Tiznit

At dawn a sardine man yelling, “hout, hout,” pushed his bike with reed baskets holding dead fish along a dusty path. Cheap eats. Fried bones. His plaintive voice echoed between cinder block apartments. His song enticed Bedouin women sweeping and mopping red historical dust to buy protein.

Blood is no argument.

A solitary light bulb behind double metal doors at #187 dangled from the ceiling. The place was an aesthetic disaster. Chunks of cinder blocks hung from rebar.

A framed Qur’an quote and a dead clock decorated a wall. A green and brown speckled gecko crawled through the pantry looking for a high carb insect diet.

I loved these sweet imperfect places. Travel and adventure offered majestic habitats.

I bought sardines wrapped in greasy paper and got on a long distance bus for Tiznit seeking old Touareg silver and the wild sea at Sidi Ifni.

We traversed towns where armies of unemployed men slept in dark corners, on sidewalks or below green shuttered windows sheltered from a brutal sun by truck carcasses.

The bus accelerated though sand washed canyons passing isolated stone homes. Women on donkeys hauled water in jugs. The terrain reminded me of Southwestern mesas in Amnesia with red sandstone, bluffs, valleys, and gorgeous gorges by George.

Camel herds wandered in scrub as goats foraged high in Argan trees eating leaves. Argania spinosa was unique to this region of Morocco. Argan berry stones make traditional oil. It’s a labor-intensive extraction process. It requires sixty-six pounds of berries and eight hours of manual labor to produce 2.2 pints. Women do all the work.

They collect the fruit during the summer, dry it in the sun and store it. The flesh of the fruit is removed, used as animal feed and the stones are cracked open revealing an almond-like nut. This is roasted and ground by hand. The residue is a high-quality animal feed. The decanted oil is used for cooking and as a medicine for stomach and heart illness, poor blood circulation and fertility problems. It’s consumed in the West as expensive cosmetics.

In the middle of nowhere a skinny naked black man under a tangled mop of hair dragging a shawl in blazing sun walked along the road at a steady pace.

His eyes were on fire. Baraka.

In the Tiznit old market square Berbers in blue flowing robes meandered through a dream.

A hustler on his motorcycle materialized out of thin air.

“Where are you going? Come have a look at my shop. Only five minutes from here. Great prices. You don’t have to buy.”

“Why should I?”

“Great morning prices.”

Five hundred years ago he would have been on a camel wearing a burnoose tending his flock in the Sahara. He’d be planning Spanish invasions, married to a beautiful girl with dark seductive eyes, produced many kids and conquered Iberia in his spare time. Now he was on an imported European 50cc bike wearing castoff designer jeans with slicked black hair and grinning with all his teeth, a distinctive character trait.

I dreamed with my eyes open.

I am a hunter-gatherer of words and images. Hunting with a singular flair, a cunning intelligence - metis - a hybrid form.

Trap and shoot. ‘Snapshot’ was a British hunting word from the late 1800’s.

I make them. I didn’t take them being the qualitative difference. The best pictures are the ones in your heart-mind.

I loved gathering raw material in Morocco and then Spain incorporating Omar's evidence and story-truth.

I practiced meditative patience, before the fact, the decisive moment, anticipating the vision manifesting itself. Before, during and after the emotional rush with detachment and reptilian behavior. Premonition is a beautiful thing. 

Photography was a beautiful fascinating magical alchemy since Nam traversing the planet becoming intuition, trusting instincts. Be the moment.

It was the essence of being and nothingness. A singularity of being, stalking and allowing life’s movie to roll as scenic action led to climatic instants. I isolated elements clean and simple.

I tweaked reality.

I stopped time.

The emotion preceding the action was my intention.

It was the KISS philosophy of straight shooting.

A shooting star flashed across the sky shedding tears of light.

I settled into the rhythm of a place. Ephemeral realities evolved through time and space. Space folded.

