Mama Again

Nine years ago Mama suddenly passed away in her sleep. I was abroad and received the phone call from my eldest sister. It lasted less than 2 minutes. I entered my bedroom, shut the door and haven't got out for two days.

She once called me long distance and asked "Are you fine"? I said I was. She said she felt there was something wrong with me. I affirmed her everything was all right and nothing wrong. She asked again "Are you sure"? I said "Yes, Mama. What's the matter?" We said good bye and hanged up.

Amazing intuition.

She was supposed to babysit my sister's kids because sis had some errands to run. The same morning, she started to feel pain in her chest and thought it was just acidity in the stomach. It turned out it was her first heart attack. She was immediately transferred to the ICU. The nurse said "She is in coma, but every now and then she unconsciously mumbles few words" I asked "Like what"? The nurse replied "She keeps asking who will babysit the kids"?

She didn't finish high school, but was an avid reader. We only knew after her death she was writing down her feelings and emotions every now and then particularly in times of distress. She never mentioned she did.

After her death, I used to open her closet and smell her clothes. I continued to do it until the smell faded away.

Nine Octobers Ago

It was a hot August day in Paris. Mother and I were aboard the Seine river cruise. As usual whenever we passed under a bridge, hands down in the cruise and up on the bridge waved to each other. Someone up there threw something down, and many on the boat tried to catch it, but it fell exactly in the lap of my mother. It was a pendant attached to a whitish string. Virgin Mary was on one side and the cross on the other. 

Eight years later, my sisters found it with Mama's jewelry after she passed away. They didn't know where it came from and were surprised to find it  (given the different religious belief) I was surprised too that she maintained it all these years. A matter of superstition maybe. 

Mama passed away this month 9 years ago. 

Months

January:

She pointed her finger at the two men standing at the street corner and said “They are selling drugs. Do they sell drugs in the streets in your country too?” I calmly replied “No, we don’t do that. We are God-fearing people. We do it behind doors” She smiled and accelerated the car in the direction of Rout 101.

As she later proceeded to point out at certain homes and mention the names of their celebrity owners, I felt it was sort of pathetic. If it was not for the company I had, I would have never taken this tour.

February:

The moment we got used to the new rhythm, a newer rhythm started to be audible.

March:

Ex-lovers become friends, colleagues turn into lovers and sex buddies evolve into lovers. Love, sex and friendship cross, overlap, fight and sometimes just sign a peace agreement.

April, May, June and July: 

* The longest time I went without watching TV. I have never been a TV person, but I haven't stayed that long before without feeling the urge to watch it.

* New land and old faces.

* No matter how close we might think we are to someone, there are sometimes black holes we have to ignore or pretend we do not see.

August:

Silence is all we dread

There’s Ransom in a Voice –

But Silence is Infinity.

Himself have not a face.

                                     Emily Dickinson

Where Are They Now?

It is my own where-are-they-now show. Those who have fallen off the map of the memory long ago. We might not have had the deep friendship that justifies my question, but I cannot deny my memory of elephants the right to wonder how life treated them throughout the years.

·                 Y and I were close friends at Preparatory School. Nice blond kid who acted, in my eyes of today, beyond our age. In a matter of few years, he drifted away. His interests became different and we would barely say hello to each other. In High School if we happened to come across each other, he would turn his face away for no reason,. The change of his character was dramatic. Drugs and sex were heavily involved, and a cocky air of self-superiority colored his attitudes.

When I wonder where he might be now, no hypothetical scenario sounds far-fetched. He might have died from an overdose, and he might as well have turned into an Isis-styled barbarian.

·                 S was above the average age of the students in our class in Primary School. She was bullied and called names like ugly face. Despite my young age I sensed from her revolting attitudes she must have had problems at home. She somehow chose me to be her closest friend and I welcomed her choice, or more accurately, I did not find a reason to keep her away. One day she confided to me that her mother worked as a belly dancer, and showed me her photo wearing that glittering suit and dancing on a table top in a nightclub. She asked me not to reveal the secret. S added that her maternal aunt was also a dancer who committed suicide by jumping off a high-rise after a failed love story. As a kid, the world she talked about seemed fascinating and very different from mine (Another S is remembered here).

