Hummus

Yesterday, I went to pick up some groceries. Around me, long isles, lots of products and people serving, helping, weighing, carrying, packaging.

The place–an expat haven of safety, especially now, two years after the gruesome act carried out in the very spot.

An elderly man came up with his cart full of purified water, so clearly not destined for him.

On his old Nokia screen, he showed one word.

Hummus.

Face puzzled, he walked from one helper to the next, unsure where to look, whom to ask.

I heard ‘humms?’ ‘eh hummus’ ping pong back and forth a few times, frowns and searching looks around the produce section.

When I saw the screen and the lost man, I walked over and said the hummus was most likely farther back, hiding behind various Brown cheeses and Brookside milks. We walked and searched together.

The absurdity of me trying to explain hummus to this man and the helper, him so profusely thanking me–as if his life truly depended on it–and a little later, him coming up again with three different types asking which one. His face all worry.

I smiled and told him they were all the same. The classic kind. He relaxed.

Before I moved on to oranges, I said that he should try it. It’s tasty, I said.

He looked at me seriously, then smiles and nods.

But the hummus was not for him–and I wish I had opened a package right then.

Desperation

Over white wine sangria and lustrous milkshakes, sipped among soft light and attentive smiles of waiters and encouraged by nods of understanding faces, I today heard the following:

“You want them desperate, But not too desperate. You know what happens when they’re too desperate.”

A knowing look, head tilted forward.

The topic, you might wonder?

Maids.

It followed the sorry tale of four maids “gone through” in one year. The first had to leave due to ridiculous family circumstances, the second was caught napping in the employer’s bed, the third was a fill-in demanding too much help in her numerous misfortunes, and the forth–what shame, since she was so desperately diligent!–was too much of just that. Maybe her son did get into an accident, but maybe she just wanted to blow off some steam. Either way, $10 were gone. And that was that.

Would you mind sending yours over to train mine? After all, there’s a new maid but trained, she is not. Desperate though, that she certainly is.

The Ambassadors’ Birds

I stepped out of the elevator and right in front of me, on the wall, were two birds. Not just any birds, but two absolutely magnificent peacocks, the iridescent feathers of blue and green trailing behind their bodies. Even without the full-on fan of the eye-dotted feathers, these birds were beautiful and noble, holding their blue, crowned heads up high. They were turned towards each other, one a bit more elevated than the other, and they were staring at a spot somewhere behind me.

I blinked, not understanding. How could they be so still, high up on the wall, standing on little ledges? Then I saw. They were stuffed, but their colors were perfectly intact. They looked alive, very much unlike other stuffed animals I’d seen in museums or friends’ dachas back in Russia. I once heard somewhere that peacocks symbolized immortality in ancient Greece and later on in Christianity, and that’s why they were often depicted next to the Tree of Life. It was ironic, almost cruel, that these peacocks—symbols of life—were very dead.

I had to force myself to look away from the birds. They were beautiful and strange. But my curiosity to see more was stronger.

It was a sunny day in the not too distant past when I visited this place of wonder and awe, a secret place that only few people know of, although it’s right here, in the middle of everything, close to the city’s masses.

I only got a brief glimpse of this world very new and different to mine, and had to leave it a few hours later, when most other guests had already departed. Among those honored to be invited to view and experience this enchanted spot for the first time were fifteen or so. Four others knew the place quite well. They belonged to it. Or it to them. The only reason I was there was that my boss was busy, so he sent me instead. I don’t think that any of the important people there expected somebody like me to show up.

To access this magical place, you muttered a secret password to the guards outside. They then accompanied you to the elevators that in turn took you up. The top few levels belonged to this group of powerful men. Once I heard the ding! of the elevator, announcing my arrival, I stepped into light and soft music and colors of wood and leather but also sparkle and gold.