I sat down, did my work, packed up essentials and hit the road. I found my comfort zone inside a visual zonal theory. Spectrums decrypted language, attitudes, perceptions and theoretical interpretations.

As a mystic and guardian of the visible world, light was my prayer wheel.

A decisive moment divided time in two. It was a pure thought with pure action. Wu-Wei. A way of life passed through a gate-less gate.

“Infinite diversity through infinite combinations,” said a laughing Zen monk walking on the curvature of the earth. It was a walking meditation or kin-kin in Japanese.

It was all the same - comforting addicts in a group, with Tran in Da Nang, offering Cambodian amputee rice and chicken or buying grapes from a malnourished boy offering sweet green life. Everyone needs love and compassion.

Millions graduated from the University of the Street with a degree in Hustling 101. It was all about survival. How the world works.

Meditating on the process of my death shaped my intention. Karma.

“The nature of my mind is the empty sky,” I said to the hustler.

Sky mind, cloud thoughts.

“Get on,” said the biker.

I shouldered curiosity and got on. We roared out of the market, down narrow twisting passages zooming along high gingerbread adobe walls slashed by blue sky, in and out of blinding sun, blasted into cool shadows and arrived at an empty shop. Full stop.

A young boy in the silver shop took over the sales pitch plying me with sweet tea and sugar words.

He tried sympathy and pity. He cajoled, he sighed wearing his saddest face. He tried to convince me to buy something. “Morning sale means good luck.”

“Every morning you wake up is good luck. A gift.”

The boy used well-established emotional appeals playing me for a sucker. His assumed every tourist was rich and relatively speaking this was true. He gave me a wooden bowl.

“This is the traditional way. Put your choices in the bowl. We can discuss the price later.”

I accepted the wooden bowl. I looked at inlaid boxes, daggers with fake stones, silver rings, bracelets, bangles, beads, earrings and silver necklaces in provocative gleaming displays.

In another incarnation I carried my begging bowl through dirt streets on Earth. It felt cool and smooth in my hands. Fingers caressed a worn oval surface. The begging bowl had a consciousness.

Recalibrating my existence I thumbed open a ragged existential dictionary. It was filled with stories, legends, myths, symbols, images, ideographs, pictographs, sliding scales, musical interludes, sonatas, and vibratos.

It contained journey notes, broken hearts, haiku, khata scarves, pure mirror paper, type-A negative blood donor manifests, rose thorns, rainbow threads, the game of life and empty wooden bowls.

The Tiznit boy wanted me to fill it up. He wanted me to be greedy. He wanted to hear the sound of silver strike wood. He had great expectations based on my desire. I wanted to hit the bricks. I found one interesting bracelet and it clattered, spinning silver.

I became a Touareg Berber. “I’ll give you 100.”

“Mister, please, the price is 350,” said the boy fresh out of tears being too tired to cry and the man in front of him being Berber and patient with Sahara nature existing inside silence did not buy self-pity and stayed with his final price.

I was a hustling poetic mercenary 24/7 and it wasn’t my fate or karma to rescue sellers trapped in their expectations.

“Take it or leave it,” I said in Tamasheq, a Touareg language. The boy was shocked hearing his cultural identity.

Culture eats strategy.

We were on common territory. Negotiation is hard work. Extra talk. It didn’t require extraordinary skills, only patience the great teacher, with determination and instinct. Always be closing. ABC.

I received one piece of silver and dissolved into a broiling sun, experiencing a metamorphosis as ego dissolved.

The bowl reflected emptiness.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Hammam

Twice a week I traversed a rubble path from #187 past plastic bags, small broken trees and rubbish to a hammam. The Turkish styled public bath cost seven dirhams or seventy cents.

Women left. Men right. A shy veiled girl accepted coins. I crammed clothes in a plastic bag and handed it to the smiling toothless attendant. He gave me two buckets made from old tires, reminding me of the souk zone where boys cut the rubber, hammered and sold them.

