Whenever I read a blog that hasn’t been updated in a while, I’m always left rolling my eyes in boredom when I read the obligatory, “I can’t believe (insert days/months/weeks here) has gone by since I last posted!” And here I am, six months later, posting my first blog entry in what seems like years.

If it weren’t for my friend Drew, an avid blogger, Bread and Revolution would probably lay fallow for some time. I could spend this blog entry recounting all the things I’ve done since Sept. 4, the date of my last entry, things like: starting a master’s program in Oral History at Columbia; seeing two of my closest friends get hitched; getting my first bikini wax; gaining about 5 pounds; travelling to Brazil and falling madly in love with Rio. But most recently, and most importantly, I have found out that my grandmother has stomach cancer and doesn’t have much time to live. And this, above all else, is really all I can write about.

My grandmother will be 90 this year. She moved here in 1974 after my mother somehow managed to give birth to three kids in 11 months (My older sis in July 1973, me and my twin 11 months later). As a child I developed an near-obsessive love for my grandmother, who has lived a long, hard life, as have many of her generation. I remember when I was no more than three or four years old, running up to her at church, and wrapping myself around her legs. She was always so strong, wrapped in a flowing beige winter coat, standing with her other Korean grandma friends, laughing at the adoring little one curled up around her shoes.

My grandmother has always taken great, meticulous care of her appearance—regular perms, perfectly penciled brows, neat-yet-age-appropriate clothes, and flawless white skin. In her dresser drawers, she covers her clothes in silk scarves, and will throw open her drawers and closests, taking stock of her jackets, blouses and sweaters. For Korean women, even at my grandmother’s age, your outward appearance is your social currency. Even at 89, all my grandmother ever wants for Christmas is a Lancome compact in Ivory Beige.

I don’t know very much about my grandmother, except that she is from around Pusan, in southern South Korea. She moved to Kobe, Japan with her husband, my grandfather, to open a bakery. He died of yellow fever, leaving my grandmother to care for three young boys alone. As for the other details, things get pretty murky. I don’t know what happened to my oldest uncle—all I know was that he was in the Korean army and was somehow killed while off duty. My grandmother sold blankets door to door to earn money to raise her boys. I know she feels incredible guilt for not having enough money to send her youngest son to college.

In my mind, my grandmother is still the same stocky, strong and feisty woman who prefers to sit on the floor and likes to eat Pizza Hut pizza. In my mind she still spends endless hours making Korean dumplings, and sneaks into our bedrooms at night, slipping her dry, wrinkled hands underneath our blankets to make sure we are not cold. Inevitably, no matter how warm we feel, she would always drag out more blankets from the closet and pile them on top of us.

She is known to say crazy things, and giggles when she farts. She loved living in Japan, marvelling at how clean it was. In the almost 35 years she has lived in the U.S., she has learned only a palm-full of English words: Thank you. I love you. Bye.

My grandmother today is fading fast. Her hands have become wiry, and her skin is paper thin, speckled with brown dots. Her clothes hang off of her bony body. Because I am not fluent in Korean, I struggle to let her know how much she is loved. I hold onto her legs, as I did when I was a small child. I bring her cookies, even though I know they may hurt her stomach and cause it to bleed. I want her to spend her last days knowing how much she is loved and how much her life mattered.

It was six months ago that I last wrote on my blog. The doctor said my grandmother’s stomach cancer probably started to develop about six months ago.

My grandmother learned few, but important English words. In a way, I feel in the end, these are the words that matter. Now, as she nears the end of her life, all I can do is show my grandmother just how much she means to me with as many gestures as possible, holding her hand, smoothing her hair, touching her cheek:  Thank you. I love you. Goodbye.

If they aren’t sitting unabashedly on your bed, then chances are they’re squirreled away in a dark closet—somewhere where light and heat cannot blanch their tender flesh.

They are the ubiquitous confidantes of children everywhere: they hold within them countless secrets, witness everyday transgressions and yet never utter a word. They are the sponges of a million tears, provide unyielding succor and serve dutifully as loyal companions as we battle invisible enemies from living-room forts made of blankets and sofa cushions, or real demons that come in the shape of loud voices emanating from our parents’ bedroom, or, as it was in my case, sometimes accompanied by dishes shattering and even chairs colliding with an old, wooden piano. These unsung heroes are stuffed animals, and they, as light as they are, are worth their weight in gold.