After my moment with the peacocks, I walked on slowly, taking in the surroundings. On my left stood soft but imposing couches with a round embroidered table between them and a golden light illuminating the scene. Even though it was morning and very bright outside, the heavy caramel-colored curtains were drawn. The effect was that the interior appeared cozy and vaguely familiar. It was the atmosphere of your favorite reading room in an ancient library or the backdoor library of a duke or lord. All this without any books, but instead tables, laden with the most polished silver wear, dishes, vases and tall crystal bottles, and walls covered with photographs of important people and expensive bottles from all over the world. Next to each table stood a full-sized, broad-shouldered wooden man replica. Again, I was confused, until I realized that those shoulders held expensive suits to save them from wrinkles when the important men sat down at the splendid tables.

I was early and the room empty. All I could hear was the lull of the music draped over everything. Even though it was my first time coming—and even hearing—of this place, I hadn’t had any trouble finding it in one of the large commercial-looking buildings of the city. I hesitated but then walked to the middle of the majestic round room, a huge wooden bar on one end and red-carpeted stairs on the other. Finally, a man saw me and came towards me, smiling. I was nervous and quickly explained that I was very early. He smiled even wider and gestured to a small door at the other end of the round room. I had not noticed the door leading into yet another room. Now I saw the suits and ties of a few men who were already there.

On my way to the men, I passed a vitrine with thick, imposing-looking cigars. Somehow, this did not surprise me in the least.

The room I entered was named after a mountain, as were others, I would later discover. Most at the unique gathering were men of a mature age. They looked similar in statue, demeanor and physical demarcations. They also spoke at least two of the same languages, languages not everybody in the room understood. I did. This elevated me in their eyes and I was allowed to join their circle. I shook hands and exchanged nods, learning little by little, that these men were representatives of their countries and industries.

For a long time, I was the only woman in the room named after a mountain. I made polite conversation, handed out and collected business cards and joined the gentle chuckle that erupted from time to time in response to politically leaning jokes. A smile settled on my face, a smile that was pleasant and friendly enough for the occasion I hoped. It did not even leave my lips when one of the important men winked at me, as if sharing a private joke. I simply sipped my tea and smiled some more.

Slowly, the gathering grew to its full twenty people, as the important men trickled in. Three women also came. They too were very important, powerful and of extraordinary influence. A white-haired woman graced my circle with her presence, speaking in an almost whisper, hardly audible. She made sure to first ask everybody else’s occupations before revealing her superior own. I could not help but think that this might be a clever tactic to reinforce her position over us. I also came to understand that she was saving her voice for a moment that came later, when she stood up and announced—with violently rolling Rs, but loud and clear—the advances and superiorities of the country she represented.

A few other intriguing comments about superiorities and inferiorities of their countries versus this one were made over the course of our gathering. The speech we were there to hear was of little importance, even though we, of course, all acted otherwise. At the end, polite applause, and all stood to shake, nod, wink.

One of the men familiar with the magical place showed me the different wondrous levels, separated by steps floating in the air. I showed my appreciation with “ah”s and “oh”s. He looked pleased.

Before I left, as the elevator doors were sliding shut, I looked once more at the peacocks, and I thought about how in some cultures, they were viewed as vane and proud. And I imagined the important men, representatives of their various countries, sitting in this palace of peace in the middle of this turbulent and troubled town, smoking cigars in rooms named after mountains and looking up at their birds—beautiful and dead.

Peacocks grace the Tree of Life in this Indian tapastry

Advice

At the lakeside, we got talking

about the land, the water

one brown, one red

Hippos are fast, he said

And when they chase you

you zigzag

and run as hard as you can

His hands were in motion

setting an example

At his childhood lake, he’s escaped a few

but not his friends.

There’s water snakes too

Once they bite, stay in the water

Will they kill you? I asked

Instantaneous, he said

you leave, you die

But in the water, your blood is slow

cold

You stay, don’t move

Wait for muti.

Journalist? she asked.

I had a friend, a journalist, she said

On an assignment, in CAR

She got incredible access

embedded with the rebels

One day

they had muti

Became invisible

—including her

When they went into a village

she followed

invisible

By the next day

they had killed them all

and she was there

invisible

A Beautiful Thing/Родина

I want to tell you about a beautiful thing that recently happened to me. It has to do with my family and acceptance. Maybe some of you will relate.