I pushed open a heavy wooden door. Three low-vaulted white tiled rooms had variable degrees of heat and steam. Men reclined on heated tiled floors or collected cold/hot water from faucets in buckets, soaping and scrubbing themselves.

Entering a heat mist dream of forms, I walked through the first two rooms to a space along a wall. I filled one bucket with scalding hot water, another with temperate liquid. Closing tired eyes I stretched out absorbing heat on my back. It penetrated skin, muscles and bones in a respite from poverty’s chaos and hospitality.

Sweating men scrubbed in steam and water music. Working out kinks an old wiry man bent a man’s arms and legs into pretzels. The skinny bald man worked wrists, elbows, and shoulder joints to the point of snapping them off a skeleton. Rolling a patron over he pummeled a spinal chord, slapped a back and bent knee joints leaving the man spread-eagled on tiled floors. Customers welcomed his torturous attention.

I soaped and scrubbed off layers of dusty skin with a rough hand cloth. Oceans flowed from tiles to drains.

I retrieved clothing, dried off with a sarong, slipped into fabric and gave the attendant a tip. The old man smiled, rolled his eyes shook his head. I dropped more coins into arthritic brown fingers.

“Shukran. M’a ssalama.”

Clean skin felt cool night air. The dusty path was filled with scooters, boys playing on abandoned rusty cars, scavengers probing trash and mothers dragging black gowns on the ground. Yellow slippers slapping earth flashed golden dust particles.

Children sang, “I never promised you a rose garden.”

A one-eyed mendicant looking for alms stumbled past.

Cafe men watched perpetual terrorism reports at full volume on a television hanging from a ceiling.

“Ah, Ahab,” said a smiling young waiter in a purple vest balancing his silver tray of cups and water glasses. “Coffee?”

“Yes, no sugar please,” gesturing I’d sit at a table outdoors on cracked pavement away from media. Dejected shoeshine boys tapped wooden boxes as their dark unemployed eyes inspected shoes of chronically unemployed men drinking endless tea.

Another waiter cut mint tea leaves, crammed them into a silver plated kettle, dumped in a brick of sugar, closed the lid and poured a light brown steady stream of tea into a small embossed glass. He poured it back into the pot. He put the pot, glasses, spoons and sugar cubes on a tray to be delivered to patrons.

A subtle red sunset spread across adobe walls. Atlas snow patched mountain ranges on the southern horizon turned pink. Women in billowing blue cloth tread sand from clustered stone villages to take a local bus to the shimmering Red City or sit on broken cement talking with friends.

Dusk and twilight married, creating night children. More field hands, more economic resources and more offspring futures destined for trades making $1.00 a day. Women sat talking on fractured pavement surrounded by trash. People discarded their lives going through it.

A small single tree in a patch of dirt epitomized local life. People had stripped off branches and leaves leaving a sharp broken piece of wood sticking out of the ground.

People wandered aimlessly or sat on hard packed earth. Unemployed men on haunches stared at dirt.

A fruit seller with green grapes on a rolling cart waved at flies circling a light bulb. A young man in his wheelchair poured bottled water over a handful of grapes. Water disappeared into dust around his wheels of fate. Savoring one grape at a time he observed boys weave past on broken bikes.

A bearded man paced the street collecting discarded cardboard in his recycled life. Cardboard made excellent cheap sidewalk seats, foundations in rolling carts to keep stuff from falling out, sun hats, beds and shop doormats after infrequent deluges.

Shredded telephone wires dangled from the wall of a telephone office as men lined up to make calls on the single working phone while holding mobile phones and punching digits.

Disconnected grease covered boys with their tools spilling into the street manipulated mammoth truck tires along broken sidewalks. The area buzzed as people with survival instincts scrambled to make a living.