Wilco knows what’s good: Two stuffed friends sit on an amp while the band plays McCarren Park in Brooklyn last August.

My close friends know that I have a menagerie of stuffed friends littered around my room—and yes, sitting quietly on a shelf in my closet: Monroe, Eldin and Lenny, the lobster brothers; a sock monkey dressed in a “Punk’s Not Dead” t-shirt; and Engelbert, who also goes by the moniker ”The Holy Hammerhead,” as well as countless others. As an adult, I have been loathe to relinquish their presence in my life. I’m certain my friends think I’m crazy, perhaps chalking up this eccentrism as a regressive expression, some sort of Freudian longing for a childhood now gone. I can’t argue against these explanations. In my defense, it’s not exactly like I bring them out to parties and tote them around as they “mingle” with party-goers, querying them in a high-pitched voice:

“Hi, I’m Englebert, also known as the Holy Hammerhead. Where can a guy get a decent shrimp cocktail around here? By the way, nice shoes!” (Furry fins flail about in wild gesticulation.)

What I can say is that stuffed animals have played–and continue to play–a fairly significant role in my adult life, however more subtle and in the shadows than they did when I was a child.

First, stuffed animals can be an invaluable tool for the ladies—a great way to gauge whether a guy is worth his mettle. My time-tested, thread-bare teddy bear, Bobby, often sat atop my bed, wearing a knitted bee sweater, his eyes cracked and dulled partly by time, and partly as a result of my older sister slapping him against the hallway wall as I danced around her in tears. Whenever I brought guys home, all I had to do was see how my male suitor would react to Bobby. If the guy picked him up, made fun of Bobby, it was pretty much a sure thing that the guy would eventually prove to be a total ass. One guy actually threw Bobby across the room—and I never saw him again.

In a relationship, stuffed animals are also worth their stuffing. Many times they have “intervened” in an argument, pulling together the sparring factions and even nudging a smile or two. You’d be surprised at how men—suit-wearing, briefcase-toting professionals by day—can deftly make use of a fuzzy unicorn to call a truce or make amends: “(Boyfriend’s name here) says he’s sawwwwy! He wuvs you so bewy bewy much!” (Boyfriend waves stuffed unicorn’s front legs, making a “heart shape” in the air.) Who can’t eek out a smile for that? C’mon!

Not everyone empathisizes with my stuffed love. Some friends nod in a “you’re off your rocker, but I love you anyway” sort-of way. Others just ignore them, and that’s fine with me. And then there’s my friend Drew–one of my dearest buddies from NYU and a fellow blogger. We wre chatting last week about my love of stuffed animals. Our conversation went something like this:

Clare: Do you have a favorite stuffed animal?
Drew: Do I have a favorite what?
Clare: Stuffed animal?
Drew: Oh, no.  I fucked all of mine. I tore a hole between it’s legs and humped the stuffing out of it. Yeah, I think it was a bear. And it might have been male, so I very well might be gay
Clare: Great, can i put that in my blog?

Although he did make out with my twin sister once, Drew will never be allowed near my stuffed friends.

Je suis un cliché. Mon dieu, je sui. Oh oui. Je sui. Je t’aime, Paris. Je t’aime.

That’s my new little ditty dedicated to Paris, city of light, city of lovers.

I have just spent seven days in Europe, traveling to Scotland (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine), then a 7-hour layover in Dublin took me straight to the city center to commune with James Joyce’s spirit for several lovely hours (despite a torrential downpour), and then on to France where I spent the final lingering days of my trip in Lille, the country’s third-largest city, and then to Paris.

I see cities a lot like lovers: old, new and imagined. Sometimes you have to leave the one you love in order to to feel passionate about it again. Paris makes me realize that you can have more than one love. Glasgow made me realize that sometimes the idea of love is better than the reality.

But Paris…oh Paris.