Years later, I accidentally ran into a story in an old magazine about the suspicious circumstances of the suicide of a belly dancer in the early 1970s in Lebanon. It was the aunt. The story suggested the incident was a murder.

I remember S family name although I'm not quite sure of the spelling. I googled and searched FB, but nothing gave me glimpse of information on her whereabouts.

·                 Throughout my university years, I took evening classes in an American educational establishment that I thought would be an additional asset to my future career (Academic staff were not exclusively American). The atmosphere in the establishment was different from that of my conservative university, and I had the chance to meet interesting students from various walks of life. I took three consecutive semesters with the same professor. He was highly qualified, efficient in his teaching method and very decent. In his classes, and due to the nature of subjects studied, there was always a space for all of us, including the professor, to express our personal views on many matters of life. So I thought I had, to some extent, an idea about the traits of his character. Physically, he was short and skinny with bluish lips due to his chain smoking.

Years later, the national media covered news about the arrest of members of a cult in a northern Mediterranean city. The arrest gained huge coverage and public follow up due to the sensational stories about the head of the cult who claimed to be a messenger sent by god, and the bizarre religious and sexual practices in which the members were involved. I could not believe many of these stories and thought newspapers and tabloids exaggerated or even made them up to raise their sales.

It turned out my professor and his wife were among the members. Special focus was given on him by the media with titles like “Professor in the American University Among Members”. The case developed and went to court for a number of alleged crimes. Many members, including the professor, were eventually sentenced to terms ranged between 5 and 10 years in prison.

I tried to find any common trait between the person I knew as a professor and the members of the cult as I read about, but I failed. I understand that dealing with someone on professional level, does not give the full picture of his or her character, but nevertheless the total disparity between the two pictures, if we supposed the authenticity of each of them, was huge.

How did he spend his prison years? What did he do after and how did he overcome the stigma? Where he might be now? I really wish to know. Unfortunately again, no electronic search could shed light on the answers of any of these questions.

Dream (April, 29 2014)

I went out of my family’s house on my way to the office. Instead of taking the usual short road to arrive the main street and hail a cab, I walked in the opposite direction and took a longer road. I passed by the beautiful white house across the public park. Its main door was open and a former colleague of mine came from inside and greeted me. I told him I didn't know he was living there. He explained that his family has just recently bought the house. He added he was also going to the office and proposed we go together, but we had to wait for his mother and younger sister.

I was surprised that his family bought such an expensive house. He didn't seem to come from a rich family. I said to myself his mother must be old and wearing a traditional dress, but surprisingly I found a rather young, elegant and bit overweight lady.

I told them my parents were one of the first families who lived in the neighborhood in late 50s of the last century, and briefed them with the history of their house and its former owner who were a family composed of a husband, wife, son and a daughter whose name meant in the native language "Chastity". 

They didn't seem impressed of what I have said, and I guessed they might have had some sort of disagreement with the old owner.

We were walking towards the main street. The mother was talkative and funny. I felt my colleague was a bit embarrassed by her attitude. Again, I thought how his look was not in harmony with hers or with the beautiful white house. 

For Rent

I go out these days with a friend who looks for an apartment to rent. I like the search process, the imaginary arrangement of the furniture and the smell of the newly painted rooms.

Our family house was originally built as a villa; two floors and a garden. Many years later and because of the high prices of land and real estate, my parents decided to build 3 more floors. We had two different gates, one to our house and the other to the walk up. Two of the new apartments were available for rent for short terms.

Through the years we had some memorable tenants.