On a side street two men unloaded shoes from the trunk of a car. Location - location - location. One seller spread a bright blue tarp on the ground anchoring it with bricks. His partner arranged cheap running, dress and casual shoes. No Adidas Berber shoes for these guys. They fired up a propane lamp.

After a day of oppressive heat residents prowled looking for a bargain and telling stories.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Burma

Buy An Eagle?

Omar meditated as workers drilled, hammered, poured, pounded, sifted, sorted, packaged, shipped, received, laughed, cried and analyzed their efforts to make it heavy, deep and real.

A newspaper in the Marrakesh souk whispered about trillion dollar foreign wars. An endless labyrinth of global deficit spending prospered in a radiant mathematical certainty.

At Djemaa El Fna I perused old Touareg jewelry, rainbow carpets, silver bowls, cracked dishes, green ionized utensils, long leather bullwhips, elaborate Berber bags and junk. Dealers bought and sold pots, pans, brass and silver.

The day was hot and the souk was cool. I evolved into F/stop sense trapping light and freezing time.

Writing with light I followed leather smells along narrow corridors into a zone of low wages, unregulated workshops and child labor exploitation. Poverty’s people hung scraps of clothing on thin lines in stale air.

Inside a small room, a ten-year old boy slaving his six-day week for $6 applied coats of thick viscous liquid paste to leather.

“May I make an image?”

“100 Dirhams,” said an older boy punching holes in leather.

Metalworking, jewelry and mosaic making were the most hazardous jobs for children because of the chemicals. Children making slippers were exposed to glue vapors. Dust caused respiratory problems for children working in pottery sheds. Child labor was linked to the politically sensitive question of educational opportunities.

Poor families globally see education as an expensive waste of money & time.

There’s little pressure from local political parties, trade unions, or wider public opinion for any legislation on child labor.

UNICEF targeted Moroccan authorities to persuade artisans to stop hiring children under twelve and release those already employed for a few hours of schooling each week.

The bare room was 8x10 and filled with noxious fumes. No ventilation. I negotiated without inhaling. One dim bulb heaven, empty walls with leather punching tools and piles of treated leather needing a brush.

“Too much.”

We engaged in a broken animated conversation. No deal. I walked. Show them the soles of your shoes. Singing boys glued magic slippers. 

*

Animal pelts hung from wires in the old slave market. Leopard, fox, and rabbit complemented long wide boa constrictor skins. There was a falcon in a cardboard box and a young nervous eagle in a cage.

“How are you?” said a boy.

“Good, thank you.”

“Is everything ok?”

“Yes, I’m just having a look. How much is your eagle?”

“For you I make a special price. Morning price. Two thousand.”

“Two thousand? ($200) Expensive. How old is it?”

“It is two-years old. It is from the Atlas Mountains. For you I make you special price, morning price. Brings me good luck.”

“You make your own luck. I’ll think about it.”

I wanted to buy the eagle, get on a Super Tour bus, reach the Atlas Mountains, hike to a stone village in a blue-fogged valley and release the predator. Trapped in humanity’s cage starving for food, water and freedom I needed someone to release me in clear mountain air.

I turned to photograph men pushing and pulling a donkey dragging a cart through a broken wooden gate.

“Where are you going?”

“Maybe I’ll be back.”

“Come, mister,” said the desperate boy grabbing my vest, “come here see this animal skin. It makes a strong medicine. It helps you with your wife.”

“My wife doesn’t need help.”

“Where is she? We have many perfumes.”

“She’s wandering around. She smells a good deal when she nose it.”

“Maybe spices, maybe you like spices.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe you are looking for something more powerful,” he said, “something to take with your tea, a special blend from the Rif Mountains?”

“What is it?”

“Ah, it is a fine, how do you say, potion, a special blend from a mysterious plant. Hash helps assassins forget their troubles. It protects them in heroic battles against sticks, stones and drones. No hash? Then perhaps a little of this balm might interest you. Here, try a sample. Rub a little on your temples. It takes away pain.” He opened a tin and smeared red paste on his fingers.