I think New York is okay with sharing me with Paris. First, I’ve been with her for so long—from the day I arrived with my packed bags and stuffed animals on the doorsteps of NYU in August 1992 until the present, with only two short beaks in between—and all the while, my heart has been so loyal. New York knows my heart lies with her. But the beauty of these other lovers, it is haunting, and I can’t help but feel so alive when I am with them. Very few cities make me feel as intoxicated as the first moments you realize you have totally and completely fallen for someone. I spent only two nights in Paris, and yet I returned to New York feeling as I had just fallen in love. My eyes had glazed over, there was a spring in my step, and a glow to my skin. There are only two other cities that make me weak in the knees: Berlin and Lisbon. But my affairs with all of them have been quick, passionate, fervent escapades that always send me back to my true love, New York City.

My flight to France arrived late, and once I retrieved my bags, I made my way to the last SNCF train bound for Lille, just an hour north of Paris. Arriving just after midnight, I could barely glimpse the historic beauty of the city, but when the sun rose, I flung open the balcony doors of my hotel room to see the bright heart of the city pulsing below. The hotel overlooked the Grand Place, the city’s great square lined with cafes and shops. Lovers lazed across the marble borders of the centrally located fountain, embracing, kissing, fondling, heads nestled in laps. Women sipped their coffees and nibbled on croissants. Old men with bikes rang their bells as they rode slowly across the plaza. And as I surveyed the scene, the clock tower rising above and the church bells ringing, I sighed along with the lovers, listening to Edith Piaf sing “Non je ne regrette rien” on my iPod.

Oui, je suis un cliché. Yes, I am a cliché.

Of course, there were a full five days of travel before I stepped foot in France, and while visits to these others cities didn’t fill me with this resonating sense of euphoria, there are, certainly, some highlights:

• Being in Europe watching the UEFA Euro Cup 2008, being around people who give a damn about soccer. In Glasgow, at a lovely little pub called The Goat (and yes a very big, very plastic goat stood in the window of the establishment) I rallied on the Germans and lamented the loss of the French to the Italians. In Lille at a crowded Australian bar—called, how clever, The Australian—I cheered on Germany, wiped the field with Portuguese booty to make its way to the semi-finals.
• Playing lawn bowls with my friend Ryan in Glasgow in Kelvingrove Park just as the sun began its slow summer descent into night
• Climbing the castle in Edinburgh, exploring its nooks and crannies in—what else—my sassy NYC wedge sandals
• Finally being in Dublin, which has long been a dream, if only for a few hours in torrential rain

 

Hands down, my favorite memory was of my last night, Saturday, June 21, the first day of summer. I had a lovely dinner at a small French restaurant in Paris (where upon a tall handsome waiter made eyes at me throughout my meal, making me blush like a little school girl) and after walking around a bit, I remembered that it was Fete de la Musique until 2 a.m., where on random street corners throughout the city were bands, singers and DJs. I started at a little square by my hotel in the 6th arrondisement near Montparnasse and the Jardin du Luxembourg to listen to a DJ spin some downtempo house and wended my way through the cobblestone streets to see people dancing everywhere. When I got to St. Sulpice, there was a little sidestreet where a 20-piece horn band had nearly 200 people dancing and singing. Imagine your high school marching band—but on a grander scale, wearing fluorescent pink feathers in their hair and adorning their shoes—playing pop songs—Born to be Alive, ABC, Bad to the Bone—and the national anthems of the teams who are now going on to the Euro Cup semi-finals. The moon hung high in the sky, and the street lamps seemed more like Christmas tree lights strung together for one big party.

Somehow, I was able to tear myself away from this band to explore what else might be lurking around the corner. I ended the night with this incredible band that sounds a lot like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I felt like a teen-age girl swooning over the blue-eyed, floppy-haired mysterious singer. Surrounding him was what seemed like a miniature soccer stadium full of young people, dancing, waving their hands, singing along. In the distance you could hear other music competing for ears. The entire city of Paris was electric with live music on nearly every corner, and it seemed as though people were in love with each other because there was such an incredible feeling in the air, like all is well with the world, and why don’t we all just make out and feel the joy? The energy was tangible.

As the Chili-Pepper band ended its last encore, a man walked by and gently brushed my bangs off my face, and as he walked away, smiled over his shoulder.

Je t’aime, Paris. Je t’aime.

I remember the day I lost poetry, and I remember the day I rediscovered it.