My family is spread all over. My mother lives in Germany, my aunt in Spain, another aunt, uncle and cousins in Central Russia, my grandma and more cousins in Southern Russia–and I’m in Kenya. When my aunt announced that she was going to marry her long-term partner, we decided to get together, in Barcelona, to celebrate.

Not everybody could make it but the three sisters reunited. Vera, Nadeshda, Lubov–Faith, Hope, Love. I also joined and saw my mother’s sister from Central Russia and her husband for the first time in 14 years.

We were all nervous. After such a long time, you don’t know each other anymore. You–literally–have to get used to speaking the same language again, learn first-hand what has happened over all those years and what kind of person you’re related to and dealing with.

My aunt is a hard-working woman who likes to shed a tear or two over shared memories, and tell stories about her children whom she adores deeply. She is also the eldest among the three sisters, and you can tell. Even though it was her first time in Barcelona and she let others decide what to do, it still felt that she had the ultimate control. It was also her who, without hesitation, pointed out the obvious, everybody else was too polite to verbally notice. One of the sisters had gotten a little belly (“What is this? And you are wearing this tight dress?”), the other one was anxious and stressed (“Quiet! Just sit down for once and relax! You’re driving everybody crazy!”), her husband drank a bit too much (“Here we go again…”) and I was lacking a good part of crucial Russian cultural know-how (“She doesn’t understand Ukrainian jokes. You must explain again.”). But in this same direct fashion, she would also tell you when she liked something about you or something you did. After a few days together, she hugged me–suddenly–and said that I was a sensible and intelligent girl who was interested in people and the world, and that she was impressed and very happy about how I had turned out. I felt honored and glad and relieved.

My uncle was a bit of a different story. He is a man full of jokes and opinions. Many of them sounded offensive to my Western, liberal ears. There were jokes and comments about peoples he clearly disliked and there was the way he did not look at me when, on our second night together, I left the women’s family story circle on one side of the room to join the men’s political talk on the couch and hear his thoughts about Syria and Crimea–merged into one argument against American world policing. I chimed in occasionally, probing his argumentation, but he attributed our generational, cultural, sociopolitical differences to my having spent too much time in the US. It’s true, spending time abroad will most likely widen the horizon of your opinions, but I’m sure that’s not what he meant.

After a while, he decided to give me a lesson of sorts. He asked me to join him on the balcony, away from the (protective) women. While he smoked a cigarette, he told me about his two children whom he raised to love Kuban, the region in Southern Russia where we are all from. Even though his children had been born in other regions of the Soviet Union, he took them to Kuban as often as he could, because he wanted them to love it as much as he did, and to view it as their Родина [liberally where you’re born or your homeland]. Clearly, my uncle loved his country–and he expected me to feel the same. Standing on this little balcony, overseeing a narrow street in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, where one of my aunts lived and where I had spent more time coming of age than in Russia, a country I left at age 2 and had only visited a few times since, I felt the pressure of needing to belong. I felt that I had to choose sides (my homeland’s side in this case) and stick with it, no matter what. Most of all though, I felt sad and disappointed that my uncle did not see me as the person I was–complex background and all. I had not grown up in a different region of Russia, like his kids, but a completely different country, Germany. And even that place I had traded in over 10 years ago for the US, South Africa, Kenya and others, because I did not feel that I belonged. People like me who face dilemmas of not truly fitting in anywhere have since been dubbed “third culture kids.” Even though I had grown up with the Russian language, food, stories, mentality and culture, I did not belong to it–and I never would, at least not fully. And that was something my uncle could not accept.

We spent the next week cooking, eating, strolling, laughing, crying, arguing, making up–and on my last evening, just before I was to head to the airport to fly back to Nairobi, a beautiful thing happened.

Over another lavish meal, accompanied by a great deal of spirits, my uncle raised his glass to make a toast. He looked at me and he said: “Forget what I have told you about your Родина. Home is where you are happy, where people accept you as you are–and where your mother is.” Everybody drank to that and my mother beamed at him, but I knew that this was a private exchange between him and me. That he, like me, had continued thinking about our conversation on the balcony. That he had learned, as we spent time together, that I could not and would not belong–and that that was OK. It was one of those rare times when you see somebody opinionated change their opinion. And it was in this moment that he stopped trying to make me something I was not and accepted me instead.