“No thanks, I’m ok. Pain is a sickness leaving the body. Suffering is an illusion. See you later.” 

I dissolved into a swirling unedited film where sense data, memory and imagination were unified as director, player and audience.

The sun burned through the Red City reflecting shadows and dust. As men shoveled dirt others hauled bricks in broken wheelbarrows to a lot. A man with bleeding hands laid them to infinity.

Donkeys clipping along a fractured road dragged carts overflowing with boxes of fruit and vegetables. They pulled loads of mattresses, end tables and cabinets to distant destinations.

Homes were all cinder block. Men made the blocks and loaded them on pallets so donkeys could pull them to sites where they waited for generations to finish their education and get to work.

Beasts of burden labored past men and boys repairing bikes and inoperable scooters.

Poor people took bus 11. Walk.

Women with babies strapped to backs drifted through red dust. Old men in jellabas hooded against wind shuffled in bright yellow slippers.

In dusty alleys men chopped tea bought from an old man on his bike offering fresh mint spilling from crushed baskets.

Men crammed leaves into a dented tea kettle, poured in boiling water, threw in blocks of white sugar, closed the lid, filled a small glass, swished it around and poured it back into the kettle with ballet dexterity.

Bad teeth decayed in hungry mouths.

A beggar shuffled past reciting the Qur’an. Waiting to feel a coin his open hand held everything. On Fridays someone gave him Dirhams.

Swarms of flies and starving cats patrolled perimeters near a butcher removing white fat. Young kittens in deserted dark corners waited for inevitable death. Happy children returning from school sampled dates, calendars and centuries. Girls carried fresh kneaded bread to a neighborhood oven for baking. Veiled babbling women haggled with sellers of henna, saffron, turmeric and aromatic spices.

At Djemaa El Fna a dancer in white robes, red sash and maroon hat wearing bells and clappers twirled as friends pounded drums. Sedated white tourists dropped coins in a sorting hat. Europeans entered the show of shows.

A musician played his flute. Black cobras fanned diamond skinheads. Exchange rates were favorable. Water sellers worked crowds selling H2O from goatskin bags. They poured life into jangling brass bowls hanging from their creased necks. Photos with tourists cost extra. 

Packed tour buses competed with humans, petite cabs, grand Mercedes taxis, pedestrians and horse drawn carriages. Desperate shoeshine boys banged on wooden boxes inspecting shoes of idle men sitting in cafes watching idle people watch idle people.

A boy draped in clothing wandered through a cafe trying to interest men to purchase a khaki vest with many pockets, the latest fashion statement. Men wore them buttoned and well pressed with empty compartments. A man tried on a couple. They discussed price. The boy was tired and persistent. The man found a reason or excuse not to buy it because of price, size, or too embarrassed to admit he didn’t really want it or need it. The boy put the vest on a hanger, gathered clothing, trudging toward idle men at another cafe. They read newspapers, drank tea, smoked and chatted with friends in their city oasis.

Red, blue and yellow carpets draped over ochre roof edges created a patchwork of adobe, blue sky, white mosques spires and a cold crescent moon.

Rows of men squeezing orange juice yelled for customers, “Come here my friend, I have what you need.”

Salesmen bagged fresh dates, figs and nuts.

Souk seller beckoned people, “Have a look at my shop.”

Shops were crammed with leather, ceramics, swords, clothing, lamps, rugs, hats, spices, shoes, knockoffs and scented cedar tables.

Men in a one-light bulb heaven scrapped scented wood or pounded leather on steel platforms as well manicured idle wealthy men in clean white shirts, pressed pants and leather shoes slouched near their Berber carpet shops discussing prosperity and idyllic life.

Young men up and down alley mazes competed with each other for Dirhams as young sellers advertised Adidas Berber merchandise. The world was full of merchandise. Buyers and sellers competed for the best steal deal. The art of negotiation played a litany.