It was early 2002 and I still held dear the notion that one day, as I had long dreamed as a child, that I would pursue a life dedicated to the artful expression of that archaic form of literature, poetry. In the throes of my early teen years, bepimpled, bespectacled and longing for love, in a fake-leather pink notebook I whiled away the hours penning words I felt dripped in a sweet-rust concoction of honey and blood, with a dash of true, writhing torment. (Of course, it was all mind-numbing, teeth-gnashing dribble, but at the time, every word pulsed with life! Sang songs! Lived and breathed the essence of love!) In the privacy of my orange-colored bedroom, I wrote this sappy, drooling dribble, but in the classroom, I was acknowledged for my writing prowess and won a number of accolades and awards.

In college, I was recommended to take graduate-level courses in poetry, fiction and nonfiction. In particular, my teachers marveled at my ability to critique the work of my classmates. I could take a poem or short story and slowly, deliberately pull apart the layers, see the whole as a series of puzzle pieces, taking apart sentences and paragraphs, and suggest ways for putting them together again. I remember one story by a student, who at the time was also my very bipolar apartment mate (he once doused our other roommate’s Bible in cheap gin, set it aflame, and launched it into the street below from our balcony). Not surprisingly, his short story also reflected his mental chaos: a short tale of a madman whose demons drove him to kill. In my critique I laid out what I saw as an attempt to tell five very different stories, all with their own merit, but as one, a jumble of conflicts and agonizing scatteredness. My professor returned my critique to me with a simple line in red: The best of the bunch. But I was always late to class, choosing to spend time in the sun with my rock star-poet boyfriend, and so the same professor gave me a B. (I never fought the grade: You have to live life if you want to write about it, after all.)

After I had graduated from university and through my post-college jobs, my passion for poetry persisted. I started a literary journal, worked at a publishing house and then, an art magazine, took classes in art criticism and poetry throughout the city. At the Poet’s House in Soho, I applied for a master’s class with the Robert Hass. You know, Robert Hass, former U.S. poet laureate for three consecutive years (1995 to 1997), and the origin of such wondrous strands of words as those in Meditations at Lagunitas:

“There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed.”

So exquisite is this poem that it makes my eyes water.

I hand-delivered my application along with five of my best poems, and received a letter that I had been accepted. This was no small feat: Hass himself read all of the submissions and selected those he wanted in his class. Upon receiving this news, I did two things: First, I threw my hands in the air and giggled like a child. Then, feeling giddy and dazed, I walked the streets of Brooklyn, where I lived at the time, as if in a haze and yet, everything around me seemed to glow, more beautiful and yet, distant.

Upon arriving to the class, I quietly noted that the other 10 or so students were not only significantly older, but they also seemed to be acquainted on some level with each other, and more notably, with Robert Hass himself. They called him Bob. Instead of making me feel ill at ease, this realization only served to underscore the notion that my poetry was not only fit to read, but fit to write. My heart swelled.

The master class’s format followed any that one might have ever taken: Everyone takes turns reading a single poem of their choosing, and the class responds with feedback, questions and constructive criticism. Following history, my classmates congratulated me on my criticism of their poems. There was one slightly overweight girl, eager yet affable. The poem she had chosen to read was about love and sex. But so overwrenchingly simple that in my mind I repeated what no writer ever wants to hear: This is not working. “In the dappled moonlight, he reached out and pulled me from the water/and kissed me as the blades of grass/waved in the breeze” is what echoes in my memory. The class fell quiet after she read her work. Looking around the table I could see some classmates squirming in their seats, ruffling through papers with nothing written on them, someone, I think, cleared their throat. No one would say what had to be said. So I dared to do it—elegantly, diplomatically. During the break, someone came to and said, “Thank you so much for saying what you said. It’s what we all wanted to say but couldn’t. You were brave.” I never said “this poem isn’t working” in my feedback, but it really wasn’t.

The next day, the critique of my poem was up. I had achieved such a level of confidence that when I read my poem about Tepoztlan in central Mexico, I heard muffled sighs and “oohs,” no doubt, because my fellow classmates had been so clearly haunted, captivated and enthralled by my haunting account of that beautiful town. The criticism and questions I had received were steady and valid—I could listen to my classmates and understand that the poem itself needed work, but that the imagery created by these strands of words held some strength and vision. But then Robert Hass spoke, and as he talked, the room began to spin and my cheeks flushed red. And he said those words, “This poem…it’s just not working.”

