its head back up as if it were only testing us. Eventually, it bounded off into the trees. We moved on and continued our expedition through mini-mounds crawling with daddy-long-legs, past blueberry bushes, and things of that nature. 

When we got back with the firewood, Matt and Yosh started tossing a frisbee around. Then Sarah joined them. I watched, envious of her frisbee-throwing skills (we are clearly not identical!). As the frisbee was spinning toward Sarah, Matt ran and intercepted it, and the game turned into Monkey-in-the-Middle. No more than a minute into this new game, he grabbed a 12-foot-long piece of firewood and started using that to block the frisbee. This game was called “The Stick”, the most ridiculous, most hilarious game to play and watch. I tried spinning with it randomly because I figured it was so long, it was bound to hit the frisbee along its path. Eventually, I got too dizzy and abandoned the stick entirely and proceeded to just tackle people for the frisbee, which was more manageable than using the ridiculously long and unwieldy Stick. 

A new drink was invented, called the Heartburn shot: Hershey's chocolate syrup + sriracha sauce, squirted directly in the mouth, chased down with a shot of vodka. It was a violent unification of contradictory flavors that somehow came out tasting good. The whole was for sure more than the sum of its parts.

Later, long after the sun went down, we teepee-ed a bunch of really long firewood and built a bonfire whose flames reached higher than 5-foot-11 (the height of the tallest person in our group). It was so impressive a fire that the eight of us simply sat or stood around it, magically silenced, watching in reverence as its light orange flames flickered and roared soundlessly, being pulled this way and that by the rather strong winds that blew that night. We watched the flames licking the logs, the logs burning and smoldering, glowing like blacksmiths' iron as the flames surrounded them and seeped through them mercilessly, flames flaring up through the cracks in the old, dead bark. We watched as a strike with the axe sent a million sparks flying like a swarm of brilliant, horny fireflies raining skyward, and disappearing suddenly into the dense, inescapable dark. The teepee-ed logs, too hastily arranged, soon collapsed sideways, lighting a stray shoe on fire. 

It had been cloudy all the second day, and so we were expecting that the moon wouldn't be able to light up the sky for us like it had the first night. How wrong we were. That night, the four of us lay on the blanket, watching smoky clouds moving swiftly and continuously past our lone satellite, and clearing up here and there to reveal a smattering of stars- more than I've seen in a while. Whenever I see clouds moving past the moon, my brain always interprets it falsely as the moon moving against a still sky, so I always have to take a minute to adjust the perception. Adjust and stare. Not a bad view for Jersey, the supposed Armpit of the United States. Crickets and who knows what other creatures buzzed all around us. The night is never quite silent. I learned this fact the night I slept on a bench on the banks of the Cher River in France, back in 2005. Such a cacophony of noise I had never heard before, including creepy dolphin cries, Sincerely! 

The fields in Jersey are much quieter, though. Someone remarked that the celestial movements looked like CGI. My eyes followed the treetops that formed the periphery of the expansive circle of sky above us. The border of treetops curved around and down toward my feet and then I couldn't follow it anymore. I raised my head to see where it led, and saw instead, the silhouette of a giant walnut tree, its inky branches hung with walnut bulbs and leaves, and curving and angling upward into the navy sky, unable to reach the moonlight. 

Lyrical Moment in 21 Grams

I heard the beginning of this in the movie, 21 grams, and had to look up the rest. Here it is: 

The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer

   by Eugenio Montejo

   translated by Peter Boyle

The earth turned to bring us closer,

it spun on itself and within us,

and finally joined us together in this dream

as written in the Symposium.

Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices;

time passed in minutes and millennia.

An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh

arrived in Nebraska.

A rooster was singing some distance from the world,

in one of the thousand pre-lives of our fathers.

The earth was spinning with its music

carrying us on board;

it didn't stop turning a single moment

as if so much love, so much that's miraculous

was only an adagio written long ago

in the Symposium's score.

Camping in Jersey tomorrow! Tents, peanut butter & jelly, beer, and no showers for 2 days- oh, and there may, or may not, be an accordion involved. Life can only get so much better! This too was written in the Symposium's score.