Always Be Closing.

At Djemaa a black Cobra gunship helicopter emerged from under a thin goatskin drum to unravel its three-foot long body on a threadbare carpet. When tourists approached, a young boy waved his hand close to the reptile grabbing its attention. Rearing with a flared black hood it weaved with the boy’s gestures. Playing an old game of survival, they danced and darted toward each other. Tourists dropped spare change on the carpet and wandered away to get lost.

An old stoic Berber in shade hoping to sell red yarn played with the dial on his dusty portable radio looking for a new frequency and better reception.

Hustlers plying language skills switched from German to English to French to Japanese trying to initiate conversations with blind tourists. Everybody wanted a slice of a diminished post-9/11 pie.

Humanity floated through broken reed shadows.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Natasha

Passengers waited for a flight from Amsterdam to Casablanca on September 2nd, 2001.

Your Self, originally from Fez and now San Francisco was going home to see his family after years away. He was a wise man bearing gifts.

There was a woman from the Ukraine with her five-year-old son. Natasha was tall, slim, beautiful and married to a Moroccan. They’d met at the university in Kiev where she gave birth and he lived in Amsterdam. She hadn’t seen him forever.

He didn’t come to the airport to see her because he didn’t have the correct papers nor was she able to leave the airport and see him because she lacked the correct papers so she waited for her flight to her new home.

Natasha had heard about Morocco but had never seen it. She was taking her son to Casablanca to live with her husband’s family. She didn’t speak French or Arabic.

Her cheap red, white and blue plastic baggage split at the seams. Her son pissed his pants leaving a trail of urine in the departure lounge. Natasha was beside herself with a double identity theory.

Everyone spoke the same language as night fell with the roar of planes taking people somewhere left gravity. We were buried at gate 54D, miles from duty free shops, perfume, electronics, banks, toy and clothing stores, restaurants, diamond rings and watches.

Fliers carried yellow plastic “Buy and Fly,” shopping bags.  

It was midnight when we landed in Casablanca. We walked through a towering hall with a waterfall and intricate mosaic tiles. A gigantic framed image of a benevolent aristocratic king watched passengers.

Customs was a formality. The baggage conveyer belt broke down as frustrated passengers waited. Small wheels on useless baggage trolleys were bent and stuck. They careened left and right as people wrestled impossible loads through green nothing to declare zones toward strangers, friends and relatives.

I helped Natasha load her bags on a cart and she disappeared into humanity with her son. Her husband’s father, mother and grandmother in jellabas approached her. They hugged her speaking words Natasha did not understand. The old woman scooped up the boy. I knew they’d take him forever, this progeny of theirs and connection to their son.

Natasha, an aberration in their world would be relegated to a new life. She moved into their culture with a Ukrainian passport, sensing unknown languages where she would be welcomed yet relegated to serving her new family.

They would project their unconscious loss on her.

She’d carry their water and gather their wood. She’d shoulder their fading light, hopes, and dreams. Their grandson would realize everything. They disappeared into a city of five million.

Being a grand man in their hearts, their son in Holland could do no wrong. Many women came and went in his life. It was his dark-eyed nomadic destiny. When his wife was trapped in the airport he was with a prostitute. He wasn’t lying when he said his family would take care of her.

Natasha heard this story at 54D but didn’t believe it.

ART - Adventure, Risk & Transformation - A Memoir

Future

Yassein from Morocco was one of my tennis students the summer of 2001. A hunting-gathering seed was planted in life’s little garden. I decided to take a six-month break in the fall.

“They love paper,” said curly-haired Yassein meaning corrupt authorities in North Africa. We sat in his Mediterranean diner. He poured fresh mint tea and said, “You can find enlightenment anywhere.”

I needed new psychic energies, frequencies and a shift in my literary life. He set me up. “You will find it easy to settle in. My mother is in Paris. She is nervous about the place. Here’s a paper. It’s for a six-month rental in Marrakesh and I’ll get her signature. My friend in Casablanca has the keys.”