Three very beautiful sisters came from a neighboring country to begin career in acting in the big city. They often had fierce physical fights in the middle of the night. The contrast between their elegant look in the street and their savage screams and each other’s hairs in their hands in the night was unbelievable. They never made it to the big screen and as far as we knew they went back home afterwards although there were, as we saw, many wealthy men willing to help.

A woman who said she was working as a nurse and used to go out very late for her night shifts in the hospital until it was found out by a neighbor she was a belly dancer in a nightclub.

A young man with whom my father had a heated argument after he demolished a part of the wall to install a new air-conditioner without our knowledge. He became hysterical and decided to leave the apartment and started to tuck his stuff into a suitcase in front of us. There were many women clothes and accessories. My then-70-somthing-year-old father said to me later that it seemed the guy was a big womanizer. I remained silent for a moment and then said “Yea, maybe”.

A man who lived apparently happily with two wives from two different countries and four children. A few years after they moved, my father and I were filing a complaint in the police station (another long story) when we ran into him. He was handcuffed and waiting to be transferred with others from the station to the office of the General Prosecution. We could exchange hastily few words, and it turned out he was accused in a drug smuggling case.

It was not like we were always renting the apartments to those who did not fit in the conservative and calm neighborhood, but in a more than 20 year stretch of time and with the intensive flow of the tenants, some cases stood different. Besides, the insane gentrification of the neighborhood through these years changed a lot (luckily!) the types of its residents.

An interesting little incident took place once when a man and woman knocked on our door and said they were a married couple who read the "For Rent" sign and would like to see the apartment. My mother was alone at home, and because of her osteoarthritis of the knees, she did not want to walk up the stairs and preferred to give them the key. According to Mama's description, they were middle-aged and the woman was wearing this sort of religious dress and headscarf. They took like 30 minutes until they came down and said it was nice, but they needed more time to take their decision. After they left, Mama felt a bit uncomfortable and decided to go up to check if everything was all right. Well, everything was fine in the tidy clean apartment except the main bed which was a complete mess with the fresh stains on the sheets. Mama told me later what happened and was very upset. My response was like "Whether they acted in the heat of the moment or it was a trick they liked to play, they are really clever, aren’t they?"

Dream (February, 20 2014)

Like I was happily living somewhere in the West Coast of the United States.

I was walking on a wide beautiful beach and everything seemed perfect. Few people were sauntering here and there. Then, I heard a shot and saw someone far ahead raising his hand and holding a gun. The atmosphere changed. We turned around and started to run in the opposite direction. We thought it was safer, but the shooter turned around too and ran in the same direction. By then I felt it was really dangerous and a chance that I might get hit by one of his bullets was not as far as I thought before.

I ran until I reached a safe spot on the beach and ran into a group of my compatriots attending something like a political or ceremonial event. In the first row sat quietly Prince Charles. He looked grim and out of place. When someone tried to take a photo with his mobile, a security officer interfered and said it was not allowed. I wondered if I should go give my name and shake hands with him or not. I decided not to. I left the place and continued my walk.

I entered a seafront hotel. The lobby was spacious with a huge floor to ceiling window. The water was so close that waves hit the glass. The view was beautiful and the cloudy sky gave a dramatic degree of light. Other persons in the lobby expressed their admiration as well.  I thought I should take a picture. Then suddenly, two crocodiles crawled from under the waves and stood on the other side of the window. Some thought it was scary and others said it was common for the crocodiles to come and stare across the glass. I was confused. I could not decide if the appearance of the crocodiles ruined the moment or they were part of that fascinating view.

Ancient, Homeless and Macho

R asked the hotel front desk how to go to Chinatown to see the celebrations of the New Year. The clerk suggested going to a special Chinese night in Soma Food Park.  We didn't know what exactly that was, but upon her recommendation we decided to go. We took the bus till Van Ness/Market and then started to walk along the Eleventh Street. R was searching the exact address on her iPhone when she looked at me, laughed and said “So ancient”. I guess I sometimes am. I was looking in the city map.

