1956  was the year that marked  a sea change in my life. I had to leave a private grade school to attend a public  high-school that was so poor that our classroom only had three walls, the fourth being chicken-wiring that prevented the children from leaving but let the cold air in.  It was also the year in which a plastic surgeon of Hollywood fame  tried to mend my broken nose by removing a bony bump that prevented me from breathing and replacing my mangled septum with some dead person’s cartilage.  It was the year in which I learned that the word virgin did not only  refer to Guadalupe, the dark Madonna revered by Mexican Catholics  but also to me on account of my intact hymen.  That was also the year that confirmed that I was tone-deaf when our new music mistress, a Mezzo-soprano from the Mexico City  Opera, while classifying the voices of her new charges  shook her head rather hastily when I predictably struck the wrong note. That was also the year in which I lost the only home I had ever known when my mother traded it for a passage on a slow boat to India where my father awaited us to start a new life.

The biggest change got a jump-start when we boarded the SS Francesco Morosini in Veracruz, a cargo ship that picked up sugar and molasses in the Caribbean and took it to Italy to be converted into rum-flavoured gelato, or so I liked to think.  It was a crossing that would take us forty-three days, during fifteen of which we would not sight land.

There were only six passengers on board, including my mother, my older sister, a middle-aged  French woman, and a  Belgian sex-pot who would  be unceremoniously dumped  off at the nearest port for disturbing the morale- or was it the morals ?- of the crew. I also remember a man  in his eighties  who swam every day to keep fit while his nurse-companion hovered around the tiny swimming pool ready to provide assistance.  The swimming pool doubled as the cargo hold opening when the ship docked. I often wondered whether the sea water and our sweat  could filter down making those molasses taste like taffy.

I got my first tooth abscess at  high seas.  The Captain sent me to the engine-room mechanic who was also the on-board nurse. At first I was not averse to the idea of his pulling my tooth since I was eager to meet this man with the swarthy skin, curly hair and soulful eyes. He led me to his cabin where he opened a glass cabinet full of medical equipment. And that is when I got a good look at his hands blackened by engine grease and I politely declined.  By the time we got to Italy my gums were so soggy that  the Egyptian dentist who extracted my tooth did not even have to use anaesthesia.

There was nothing much to do on board except swim in the tiny pool, eat, drink (if you were an adult) and stare at the sea.  I would observe the dolphins that accompanied us on our journey and when they were absent, I would stare into the depths of the dark waters.  One day a sailor warned me off since marine lore has it that the sea can hypnotise you and lure you into its bosom.  I heeded his warning and dropped my favourite pair of earrings into the water  instead.

It  wasn’t all smooth sailing, though.  The sea can be cruel.  On the 25^th of July the SS Andrea Doria, the pride of Italy’s passenger fleet, send out a distress signal after it collided with a Swedish vessel.  Our own ship made an abrupt turn and went full steam ahead, but other vessels had arrived before us to provide succour.  Another near miss was a giant whale that narrowly escaped the Francesco Morosini’s propellers.

That was also the year of my first love. I was fourteen and he was 24, but our age difference didn’t matter since he was completely oblivious to my crush. I became Giancarlo’s confidante, though, and he would sometimes whip out the picture of his Egyptian wife and their blond curly haired boy while he told me how much he missed them.

I made another friend whose name was Scarlatti. He was an old sea hand who had been travelling back and forth between the Caribbean and Italy for so many years that he no longer knew where his Italian ended and his Spanish began. I helped him paint the ship during the fortnight that we were at high seas. He repaid me by making me fluent in Spanish-flavoured Italian.

We docked for a week in Casablanca which gave the passengers plenty of time to visit the city.  My mother, the French woman, my sister and I visited the Kasbah by ourselves, to the horror of the sailors who warned us of the dangers that lurked in the Arab quarters.  Nobody bothered us there, but  a young boy grabbed my leg while we were sitting at a sidewalk café in the French Sector. He insisted on polishing my shoes, which certainly wanted some buffing, but I refused, jerking my leg away and hitting him accidentally.  He let out a string of curses in Arabic but the French soldiers sitting next to us pretended not to have witnessed anything. Later that day, while returning to the ship,  two policemen tried to arrest my mother for attempting to kidnap “two Arab girls”. My blonde, green-eyed Belgian mother had to produce our passports to prove we were indeed her daughters. They had taken her to be French. Morocco had recently obtained home rule and then full independence but tension between former colonizers and the colonized was still  high.

Our ship docked in Naples at a funny angle on account of a mine left over from World War II.

After three weeks in Italy we boarded  a passenger ship  headed to India via the Suez Canal. While the ship waited in the locks some passengers took tour buses to visit the pyramids but my mother stopped us from accompanying them because  “something was about to happen”. She was right.  When we reached Bombay  we discovered we had narrowly missed the shutting down of the Suez Canal by Egyptian President   Gamel Abdel Nasser in retaliation for Anglo-French policy in the region. The cold war was heating up.