Bethany Beach

Delaware's not so bad. I've been sponging off of Sarah's friends since I haven't been back in Philly long enough to form my own bonds. Thanks to that, I got to go to a beach in Delaware and experience this:

Angled bridge

Lit like a spotlight onstage

by fluourescent white lights swarming with flies.

On either side, wild grasses grew

from white sands.

Lit unnaturally

by white fluourescent lamps

I tread the angled bridge in flat silver shoes,

stopped.

& lost my breath, my eyes grew wide.

Never have I seen 

such blackness staring me down.

It stretched across the dimensions

ready to swallow me whole

into its deep, dark, infinite abyss

Empty space, 

neglected by the Creator of things

I tread the length of the angled bridge

approaching the abyss.

Kicked off the silver shoes

and walked straight into the abyss.

I was not afraid. I knew the nothingness

was only an illusion. 

Things were there, should light be cast on them.

Just now, the light was fast asleep.

As all should be, 

but not were we.

Bare feet

Soft sands beneath the toes, 

Grains between the toes

We paused at the edge of the dry sands

& the beginning of the wet sands

From here, the abyss

was no longer empty.

We heard the woosh and crash of 

the surf against the shore

It thrilled me! Electrified me!

Leaving the others behind, my bare feet took off running down the wet sands

Hands flurried to strip off the remaining flowing garments

Tumbled playfully in the sands along the way

and dove into the abyss

Cold, black Atlantic! 

Pale bodies floating in a sea of tar

Above us another sea of tar

speckled with stars, 

no moon 

only Venus and Mars

I try to surf with the tide incoming

Massive, mammoth monster rising

But black force pounds my face and engulfs all my senses drowning

My sight is struck with stars

Thunder crashes around my ears

I lose all sense of when or where

As ruthless waves toss me hither and there

My clothes are ripped askew

All I can do is gasp and sputter

and crawl on my knees,

dragging my self, beaten and stripped, to the kinder shore.

Woah, rush! Again and again, over and under,

I battle with the tides over and over

What a rush, What a rush, the need to suffer...and fight and conquer

Back to shore I drag my self 

through the heavy molasses I drag my self

Bare feet back on solid sand 

and light and slender air

I become a spectator as others battle

their own tempestuous waves

On this planet, I see

no colors but black and white

Black sea, white crests

Black sky, white sands

Pale luminous torsos glow

like stars fallen into the jet-black flow

Crests race in from sea to shore like 

white stallions in battle form

Two front lines charge toward the shore 

Diagonal lines close in and roar

Clash and explode.

Another races from side to side

I watch, hypnotized.

I think we are standing at the edge 

of a strange planet

One jump will take us into deep space

off this strange planet

But I know this place, this lonely planet

And feel no desire to abandon it

Why would I want to leave?

Why would I want anything better?

We are here, and we don't know it

We are home, and we don't know it

Know it, know it, seek it, love it!

And then abandon it.

Mind vs. Eye

I went running for an hour yesterday! We ran along the Schuylkill River all the way to Boathouse Row and back to our house, and I'll be damned if it wasn't the most beautiful day ever, with so many other runners along the same route, which is inspiring...and perspiring.

When we reached the still waters of the beginning of Boathouse Row, where the canoes floated idly against the dock and the trees reflected their mossy green in the shaded water, two things happened. One, I was struck by the beauty and tranquility of the scene, so like an impressionist painting. This is as beautiful as it gets in gritty Philadelphia.

And two, it occurred to me suddenly that water is not supposed to be clean. In imagination, I always picture natural bodies of water to be blue and clear, but in real life, I am always unpleasantly surprised by how green or brown and unclear they are. The Schuylkill in Philly is always bashed for its mysteriously murky, hazardous-looking water, supposedly full of dead bodies; and the waters of Greenlake in Seattle reflect its name due to the excessive growth of algae and milfoil underneath its calm surface; and the Nile and Tigris, both acclaimed rivers in ancient times, but when you actually see them, you can't help but cringe at the thought of stepping foot into their murky depths. But maybe that's how natural bodies of water should be and the fault is really with my idealization of rivers and lakes.