Needless to say I was devastated, and I returned home to lie on my couch, crying my eyes out and self-medicating with fistfuls of wine and ice cream. February 2002 was the last time I wrote a poem, and that class with Robert Hass put my dreams of poetry into a deep, dark grave.

Fast forward to May 29, 2008. I am leading the media outreach for the Pulitzer Prizes, and Robert Hass has won the Pulitzer for his book of poems, Time and Materials. At the awards presentation, he is sitting at a table right next to mine, and so I muster up the courage to introduce myself to him…and for a moment, see if he might remember me as the girl whose poem wasn’t working.

“Mr. Hass?” I say. “I’m Clare, the media person for the Pulitzers. I wanted to come and congratulate you on your award, but also, I took a master class in poetry with you at the Poet’s House.”

“Media relations is a good job for a poet,” he said, smiling, and I know, sincerely. “Yes, Clare, I remember you. Are you writing still?”

“Well no, not really…I think it ended with that class,” I say sheepishly, but I had to say it. I just had to know if he thought I was so horrible I should quit altogether, stick to corporate writing and call it a day. 

“Clare, you can write at any age, you can pick up again at 60. It’s never too late. Just don’t stop.”

And with that, I had my answer. It may just have been that his sharpest criticism, perhaps, might have been reserved for the one person in whom he saw some potential. That was now more than a week ago—and I haven’t written any poems since that day. But I have been living, feeling and seeing poetry in my daily life: in the softness of skin, the round, brown eyes of my niece, the smile of a stranger. Old songs are new again. And in this way, very consciously and very deliberately, I am welcoming poetry back into my life.

 

 

Strangers and Feeling Strange in New York

(NB: This is NOT a Carrie Bradshaw-esque tribute to a night of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll in NYC. My shoes aren’t Manolos—they’re Payless.)

It was last Friday, and I was out helping P. celebrate her birthday with some of her close lady friends. After a disappointing meal at Barrio Chino and giggling with some loud gay boys at the neighboring table, consensus took us rambling to another bar close by. Spitzer’s Corner, on the corner of Rivington and Ludlow, was fairly packed, but we managed to find some sitting room along the back wall by the bar. As we drank our wine and shouted over the din of drinkers, in walked a gaggle of very tall, very blonde Euro-looking men.

I interrupt P’s banter about cookies and dating, and point to the tall-blonde gaggle, and my eyes narrow. While some people profess to have an acute ability to suss out “the gays” from “the straights” (aka gaydar), I guess I’d have to say that I’ve got an acute sense of Euro-dar. Both terms based on gross generalities, it’s hard to put into exact words how I can spot a Euro from others, so acknowledging it’s no science, I’d say: generally tall, generally white, generally thin, and generally wearing tight jeans. With lots of exceptions.

They’re Euro, I say to my friend matter-of-factly. P, who is Indian, and I debate as to which European country they might be from. French? German? Maybe Dutch. But these guys are too good looking and well, with such a stark lack of diversity among them, they could all even be related to each other.

“Scandinavian, fo’shizzle,” I say. Bring’em on.  

As if on cue, one of the group—an older man, not as tall, not as blonde—walks over to us. “Is there room to sit here?” he asks us. We pile our coats and bags onto one another to make room. He sits down. We pounce. “So where are you guys from?” we nearly ask at once. “From Denmark,” he replies. Ah, yes, of course, Denmark. Land of Muslim cartoons, herring sandwiches, Hans Christian Andersen and lots of tall, blonde people. Within a few minutes, the whole crew of them had gathered by our side. One of them, particularly handsome, I must admit, sits down to talk to me. We trade some remarks about what he’s seen in New York so far, but architects seems to speak their own language and so I divert the topic to something I am always curious about: race.

Thanks to some of my own Danish friends, I know enough to know that, while Denmark isn’t exactly bereft of racial diversity, it isn’t exactly frothing over either. Sure, there are the Chinese take-away owners and surprisingly, a good number of Koreans adopted by white Danes (thanks to J for that tidbit)—but it’s probably a lot like finding stray poppy seeds on an otherwise plain bagel: random, spartan and obvious. Armed with this knowledge, I asked Jannes (Particularly Handsome Architect Boy, PHAB) if he had any Asian friends in Copenhagen. He said he had one friend. Then I asked him if he would ever talk to Asian women at a bar in his home city, he said probably not. When I pressed him as to why, he just shrugged and said, “Because Danes are not as friendly, they just don’t want to bother.”