On the Road with N

From the garage

dark and calm

we slide onto the street

Music tunes behind

dust and cars inched up close

we settle down to wait

in patience that is necessary

N talks of congestion

banning cars from Nairobi

making everyone use public transportation

not matatus but trains

not with wooden benches but cushions

“How can you leave the seat of your car

for a wooden bench?”

—

There, outside

a fence

white and long and windy

On the other side

shacks: brown, metal, roofs, walls

so close to the residence

of the president

A woman washes clothes in a bucket

bending over with straight legs

in this astonishing, flexible way

I remember how once upon a time

an acquaintance slammed

straight into the pristine white fence

full speed, and probably not sober,

freeing himself though with the solution to everything

—

Here, inside,

we decide

if it was not for borders

we could all go where we pleased

and maybe it would be better

N was to leave

back then

as a professional football player

Even today, he’s best in his town

unsurpassed by the new generation

About to leave

he broke his leg

the big bone

broken clean and thorough

by a matatu

We roll freely now

town behind us

N talks freely now

acceptance between us

—

A year and a half

on the sidelines

on cruches

In the end, he recovered

but they didn’t sign him

“Maybe it happened for a reason?

Maybe in Europe,

I would have lost my mind

and died on drugs?

To me, it’s not an accident.”

I glace over at N

astonished by this bendy, flexible way

to accept

—

We stop

another fence

another residence

There, outside

is where I live

Fallacy

Today I sat at a table

With a vet, clerk, farmer, banker, professor

all concerned about inclusive business

Voices were low, humble, conspiratory

The room lit with a few bright lights

Contributions to the conversation were carefully announced, delivered softly and determined,

like a feather falling down to the middle of the table

to be examined and accepted

with understanding nods and continuous “hm”s

Among water bottes, notebooks, glasses, suits and cloth-covered chairs

the consensus was reached

that we too readily fall prey to the fallacy

that technology solves anything

by itself

Situations

This one time
I sat in Dolores Park overlooking San Francisco
listening to “Best Day Of My Life”
checking out stylish people
on a borrowed iPhone
dancing bright yellow frames
all over the city
an advertisement friends were making
on tight budget
thus the cinematic favor.

This other time
I sat in a crammed bus returning to Nairobi
listening to “Best Day Of My Life”
stuck for hours
an accident
people overtake each other
on the steep Great Rift Valley roads
red dust in the air from shaggy wheels
makes it hard to see
a man threw suffocated sheep off his animal-stacked truck
they landed twisted, eyes closed
and the words
“Best Day Of My Life”
morbidly mocked the ambulance
speeding by.

My commute: Getting to know you, San Francisco

After a little more than a month, I think that maybe—just maybe—I know it well enough to begin to describe: my commute.

This sudden impulse, probably because this week, for the first time, I shared it with somebody. We walked along, me pointing out the spots, moments, observations I’ve begun to see as mine, as you do when you get to know someone new—be it a person, or a place. And it struck me that it was time to share. My commute, my getting closer to this city I don’t quite like—part of my life, just like that.

The territorial cats who still regard me with suspicion. But I know where to expect them now—the happy hounds and them

The red strawberry I admire. And I wonder if the owner will mind when, one day—I eat it, straight from the branch, in the breaking light

The severity of silence for 30 precious minutes, serene in the true sense, and inexplicably important. Because every morning I entrust my safety to a complete stranger, for a dollar. When the stranger drops me off on the other side of the bridge, we’re a little less strange—and somewhat restored

At 3^rd and Mission, a homeless man eats his Styrofoam breakfast

The two wide inbetween streets that are so out of place in this densely and constantly densifying place. The first—home to colors: a green, indiscernible corner on top of the roof, a rose wall and gray asphalt. The second—home to a man: bright blankets, always asleep, always contorted, always anew

Downtown construction that never ends, fueled by technology, both micro and macro, swept even into our non-profit shared working space. Until profits are made

The line outside the methadone clinic by the office, and the woman who looks, glazed over, tattoos across her face, and she’s gone

The security guard, deemed necessary, positioned outside the office—sunglasses and leather jacket

The impossibly young faces of the bourgeoning, posh ad firm, sprawling on three floors below ours in a building, formerly a garment factory—the long florescent lights still blind

 

My path there so starkly different from my return.