We probably do this more than we realize- kind of like how we draw stars with 5 triangle points, but in reality, stars look nothing like that. Or how we often draw sheep as these fluffy, cloud-like things, but in reality, sheep hair is long, straight, and mangy and not white. Sigh...I always suffer such disappointment whenever I run across a real sheep! They are not at all like the cute and fluffy sheep you see in cartoons. Mental and physical representations probably rarely ever match up with the real object it represents. But that's ok because representations don't necessarily have to be accurate, right?

Mystery Phone Call

The other day, I was woken up by a phone call way too early in the morning. The number on the phone began with 964 and looked ridiculously long. I opened the phone anyway.

“Hello?”

“Hello?” replied a little girl's voice. 

Who the hell was this? My girlfriends tend to be in their twenties or older, not ten.

“Hello? (*Major static*) Miss Angie?

Oh my, it's been a while since I've heard that name! 

“Miss Angie, this is Abdulrahman.” 

It wasn't a little girl! It was one of my kindergarden boys calling me from Iraq! And his English was rockin'. Go Abo!

Good Timing

I think I left just in time. The location of the latest bombing was uncomfortably close to Erbil, and right in the region of that Syriac monastery we visited a few months ago. Timing is everything!

Final Citadel Survey: Muddy Waters

June 20, 2009

I shut the cab door and turned around. Facing the inside of the bazaar, suddenly, I felt like exploring, not shopping. Good thing there was an ancient citadel right across the street! I made a detour from bazaar to citadel, bought a couple of those shepherd bags from the tapestry shop underneath, and headed through the archway and up the stairs for what would be the last time, though at the time, I was thinking I'd be coming here at least a couple more times before leaving. As usual, there were a couple lone men perched on the edge of the flat top overlooking the city, watching the hubbub of the bazaar traffic below. The sky that day was a uniform, hazy white, so heavy with dust that the buildings along the horizon appeared smoky and gray. 

I entered through an opening on the side this time. Fortress walls enclosed the path on either side and reached up to the sky. Treading this path, I came upon an old mud-brick wall in a permanent state of crumbling. Staring up at it, I realized it was not just a single wall, but layers upon layers of it. Underneath the crumbling parts, older layers of wall could be seen, as well as old doors and windows that had been built then blocked up later on. Some patches of brick were smoother than others. Some patches looked like old man's teeth, all crooked and leaving gaps and halfway pulled out. Bricks grew out in clumps from flatter surfaces like the mossy growth on ancient tree trunks. I couldn't believe it was still standing because it looked like a Jenga game that's been going on much too long.

I meandered like one of the citadel cats through some alleys with my camera, until I saw one of the guards walking toward me. I nodded agreeably as he gave me the usual friendly warning to not stray from the main road, and dutifully followed him back. About a dozen or so members of the pershmerga lounged around the circular podium there in their army pants, but as soon as they saw me approaching, their leader barked at them to get into formation and they started doing these hilariously lame, outdated exercises. I managed to get a picture of them while they were still lounging around. 

Looking up from the picture, I noticed an ever-so slight brownish tint of the sky that had not been there earlier. Dust was gathering. It hit me then just how brown everything in here was today. The mud-brick buildings, the dirt ground, and now even the sky was reflecting an off-white tint.  

I made my way up the main road toward the other archway in the back of the citadel, pausing to take photos of an adorable Creamsicle-colored cat lurking at the top of a railed staircase behind some old bricks and leaves. Seriously, it is the cats that rule this place now. Akkadians, Babylonians, Persians and Greeks have come and gone, and now only the felines remain. 

By the time I passed under the back archway, the dust had thickened so much the sky seemed to be dropping down on the city, the smoky film along the horizon having spread forward to turn the clear outlines of distant buildings into indiscernible shadows shrouded in mist.

I climbed up some old crumbling staircase along the right side of the citadel walls, over loose boards, stones, and mounds of dirt. There was supposed to be an amazing view of the city during sunset from a window up here somewhere. But even as I began climbing, I could see a guard out of the corner of my eye making his way toward me. Argh, since when have they become so annoyingly thoughtful of the tourists' safety? I sat down on a cement block and pulled out my camera, indicating to the guard that I was just going to sit here taking pictures. He seemed to be fine with that, though he lingered to keep watch. I'll come back another day and try to get up there, I thought. Of course that day never came.