But here we were, sitting in this packed bar in the Lower East Side—plenty of women milling about, looking ample and willing to talk to some attractive foreigners (Americans are suckers for Euro accents). So why me, then, why us?

Having done quite a bit of research on how human behaviour changes while on holiday, I know enough to know that what is taboo at home becomes exotic and desirable on holiday. One study that looked at female white tourists from Canada and the U.S. and their interactions with local black men in the Caribbean showed that many of these women admitted they they would never date a black man at home. Why? Well this was rationalized by dismissing them as crass—black men up North don’t know how to treat women, they said, but their counterparts down south, however, were idealized as great lovers, romantic and tender. And so these women eroticize these men who they wouldn’t give the time of day to back home. Many of these female frollickers have sex with their exoticized lovers, some even fall in love. What often happens after is a complicated tale. I should know, I dedictaed 60 pages of my master’s thesis to the dern topic.

Another architect swooped in after PHAB left to take a jaunt to the loo. He said, nodding at us, ”We are surrounded by beautiful women.” Well I guess that meant me and P. Their wide-eyed curiosity and our mildly leery curiosity—like groups of dogs sniffing each other—took us just a little bit further to another bar down the block. We all walked over to the Pink Pony, a bar on Ludlow, and nestled into the back room, which had emptied out by the time we arrived. I looked around the table at this band of Danish brothers and suddenly felt very obvious and very invisible all at once. Sixteen years in New York City, and yet I felt like a total stranger—a little like an alien on a foreign planet, a lot like that stray poppy seed on an othewise beige bagel. And then it dawned me: I was the exoticized local on their holiday. Just a plane ride away from from home, the forbidden fruit becomes daily bread. It was time for this alien to board the mothership and high-tail it out of Dodge.

It seemed the Pink Pony wasn’t enough to capture the young Danes’ attention either, so after a while, everyone got up to leave. Outside, the sky was black and the rain was pouring in nearly opaque curtains. In the melee to rush for safety, I ditched PHAB and the other architects—and darted for Houston Street, skipping over puddles and whistling in the rain.

Or, the Case of Icky, Creepy Crawly Things

I have an extreme phobia of bugs that bite. I’m talking mosquitoes, flies, fleas and gnats. And as anyone living in New York might know by now, our great city has been besieged by small, lentil-sized bugs that leave itchy welts during the night and hide in between pages of books, cracks in the floor and in every little hole or crevice that you never knew existed. Yes, they’re bed bugs, and unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past year (bed bug-free, I hope), you know about NYC’s not so little infestation. Perhaps you’ve even had a friend or two recount the nightmarish stories of these impossible critters taking over their lives. I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy. (God forbid you might actually have to be in their presence: a bug might hitch-hike onto you.)

That all being said, I slipped my very-real fears into the darkest corners of mind, even as I boarded the plan bound for Morocco, keeping within my sight the vision of dancing tagines, endless cups of mint tea and the overwhelming din of the souk sellers. Topaz-tinted skies and the beating sun after a seemingly endless New York City winter would be a fine anesthetic to keep even the split-second thought of bed bugs from scurrying across the clean and blissful slate of my mind. Until I actually saw one. For the first time. In bed. With me.

And there I was: lying in bed in this beautiful riad-style hotel (Maison du Sud) in the heart of Essaouira, reading The Sheltering Sun, and feeling this sort of poetic restlessness after traveling all day, constipated but invigorated by the salty smell of the ocean. I was dozing off, and feeling a slight chill, I slowly pulled the crisp white sheet to my chin, in the process setting free the carcass of a lone brown, lentil-sized bug. It fell onto the bed and laying there on a background of white, it looked like a freckle on porcelain skin. I stared at it blankly. I could feel a tightening in my chest, my breath quickening. I touched the bug, tossed it over from front to back, back to front. I squinted at it, not allowing myself just yet to believe it was a bed bug. But there it was: the classic reddish-brown color, the flat back with tiny ridges. My hysteria must have reached an audible crescendo because my bleary-eyed friend, not pleased that she had been awakened by my irrational whimpering, came to my bed, admonished me for my panic and blithely said, “You can’t see bed bugs, it’s probably just a tick.”