We walked around 15 minutes and saw a big Costco sign on the left side. H wanted to buy something, so we spent one hour to enter, shop, buy, pay and get out. R asked the customer service to give us a plastic bag to put the stuff we bought. Out of courtesy I offered to carry the transparent bag. As I was walking and carrying it, A commented jokingly “You have been drawing our attention to the number of homeless in the streets until they increased one”.

The celebration was not as interesting as we expected. Just concession stands and a DJ playing Chinese pop songs. Each one of us bought his/her chosen dinner and we sat together inside the tent because weather was chilly outside. There was supposed to be a dragon dance later, but after almost one hour we felt exhausted given our long busy day that started early and we decided to leave. On our way out R drew our attention to a fortune teller in a corner who was reading his cards to a listening lady. A asked me if I wanted to let the teller read my future, I replied I would be the first man to do, because I have been eyeing him from inside the tent and all his clients were ladies. A sarcastically said “Macho much? Don’t be shy and wait in line” I said “No. It was just a remark. Just a remark”.

Day of Departure

I thought it was better to check out early and leave the baggage in the store room, so I would have more free time on my own before the shuttle bus picks me up at 4 o'clock.

My companions have already all left. There were still places I liked to visit, but due to the limited time I had to rationalize. Besides, I wanted to walk the streets because that has always been my compass for truly feeling a foreign city.

It was finally raining, not heavily but enough to open the umbrella every now and then. Armed with the city map, I took the bus from downtown to Alamo Park. Few persons were walking their dogs and tourists were holding their cameras and taking photos of the famous view. As clichéd as it is, I took a shot too. My moto is when I am a tourist, I should not shy away from doing what tourists usually do because after all we are all tourists.

Walking through calm residential streets for more than 2 hours on that wet Sunday was enjoyable and by 2 o'clock I took a bite somewhere before going back to the hotel lobby waiting for the shuttle.

The driver, with his heavy Chinese accent, looked at my baggage and asked for extra 5 dollars because each passenger was only allowed two suitcases. He opened the door of the mini shuttle and there was a lady sitting in the first row, a man and woman in the second row and the third was empty. I hesitated for a fraction of a second when the lady in the first row said something I could not catch. I said "pardon"? She repeated "You may sit here if you like, I won't bite you" she smiled and I smiled back and took the seat next to her. She immediately asked "Where are you from?" When I replied she continued "So you are going back home?" I said "No" I am flying to South America. She said "Where exactly"?

She was smiley and friendly. In her early sixties I assumed. A Goldie Hawn-look alike, but with a less damaged face.

She introduced me to the couple sitting behind and said they were from New Zealand. She was surprised there were direct flights from San Francisco to Auckland.

She then said something like "I hope you don't mind me talking too much. I am never silent. A part of it is due to my work in the show business. I was a dancer and comedian. I wrote scripts for some big names. I met my husband, who was a Spanish ballet dancer, more than 40 years ago in L.A. and we decided to get married only 3 weeks after we met. We did not tell our families until 6 months later. And here we are, 41 years later, still together"

I thought it was amusing to listen more than to talk.

She continued "I live in Las Vegas. I visited San Francisco to attend my brother's marriage. He is gay. He had a terrible car accident few weeks ago and we thought the marriage would definitely be postponed, but no, he recovered quickly and everything went well".

The shuttle stopped to pick the last passengers. Two middle-aged ladies, who turned out to be from Spain and were flying back to Madrid as they said to our enquirer.

Few silent moments prevailed, and she said again "So nobody here is interested in the Super Bowl except me. Denver is optimistic because it is the Chinese New Year of the horse".

"In Vegas no shuttle buses are allowed to go to the airport, the taxi companies are so powerful and lobbied against it. I live only 15 minutes from the airport, but I have to pay 65 dollars for a taxi fare"

Here the driver started to explain, as far as I understood, that taxi companies in San Francisco were also trying to restrict the access of the buses to the airport, and that the daughter of the governor, or so I thought I understood, was a shareholder in one of the these companies.