Perched on the cement block and leaning against the old mud-brick wall, I watched as this one came to an end, the sun sinking slowly down from its lofty roost. Its gold light cast a yellowish hue over the westerly sky, diffused by the intense dust clogging the atmosphere that day. The entire sky seemed to glow with a soft, nebulous light.  Strong gusts of wind blew that infernal dust my way. I shielded my eyes with my hands, and futilely tried to brush my bangs away against the direction of the wind. The winds were shifting, the air hung heavy. Gee, the day sure felt ominous. I toyed with my camera for awhile until suddenly, a fat raindrop splattered on it, and I looked up to see that the world had been drenched in coffee. 

Or so it seemed. Brown, brown, everywhere brown! Muddy brown skies hovered over a muddy brown city with brown buildings and white buildings that looked yellowish-brown under the strange glowing light from above. I was impressed, but also, I had to get out of the rain that was about to be unleashed. 

I ran down and took shelter underneath the arch next to a young girl about 12 years of age, but already as tall as me. Possibly, I have not grown since I was twelve. We huddled against the bricks and watched the muddy rain drumming down, heavy as pebbles. 

Soon, though, the wind was sweeping the downpour sideways, so we were getting wet anyway. A soldier motioned for us to get inside the old security station. Grateful for the tiny, but dry shelter, we sat down on the old stone bench and sighed with relief- but I yelped and leapt up a second later because water was dripping down from the ceiling onto the bench where I sat. So we stood side-by-side, waiting for the storm to pass. 

The girl's name was Raman, and she was visiting from Denmark with her grandfather. Raman dreamed of living in Kurdistan forever. The houses here were big and beautiful, she said, and nowhere else has she ever seen such beautiful things. I liked how she could say these things about her homeland even in the midst of a giant, disgusting mudstorm. A shattered window directly in front of me framed an old man standing under the eaves of a house across the dirt path, one hand resting on a large, yellow garbage bin, the other wiping the rain off his balding head. The old man was her grandfather, a school headmaster. The rain slashed down like needles past this viewing frame. 

We watched the river of coffee flow and splatter past the doorless entrance. It reminded me of a time more than a dozen years ago, when I stood under the protective eaves of a storefront somewhere along the route to my aunt's house in Korea, watching a muddy river rushing madly by through the cobblestone street. Now that was a rainstorm. I had been exactly Raman's age, but unlike her, I remember being scared stiff by the torrential flood that looked like it could easily sweep me away if I tried to step into it to get home. All I wanted, though, was to get home, so I braved the torrents and blindly made my way back to my aunt's house eventually. I remember my lovely aunt yelled at me for not taking an umbrella. Hmph. As if an umbrella could have held back a rushing river. She must have been mistaking me for Moses.

This time, I waited. Quite suddenly, the downpour slowed to a trickle, then stopped completely. We stepped out of our tiny cement shelter, amazed at the transformation. Having dumped all its dirt onto the city below, which remained a murky, muddy brown, the sky looked positively cheery: light and clear and fluffy with clouds. Had it been a cartoon, it would have started whistling a tune. Had it been a deer, it would have started frolicking after a butterfly. How beguiling. Raman and I joined her grandfather and the few other tourists heading down the hill and out the citadel. Her grandfather invited me to their home, so I waited with them in the flooded streets for a cab, taking care to step upon the more solid islands of mud. The sun had sunk low and was glowing a pale orange, visible just over an old brick wall across the street. I followed them into the cab for an evening of ice cream and babies at Raman's aunt's house. 

“If I had all the money and time in the world...” We ended up playing this game somehow. Raman said she would live in Kurdistan and help other people. Wait till she finds out just how many ways there are of doing that. How would she choose? Her younger sister would be a princess. Would that be a full-time occupation? I guess in this day and age, depending on which realm you're in charge of, being a princess might entail getting involved in politics on top of wearing the tiara and pretty dresses. In the old days in Kurdistan, a princess was also a warrior (Remember Princess Khanzad, the 12th century Kurdish warrior princess? The Yezedis, before the Islamic conquest, did not care much for distinct gender roles.). Her older cousin was studying to become a civil engineer, which sounds a lot less glamorous than Occupation: Princess, but in a developing region like Kurdistan, would be a hundred times more useful. 