With that I leapt out of bed, and ran downstairs to tell the night clerk. He probably thought I was a silly Westerner afraid of dirt and bugs and nature, and so he matter-of-factly explained to me in French and gesticulation, that the bugs come from the many roses planted around the riad. “Somehow,” he said, “they must have come into your bed.” How romantic. To further allay my fears, he served me tea, and together we sipped and chatted in a broken mix of French (which I don’t speak), English and gestures, until I had calmed down, doubting myself and the chaos I had caused. The tea was a balm and the gesture itself was kind and familiar. It made me laugh in spite of myself.

Feeling more than a little embarrassed, I went back upstairs, first asking the night clerk (let’s call him Sidi Riad Man, or SRM) to come with me and check the mattress for more bugs. We saw none, and as my cheeks reddened, I laughed nervously and bid him, “Bonne nuit.”

But as I lay there in bed, I imagined legions of bed bugs marching slowly toward my tired, suntanned body exclaiming, “Okay bugs, go get her!” In a panic, I clicked the lights on to check the bed—again—and attempt to calm my fears. And there, under the right corner of the mattress, I saw more bed bug carcasses and their feces (tiny black spots) spotting the box frame. Telltale signs of a bed bug infestation.

In a fit of tears, I once again ran downstairs and told the SRM in shamefully bad French and some English and wild gesticulations: Bugs! (make crawling movements with fingers like itsy-bitsy spider) Coucher ici! (point to lounge seat) No dormir! (point upstairs toward room).  All the while, shaking my head, crying, feeling small—very small. Again, in gestures and English and French, I explained to him that I would not sleep in any bed in the hotel—lest the bugs be there as well—and that I would sleep instead in the hotel lounge in a makeshift bed. He obliged me in my hysterics, making a bed with sheets and pillows. I lied down in it, only to realize that there was another problem: SRM.

As I lie there, I had the acute sense that SRM was calculating how he would join me in my makeshift bed. I pretended to be asleep all the while. But in the middle of the night, he came to my side, “Clara, Clara! C’est froid, c’est tres froid!” Well, I knew enough French to know what he was saying and what he was doing. In the dark, I could make out his hands motioning to get under the covers with me. I heard him say “temps,” perhaps to say “just for a short time” or even “it’s about time.” In a fit of anger, I said to him in nothing but English: “This is a hotel! There are hundreds of blankets here!” And with that, I ripped off one of my own blankets and threw it over to the other side of the room. “ICI!”

It was his turn to nervously laugh, and he returned to his side of the lounge, where he tried to go to bed. What a night: Between the bed bugs in my room and the very big human bug downstairs, I had survived a nightmare—somehow, with no bites. The tea had made me let my guard down, but of course it didn’t help that in make-shift French I had screamed “Coucher!” which I now know means to f*ck (thanks Y and M!). So instead of screaming, “Bed Bugs! I’ll sleep here! I won’t sleep upstairs!” I sceamed: “Bed bugs! I’ll f*ck here! No sleep upstairs!”

No wonder SRM tried to get in bed with me. Poor confused bastard.

Tasting Berber History

The dusty clay village of Leksbah, a slow and somewhat treacherous 30-minute walk (the casualty in my case was a black sandal ill-equipped for such rugged terrain) from the town of Taznakht in Southern Morocco, is a Berber village spartan in modern-day luxuries, but rich in tradition. Here in this village, which sprouted up around an old, abandoned casbah, women bear the burden of what I call the Four Cs: cooking, cleaning, care-giving—and yes, carpet making. Nearly every home has a carpet loom, and as long as daylight exists and lamps illuminate the night, women and girls are found sitting upon cushions and bags of flour, expertly weaving candy-colored threads of wool through vertical white strings hung on a hand-made wooden frame. As women juggle the competing tasks of domestic chores and carpet weaving, men, conspicuously absent from the home, are often out tending to the fields and herds of goats, or in town, as is the case of Mohammed, looking for work.