 

The smell on Howard Street that reminds me of a boy I once saw at age 8 at Niederrad train station in Frankfurt, Germany. A smell of ripe fruit that has just begun to rot—sweet, animal-like

The strange feeling when one of the homeless is not in his regular spot. Could he have?

Oh, but I know the patched sidewalk. Let me show you where.

Lines and streams of bodies move. Stop, and you’ll make them part

The lengthening line of bus passengers, one after another, actually—incredibly!—abiding

6.30pm lights flickers on passengers’ balding heads. They don’t notice me noticing

Albany’s glowing shimmer of gold, welcoming me back. I look and look. Until my eyes hurt. The angle shifts. And it’s just another apartment building

I nod a quick hello at my familiar giant harbor friends

They know

I’ll be back tomorrow

Breaking

Breaking is those hated, inappropriate tears that come, because I know the right questions to ask.

Breaking is cracking the shell, when he opens up but never talks to me again. Breaking is the glimpse I don’t deserve, the one that never lasts.

Breaking is spelling out the word “cappuccino,” because of its novelty, because it’s a rich person’s thing, a thing to tell, to show, to spell. The hysterical laughter at the leaf in the foam.

Breaking is when I see things I should not see.

Breaking is the old man across my mountain of fish, plantains, vegetables chewing on his plain potatoes, staring absently. Alone.

Breaking is the layer of skin forming on the old man’s hot tea, and the clothes that are too big on him, too stiff, destined to carry to the grave—Him. Us. Whether it’s time or not.

Breaking is the disbelief of a slum dweller in the UN (“It’s so big!”). Breaking is its very rarity.

Breaking is a body in the middle of the street, naked, buses swirling out of their way, avoiding contact because it slows down business. Breaking is not knowing death from drunkenness.

Breaking is a waiter asking “Would you like lemon with your Pimms?” and the fact that he really means it. That this could matter to him.

Breaking is the dead pig in the river, swollen, grey, and children throwing stones at the other pigs, calling them by name.

Breaking is his red eyes, infected, in the fumes of burnt plastic, batteries, flesh.

Breaking is the “thank you” after another unaffordable meal afforded—For him. His family. When he can’t. The endless thanking.

Breaking is the sullied and ripped, sparkly dresses on little girls in the mud.

Breaking is that smell.

Breaking is having doubts—about trust, about security, about life.

Breaking is nervously looking out of the taxi, making sure you are on the right road.

Breaking is when it becomes a habit.

Breaking is trying to explain—blank stares on beloved faces.

Breaking is when he orders the largest coffee available. His eating an opportune meal.

Breaking is the sign by the city’s dumb site “Don’t throw away your baby.”

Breaking is a man who says “I don’t know what to do.”

Breaking is when I can’t sleep at night.

Breaking is the insistence that he’s not a criminal and does not want to be one, that he wants to earn his living “with his sweat,” the doubt so obvious in his voice, his look.

Breaking is that I get it. I won’t blame him.

Breaking is the waiting eviction notice. The inevitable, patient state. State of affairs, state of being, state of desperation.

Breaking is being let into a ministry and given insider contacts because of the color of your skin. No questions asked.

Breaking is avoiding people, because what can you realistically talk about?

Breaking is when the libido is numbed by the shit filling your head.

Breaking is when the act is desperate, beautiful, the thing that might save you.

Breaking is feeling pretentious because of my inability to deal, to adjust, to care for the things that should matter in my life.

Breaking is being surprised at a slum resident’s brains. And being appalled at the inability of so many in power.

Breaking is the hands on his face when he thinks of my leaving, when the challenge, the investigation is over.

Breaking is the question “When will you come back?”

Breaking is what I do. Be it an inherited masochism or one acquired—with too much alcohol, too many worries, too little sleep, too many places not-to-go, too many thoughts not-to-think.

Only few will understand. But they are there, those few.