In the corner of the room, swaddled in blankets, the littlest sister, still just a baby, cried out in her sleep. I wondered what dreams had startled her from her tranquil slumber. 

Heavenly Theory of Relativity

I read a beautifully-illustrated picture book called "Cat Heaven", and laughed out loud when I reached the part that says that in Cat Heaven, the cats sit on "God's kitchen counter" where there are many cat dishes full of sardines and tuna for the cats to chow down to their hearts' content. My first thought was, If this was Cat Heaven, then was it also Fish Hell? Also, if a Fish Hell exists, would a Fish Heaven also exist in which the Fish are on the other side of the bowl watching humans swim around mindlessly and blow bubbles, unable to escape the cramped confines of the aquarium? So many possibilities exist with a healthy dose of imagination!

Reflecting on Reflections

“...And so, the image of the object is seen as being behind the mirror.”

It is?

I always thought of my reflection as being on the surface of the mirror, not behind it. Obviously, nothing lies behind the mirror. Or so I thought. I guess I didn't know what I was supposed to think. Now, thanks to sitting in on an intro physics class, I know that I'm supposed to think that my reflection is behind the mirror, because that's what my eye sees. And what my eye sees, my mind must see, I guess, is the assumption. I think this is where screws become loose in some heads, when there's a huge discrepancy between the eye and the mind. So now, in order to show I'm not crazy, I'm going to try to make myself believe my reflection is behind the mirror every single morning.

Schooooool's Out For Summer!

June 19, 2009

Schoooool's out forEVER!

The last day of school called for a lot of hugs. Regardless of what day it is, though, 5-year-olds have an inherent hugging impulse, as if it is in their nature to love. I think the hug control center is located somewhere near the thymus, but the impulse remains virtually uncontrollable until kids reach the age of 7 or 8. Until then, all they can do is helplessly follow their arms as they desire to wrap themselves around some warm-blooded target standing around in the same room.

Of course, by high school and university, to have such a compulsion to hug your teacher during class is far from endearing- and rather a symptom of some psychological instability. Sometimes, when I observe my younger kids, it occurs to me how such alien yet adorable behavior would be considered repulsive in an adult, and usually a sign of mental retardation. This double standard is disquieting. Teaching such young kids has made me realize just how much is lost in the inevitable process of growing up. Unconditional love to the point of idolization, unsuppressed displays of affection, laughter that brightens the entire face with utter delight, playfulness and boundless energy, endless curiosity and wonder at the smallest things...and half of these things are lost in school, where they are trained to sit still and be quiet and not interrupt class with hugs. But admittedly, it is sensible and necessary to learn to lose some of these childish behaviors in order to train the mind, function in group settings, blah blah blah, and most importantly, so that they don't drive their teachers crazy.

Speaking of which...Before I knew it, the bus kids were gone, and I was left in the dirty, cluttered classroom with the remaining kids running around and chasing and hitting each other as usual. By this time, though, I usually allow them to be kids again.

“Miss Angie! Diyar and Tara are hitting me!” Daryan came to me complaining while my brain was still trying to comprehend that it was almost over.

“Diyar, Tara, you can hit each other, but stop bothering Daryan.”

Diyar and Tara grinned at each other and turned their (harmless) weapons on each other instead of Daryan. Crisis easily averted. It hit me as I was standing around, that I'd never see the bus kids again, and suddenly the last high-fives and goodbyes I gave as they filed out the door weren't enough. I regretted not taking one last long look at little Shene's face, or picking up Hoz and tickling the little puppy one last time, or...damn, but these moments pass too quickly! So many things were going on at that moment that I just treated it as just an end to yet another school day, and suddenly they were gone. I scooped up Zerin and smothered her with kisses before handing her to her sister, and Bariz the Panda threw himself at me one last painful (he's a hefty kid) time before heading out with his driver.

Goodbye, my babies! Qua xafis, darnafis (”See you later, alligator”)!

Playing Games & The Sounds of Laughter

June 16, 2009

It always startles me when Doe acts like the 5-year-old girl that she really is. She is so perspicacious for her age that I often forget she's still just a baby. If you think you can't use logic with a 5-year-old, you haven't met Doe. She may ask “why”, but once you explain why, she takes a minute to intently process what you said, and most of the time comes to an understanding, or at the very least acceptance and continual musing.