On our last night in the village, we stayed at the modest, but airy home of Fatima and Mohammed, and their sweet-faced, brown-eyed daughter named Safaa. Pregnant with their second child (A boy, said Fatima, Inshallah), Fatima shared the sacred space of her bare-walled kitchen to show us how to make a lamb tagine—which is perhaps most comparable to a Moroccan stew. In the dim light of a single light-bulb, she peeled and cleaned wirey carrot sticks, onions, potatoes and peas, and set them aside. She then took generous cubes of lamb, layered in fat, and placed them in the bottom of the tagine dish. Then, lacing the lamb with olive and argan oils, she powdered the dish with cumin, pepper, paprika, turmeric and rass el hnout (a melange of a range of spices, sometimes up to a 100). She covered the bottom, now placed on a table-top gas stove, with the conical clay lid, occasionally stirring the meat over several long, torturous hours—torturous because the intoxicating smell of the cooking meat was enough to make me, hungry as I was, start climbing the walls. In an anxious moment, while Fatima was away catching up with Mohammed, who had just returned from work, I quietly lifted the lid, and saw the lamb simmering in its spiced juices and now-liquid fat. Not until the lamb had cooked sufficiently were the vegetables added to the tagine.

When it was finally done, the lamb tagine was offered to us in the same clay dish, encircled with green olives. Fatima had also created Moroccan-style salad plates, which often come with beets, steamed squash, carrots and surprisingly, white rice. But the salad, while tasty, was a mere distraction to the headlining tagine. Following tradition, the meat was doled out by the head of the household, who generously gave their guests the lion’s share of the portions. I must have mumbled, between mouthfuls, Shoukran bezef! at least 20 times.

Tagines are eaten with bread—kuhbz in Arabic. In the place of forks and spoons, pieces of khubz soak up the sauce and curry forth pieces of vegetables and meat. The meat of the lamb was tender to the touch, and the caramelized onions provided a lovely sweetness to the meal. The beauty of the tagine may be its simplicity: with a lot of patience and a modicum of effort, a tagine is both delicious, hearty and complex in its flavors. During the meal, we drank glasses of soda and toasted to our hosts, who had ushered us into their homes and fed us like we were royalty. Days after we left their home in Leksbah, my mind often wandered back to that meal. Restaurant tagines in Essaouria and Marrakesh were no match to Fatima’s home cooking. And now, back in New York City, I have to wonder: with all the diversity here in New York, why does the city—especially Manhattan—lag in good, authentic Moroccan cooking? If anyone can refute me on this, please, by all means, do so. I would be delighted to be wrong.

La bas? La bas. La Shoukran. Tagine!
The past 10 days trekking through the rugged and geographically diverse landscapes of Morocco got me thinking of the simplicity in which three words/terms helped me through some challenging and also, wonderous, times. The first is La bas, which basically means ”how are you?”. To answer, you hold your hand to your heart and respond in kind: “La bas,” and depending on your inflection, you can convey just how well, at least to a limited degree, you’re doing. La shoukran=No thank you. I am certain I have never used these two words together as often as I did in Morocco: to the poor children selling obscenely priced packets of tissue, to the men beckoning me to check out their wares (literally and perhaps metaphorically as well), and finally, to the night clerk at a certain riad-style hotel in Essaouira, who tried to join me in my bed. (“C’est froid, Clara! C’est tres froid!”)

And finally, my third-most used word was undoubtedly the sweet-sounding tagine. Rooted in Berber culinary traditions and common to much of North Africa, tagines are defined by the two-part cooking mechanism, also called a tagine: a flat, round pie-dish bottom and a cone-shaped lid. In the case of the tagine, function equals flavor. As the meat (poultry, lamb and even fish) and vegetables (potatoes, peas, carrots) simmer slowly at the bottom, the steam rises to the top, which captures the condensation, allowing it to cascade back along the slanted sides into the bottom. This creates the most delicious falling-off-the-bone meat and allows for a thin sauce to delicately coat the meal. Tagines often have a sweetness to them, which I love: apricots, raisins, berries, olives and prunes add just the right touch of natural sugar.  (In lieu of dessert, a retired military guy asked for a taste of the thick, syrupy-sweet raisin-onion paste left over in my tagine, while we dined together in Rabat.) Wherever I traveled—from bustling Marrakesh to the dusty village just outside the southern carpet capital of Taznakht—I went looking for tagines in whatever form I could find them. And, undoubtedly, the most delicious tagine was found in the humble clay home of Fatima and Mohammed.