She shifted her attention to me again and said she visited my country in 1990, and it was terribly hot in August. She asked "How is it now in winter as you are going back home?" I said with a smile "I am not going back home" She said "Yea, right" I thought that what was exactly wrong with those who talk much, they do not listen.

She asked the New Zealand man about his job. Intriguingly enough she did not ask me. I guessed she maybe thought the Middle East, the United States and South America being mentioned together in one case must suggest an ominous job!

The couple and the Spanish ladies were dropped off first. Afterwards, she extended her hand to me and introduced herself. She did not have a difficulty in pronouncing my name as it frequently happens. Then the bus stopped where she was supposed to leave. She looked at me and said "Nice to meet you A. Bon voyage". 

Four Reasons

What should have made me happier? A holiday trip that was decided upon and materialized at the last moment, it was to California, the sunny winter days (news of drought made me feel guilty though) or the new camera with which I took this photo of sunset at Redondo Beach?

Names..Names

* I knew G during my military service. I wrote about him more than once in this blog. Here. By the end of our conscription, we exchanged telephone numbers and mail addresses (No usage of internet yet) and promised to keep contact. Afterwards, my life took a new path that drove me away from many faces and places I used to be around.

Two years later I was in a crowded standing restaurant in downtown with a colleague. We were having a quick lunch before heading to a meeting nearby. There, I saw G entering in a hurry, accompanied by a young woman in her early twenties. She physically looked very unfortunate. Moreover, her clothes were messy. They were busy talking, and then they stopped for a moment behind us looking for a vacant spot. I thought the noisy restaurant was not the best place to initiate a conversation with him. Besides, my colleague and I were a bit late for our meeting. When we went out I asked my colleague if he saw the couple, and told him the guy was an old friend. He commented "But the girl looked a complete mess. When they stood up behind us, she pressed her butt hard against mine".

Six years later, I was working out in a new gym that opened close to my parents' house, and I found G there lifting weights. I went directly to him and mentioned his full name, but he did not seem to recognize me. I thought it was amusing to let him guess who I might be. He said at least I should give him a hint if we had been together in a school, university or previous work. I said "We were conscripts together in the army. Tell me whom had you known well back then?" He replied "I knew X, Y and ...." I said "I am X". It was funny my name came first when he recalled his army days, but still he could not recognize my face. I knew I looked much different, but not that different. We talked and again exchanged our contact information, but never saw each other again.

* I met her during my two year stay in France many years ago. I saw her for the first time standing on the platform of the train station in a small town in central France. My friend smiled and said hi. When I asked him who was she, he said a friend of a friend. In the train we started to talk and that was just the beginning of a relationship for which it is difficult to give a qualification. Friendship, romance or something in between? I don’t know,  but what I know there was something genuine, no matter how it could be called. The complicated circumstances were not playing for the favor of the relationship though, and it ended prematurely.

Her memory only popped up in my mind 3 or 4 times in the past twenty years, nevertheless few weeks ago, when I was surfing the internet, it crossed my mind to search for her. First, I could not remember her family name, but it flashed up as it was written on the back of an envelope in which she sent me once a letter to clear up some sensitive matters. I kept the letter for years before I threw it away.

On Facebook, she was there! Or at least someone with the same name and similar look plus the time touch. Unexpected and pleasant surprise. The second surprise she is living with a female partner. The third surprise is the right wing tone in her views.

I feel tempted to contact her, but something tells me what for? She might be uninterested to revive an old friendship. She might even be hating to recall her difficult life back then, and a “Salut, Est-ce que vous êtes ___ ___ qui a habité la ville de ____ ? Si oui, vous vous souvenez de moi ?! Si non, excusez-moi de vous avoir dérangé’’ might be just ignored.