He briefed local friends on the deal.

“How much are you paying Yassein for the apartment?” said the American insurance agent with a Moroccan wife. She practiced her English selling bras in a department store. Uplifting.

“We’ve agreed on two hundred a month depending on the condition of the place.” 

“Oh,” said his wife, “you’ll absolutely adore the place. We’ve been there many times.”

“Yes, my wife is very well connected. Her father used to be with the national police.” I smelled an interrogation. They showed me travel photos. In one he wore a dark blue suit and tie next to a naked camel.

In late August I gave Yassein’s girlfriend, Bashira, a Pakistani with two kids and one on the way, a check for two months. “Yassein’s in Morocco,” she said.

He’d gone home as a fake tour guide when in reality he was scrambling around paying off a Berber family to get out of an arranged marriage. His mother in Paris had set him up with a village girl.

While his relationship with Bashira helped, Yassein regretted wasting his time in the United States of Amnesia starting and stopping diners selling hummus. He regretted having a mother even though he loved her. She was a pain in the oasis.

Projecting her desire it was everything she wanted for her son. She was the mother of all arranged marriages. She had connections in a village.

“We can control more land now,” she’d told him. “She is a lovely girl. Her family is well off. They own many camels. The oasis is thriving.”

This was all well and good when she was sitting in her Paris flat remembering the Marrakesh cinderblock hovel. Where Yassein’s ancestors drank tea and plotted Spanish invasions. She was renovating the place for tourist dollars. Paris was a world away. He was her front man.

“You will marry this village girl,” his mother ordered. “It is our duty, your duty. Family first. You are my eldest, never married and now’s the time. Think of it as a tradeoff, an extension of our relationship. It is a connection to our heritage and our community. This is your destiny and honorable for us.”

He married the girl to please his mother. He didn’t like it. It was a gigantic hassle and complicated his life. He’d been in the states long enough to see new futures.

It was an arranged marriage and he was snared in family schemes and trapped by traditional expectations. How things were done in the desert. It was all about relationships and consolidating resources.

It took him a year to finalize his plan. He was a juggler in a circus routine and his mother cracked the whip.

He kept the Berber girl and her family on hold. He blamed time, lack of money, no visas, no tickets, no way he told them. Not now. Later. He loved the word later. It was a negotiating art form in a culture where a century is nothing.

They bought it. He knew they had no choice. Their daughter was married and that was that.

“Sit tight,” he said. “Let her take English classes or run around chasing invisible paperwork in the notoriously corrupt and inefficient system.” They didn’t understand the tight part. He simplified it for them.

“Be patient.”

A player and hustler, he was an expert at dragging it out. He planned a way to get out of it. He set it up and played his trump card. Money talks.

He returned in August and bought her family off to forget the whole thing. They took their daughter back using his cash to buy land and livestock. She resumed hauling water, collecting wood, cooking and cleaning. Her future was done, finished and finalized. She was as good as dead.

Yassein took care of the paperwork, greased palms, got on a plane, returned to Bashira and forgot the mess. He’d never liked these arranged marriages and knew it was all about deceit, lies and manipulation.

When his mother heard what happened she was furious. “You’ve disgraced our family,” she screamed on the phone. She was so mad she conjoined her French and Arabic polymorphic syllables in the City of Electricity. She fried on the grid.

“Somebody had to pay,” he said. He didn’t say she gave him a migraine. “There’s something wrong with the line mother. I’ll call you back.”

Bashira didn’t know the backstory. She played her role with Oscar potential. Yassein played her.

“I’ve always wanted to go there,” she said the week I left. “It’s Yassein’s ancestral home. I’ve dreamed being there, taking care of the place, meeting the people, settling into the flow, the rhythm of the land. Smelling the spices.”

Smelling a fascinating opportunity I jumped into the future.  

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir