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.