The school year is coming to a close, and these last few days have been more fun-filled. Since all our work is finished, I have been spending a lot of class time teaching the kids how to play games like “Find the bell”, Hangman, and “Rock, Paper, Scissors”. This last one is a huge hit with the kids, and they've actually modified this timeless game to include things like “Pencil”, which beats Paper by writing on it. Out on the playground, someone suggested “Snake”, and Doe, ever the innovator said,

“Let's every time we both do snake, you kiss me and I kiss you!”

I was confused at first, but I just went with the flow, letting her teach me: “Rock, Paper, Snake! Rock, Paper, Snake!”, until we both did Snake with our index fingers pointing outward. Then Doe touched her index finger to mine and made silly kissing noises. As soon as I understood, I make equally silly kissing noises back and suddenly, Doe gave a most childish, gleeful squeal, and it was one of those moments that reminded me of how young she really was still. The sound of her laughter is unbelievably disarming- so full of delight.

Hoz also has a laughter that is incredibly disarming, but in a different way: more like an explosion . When he laughs, his entire countenance brightens like a sunburst. And it takes so little to make him laugh. Once I was standing at the board teaching, and suddenly I looked down and saw him crouched down into a tiny little ball right at my feet, waiting gleefully for me to notice. As soon as I made a surprise face, he burst out into his radiant laughter and ran back to his chair. And then I went on teaching.

Sometimes, teaching five-year-olds feels like teaching in an alternate Alice-in-Wonderland universe.

At the time, I remember thinking, it takes so little to entertain them! A silly expression on my face and they'll laugh like it's the funniest thing in the world! I had them wrapped around my little finger! I thought naively. Now I realize, that actually, they've got me wrapped around their tiny little fingers. Hoz was the one crouching down and hiding to make me laugh; Doe was the one to coax me into playing Rock, Paper, Scissors and making me laugh with her innovations. They were teasing me! Hm, I suddenly feel the fool, but blissfully so.

Before I taught KG, I was somewhat fearful that working with kids this little all day would “dumb me down”. Interacting at such basic levels, how could it not? In reality, though, working with kids so young has brushed off the dust and rust from worldly things, restoring them to the original level of wondrous and strange and new.

But it is a love-hate relationship. I love them, but containing the energy of dozens of kids at once and simultaneously trying to teach them is mentally and physically draining. I love them, and I'll miss them horribly, but I'm not altogether sorry to see it end. Like most endings, this one will be bittersweet. But more on the sweet end. I'm pretty certain I'll be skipping ten feet in the air down the walkway lined with toilet watered mulberry trees for what will be the very last time.

Zerindoodoo

June 9, 2009

Zerin is back! She and her entire family's been stuck in London with a visa re-entry problem since the end of March, and boy have I missed this doll! She's a little one- so tiny, she weighs about the same as a one-year-old baby, and her tiny hand can barely hold one of our fat wooden pencils. As frustrating as it was to be her teacher, I've missed the way she stares dreamily at me from her seat, a pencil in one hand, lifeless and un-writing, her chin in the other, her huge almond-shaped eyes vacant as a parking lot after closing hour, a thin fountain of hair springing from the top of her tiny head. Academically, she was in deep doodoo, having missed so much of the last term, but it's good to have her back with us.

Mr. Clarry's Clues: Assyrian Rock Carvings in Khanis

June 6, 2009

The nearly-full moon nestled between the criss-cross of the wires strung over my head, I lay on the stone block in the middle of the rooftop, blanketless, but swaddled in the balmy night air. We were at a party in the USAID compound, but my eyes were closing to the sounds of mingling and music and laughter coming from the party below. I think I was really tired out from our second failed attempt at reaching Lalish, the Yezedi temples up north. We only got as far as the Assyrian rock carvings in Khanis before the driver started demanding more money than what we had bargained for.

Instead of giving in to his deceit, the three of us got out of the cab and joining the locals picnicking along the canal's edge. A Yezedi family on their way back from their annual pilgrimage to the temples invited us for tea and lunch. Once again, I was overwhelmed by the generosity displayed toward perfect strangers. After eating and drinking, I watched and took pictures as men, women and children waded in the dirty brown and green water, fully-clothed (with the exception of two stark-naked little boys). On the other side of the canal, T joined the Kurds, ducking under the rocks and getting baptized by the water streaming down off the rocky ledge. What a strange sight, all in all. I guess bathing suits or clean water aren't all that necessary for swimming after all, as we Westerners are led to believe.

*PS: We never made it to Lalish. It was not meant to be.

Iraqi Karaoke

June 4, 2009

At around half-past ten in the evening, B, T, and I were heading down to the big gym to shoot some hoops. After an attempt at breaking in- a very valiant attempt, I might add, in which I rolled on my side through a narrow window, wandered through the boys' locker room, and out into the dark corridor, only to find that the door to the basketball gym was locked without window-access- I climbed back out and stood around with the others, waiting for someone to come down with the keys. That's when we heard the music that altered the course of our evening. B, not feeling so spontaneous stayed behind to shoot hoops while T and I followed the music down the hill, past the un-manned security gate, across the highway, and into the gravel front lot of the giant glass-tiered house.

“Okay, so how are we going to do this?” T asked.

“Easy: just walk by and stare until they stare back. Then smile and wave to break the ice, then they'll smile and wave, and badda-bing! We're in.”

And that's pretty much exactly how it happened.

They ushered us into the garden to a table in the back. It was like stepping into one of the 1001 Tales from the Arabian Nights. At a long banquet table facing the stage sat the other guests- about a dozen middle-aged fat, bald, Kurdish men in button-down shirts wrapped tightly around their substantial bellies. On the stage stood a lone man singing a lively Kurdish tune with only a keyboardist as accompaniment. The men listened and clapped and cheered and sometimes stood up to dance. Plates of salad and hummus and bottles of imported beers lay on the table, half-eaten, half-drunk. Waiters went around serving plates piled high with chicken tikkas, lamb kebabs, liver even, all covered with giant pieces of flatbread. I sat back with my own beer, watching the moths fluttering lightly around the audaciously-colored lamps, and listening to the music. It was the song that never ended, words with no rhyme nor reason sung to the same single-bar melody for nearly an hour straight. More like a chanted story than a song; an epic poem, a Kurdish Iliad.

“What do you think he's singing about?” I asked T. One of the guests turned around and started talking to us with broken English.

“Turkey, Iraq, oil!”

“Oh my God, T, I think he's singing about the oil pipeline going through Turkey!”

“Hahaha! He's singing about current events! That's brilliant!”

Okay, so he wasn't reciting Homer. He was Yunis, the Turkmen singer singing the daily news with a voice that seemed to echo off the rims of the Earth- or at least off the mountain ridges of Kurdistan. In this area surrounded by endless fields and rolling mountains, he would suffer no complaints from neighbors about excessive noise, no violation of some silly civil law against disturbance of the peace. Kurdish Ross sat banging away at the keyboard, and neither relented with their music until the electricity shut off suddenly. Lights extinguished, stars brightened, and the singer finally put his mike down to take a swig of water and wipe off his sweat. When the lights came back on, suddenly the men were urging us to sing a number of our own.

“They want me to sing a Korean song, T.”

His eyes got big. “Oh man, that would be totally...”

“But I don't even know any Korean songs!...Oh wait, I do know one.”

“Let's do it!”

So we climbed onto the stage and sang the only Korean song I knew, an old folk song called “Ah-Ri-Rang” about some heartbroken dame who swears that if her lover tries to leave her, he'll develop a foot disease before he can walk even 10 meters (or some distance unit). It was only thanks to the gang of chanters at Rawanduz gorge that I knew the words to this song, and here I was once again singing the song for a bunch of Kurds. Only this time, I was standing on a stage with a mike and a tall, blond Brit next to me singing with whatever Korean vocabulary he'd been able to pick up during his one year in Seoul last year. The phone cameras came out in a flash as we sang our hearts out.

“Ah-ri-rang, Gal-bi joh-wah-yo (I like short ribs)!” T belted out.

“T, I really hope this doesn't end up on youtube.”

“I bet it will!”

I grinned and kept on singing till the end. Cheers and claps met us on the way off the stage. A man named Mokhtar took over the mike and sang “I love you! I love you!” effusively, pointing at T and me. We danced with linked arms and smoked orange-mint flavored shisha and watched intrigued as the men stumbled forward one-by-one to the stage, throwing red 25,000 dinar bills at the Turkmen singer who had regained control of the mike. The cheap ones picked up and re-threw the bills that had fallen on the grass.

Later, sometime way past midnight, as we made our way across the empty highway and back to the deserted school grounds, we could still hear the singing loud and clear through its monster speakers like an alternative call-to-prayer. I wondered what the Muslims were thinking when they heard Mokhtar singing “I love youuuuu, I love youuuuuu!” Elated by our latest adventure, we doubled over with laughter as we climbed the hill leading to the apartment, and thanked our lucky stars that we had decided to ditch the hoops and follow the music instead. It's a decent piece of advice: Follow the music, you never know where it may lead. Unless it leads to the back of a truck. Then avoid the music at all costs, and whatever you do, do not accept the candy!

Burial

June 3, 2009

My doorbell rang. ND was standing outside my door.

“D'you wanna see something weird?” 

“Sure.” I followed her into her apartment.

“It's out on the balcony.”

Hm, mysterious, whatever could it be? Another hideous camel spider? I followed her out to her balcony.

“Look, isn't that weird?”

I looked. Lying on the ground were four dead baby birds, still in their embryonic stage. 

Scattered around the birds were shards of white, clearly the remains of the egg shells that had contained the poor babies. I bent down to take a closer look at the corpses. They looked more human than fully-formed birds! I remembered reading a long time ago about how all animals from humans to frogs looked alike at the embryonic stage of development. It seemed to be true with humans and birds. The wings had yet to fully develop so they looked more like tiny arms with mittens on the hands. Their peanut-shaped bodies were so fragile-looking, the skin on them gray and translucent. I felt surprisingly sad for these birds. They weren't humans, but still, they were a form of life, once living flesh. It felt strange and sad to be peering down so close to these now-lifeless forms. I realized this was the closest I've ever been to a dead creature aside from those belonging to the Arthropoda Kingdom, which I couldn't care less for. 

“What should I do with them?” ND asked after she'd swept up the shell fragments.

“Bury them,” I said. It seemed the proper and obvious thing to do.

We scooped up the fragile things with the broom and slid them into a Bakery & More box. The two of us walked with box in hand down to the dirt ground where the groundskeepers had planted a few trees here and there, not yet grown. 

“How 'bout here?” We stopped at a plot four trees down from the apartment entrance.

“Yeah, looks good. As good as any other spot, I guess.”

We each grabbed a stone and started digging. About six inches in, I paused. 

“Is that deep enough?” 

“How do I know? I've never done this!”

“Oh yeah.”

Throwing our stones down, we took the Bakery & More box, opened it and carefully slid the four bodies into the shallow hole. Tumble, tumble, tumble, tumble. I shuddered. We took up our stones again and threw the loose dirt back into the hole, closing it up. We stared at it for a minute.

“That's gonna be us someday,” said ND.

We stared some more.

“I feel like we should say something,” ND spoke up again.

“Here lie Huey, Duey, Louie,...and Gooey.” 

“Okay, that's enough. Let's go down to the greenhouse.”

We left the emptied Bakery & More box and picked our way across the uneven, stony dirt ground down to the greenhouse. We jumped across a shallow trench and ducked to climb through the opening along the side of it. Straightening up once inside, I gasped. So much leafiness concentrated in a tiny area! I tread the path surrounded on either side by cucumber vines taller than me, strings hanging down from the roof to hold up the growing plants and herbs, and all sorts of gorgeous flowers that one would never find growing naturally in this semi-desert region. 

At the very end, I found these really cool bright red, spherically-shaped flowers with spiked surfaces blooming from beds of leaves the size of two of my hands. I squinted through the back wall of the greenhouse. Through the translucent plastic sheet, the blurry red and gold tint of the sky was visible, hinting at twilight.  Another atypical view of sunset to add to my collection. We ducked out of the tent soon after, jumped clumsily over the trench and ran back up to the apartment, grabbing the empty coffin on the way. Huey, Duey, Louie, and Gooey lay decomposing back into the soil from whence they came.