When we docked in Bombay I caught sight of my father who looked so small in the huge crowd. Many seas separated me from my birthplace and life would never be the same, but  I had finally arrived.

A fictional rendition of the story of King Dasharatha from the Ramayana

Dasharatha could hear the mynas and macaques above him mixed with the squawking peacocks. The young king could not remember this large pond and was happy to find such a serene spot. Wearing only a dhoti, he kneeled down next to the water and splashed some on his burnt face.  “This is a good place to rest for the night,” he sighed, as he placed his bow and things down beside the large tree. He squinted around and between the trees feeling like he was being watched.

Consent

In his earliest years Dasharatha was told by the palace’s pundits (priests), “The spirits of the Gods are with you and growing as you grow. They are with you as no man before.”  During his coronation, a hawk was seen hovering over him. This cemented their belief (and therefore his) that he was destined to lead his people in conquering and settling new land.

Dasharatha‘s palace guru (teacher), Bhargava, was responsible for his education, which included lessons on governance, philosophy, and religion. Bhargava also taught Dasharatha how to hunt.

There was one thing that the Guru was unwilling to teach his pupil. A skill that few beings that walked the Earth were privileged to have. Bhargava was reluctant to share this special skill with him because Dasharatha was from the warrior caste and might be susceptible to the improper use of this knowledge. After many years of Dasharatha’s begging and promising not to misuse the skill an old Guru Bhargava finally gave in and taught him. The skill was a special type of archery. By just hearing the sound of the target, no matter where it was, the archer could shoot it. He did not need to see the prey or enemy.

Ever obedient to his guru, as the years passed, Dasharatha did not consider using the special skill outside the presence and watchful eye of Bhargava.

The years passed and Dasharatha became King. Times were good in Armagarh under Dasharatha’s reign, and there was finally peace with the other clans after a long history of bloodshed. During these calm times, Dasharatha, being a warrior, fell victim to his restlessness and often went off hunting alone. He often came upon several large and fearsome creatures, and had the opportunity to kill them, but he never did. Each time he was about to release his arrows he suddenly lost the desire to hunt. He felt the targets were too easy and not a challenge to his superior archery skills. Over the years he became increasingly bored and frustrated that he was unable to engage in a real challenge by practicing the secret skill and began to question Guru Bhargava’s cautiousness.

Ceremonies

Kneeling by the large pond, Dasharatha again began questioning his guru. “That old Bhargava worries too much,” Dasharatha muttered to himself. The young King sighed, and reminded himself of his promise. Picking up a branch, he scratched a circle in the dirt around the tree up to the edge of the still pond. Tossing the branch aside, he stepped into the circle and uttered a few protective prayers under his breath. He flopped down against the tree. Dasharatha watched the sun set between the hills in the distance when he heard some rustling from the path behind him. A bearded Sadhu (holy man) with grey, matted hair walked by him with a walking stick. He wore a spotted deerskin hide and his bag clanked every time he took a step.

The Sadhu stopped and turned to look back at Dasharatha. “I hope you aren’t going to rob me because the Gods would consider that…inauspicious,” he smiled, showing his yellow teeth.

Dasharatha appreciated the old man’s humor. Gesturing to his bow and quiver, he replied, “No Sadhu, I am hunting. Although you are scaring away my animals with all that noise you are making. You seem a little out of the way though. Where are you off to?”

The Sadhu recognized the hunter as the young King of Armagarh. “I am on my way to your palace from our settlements in the south. We have been attacked while performing our sacred ceremonies.”  He looked away from Dasharatha to look at the pond and then looked up at the dusky sky. “Your Highness, you have found a nice spot and if you don’t mind I will also rest here tonight.”

Corruption

Dasharatha started a small fire between the tree and the pond. The old man watched quietly in the orange glow as the King walked around in the dark picking up some more branches to keep them warm.

“That’s a very nice bow your Highness. I imagine that you don’t want for much. Why would you want to hunt?”

Dasharatha dropped the branches into the pile next to the fire. “It’s in my family’s nature to be spirited and determined.”

“Yes, and courageous, I suppose.” The Sadhu continued, “I imagine that as the King of Armagarh, you can do whatever you please, and can have whatever you wish.”

Dasharatha squatted across the fire from the old man. He snapped a few twigs before tossing them into the fire. “That is not the case. I have learned an amazing skill from my guru that I am still not allowed to use.”  Dasharatha explained his archery skill and how his guru made him promise to never use it outside of his Guru’s presence.

The old man got up suddenly and exclaimed, “I am so impressed and blessed to have found you! It is a powerful skill not only for hunting but for protecting our rights to these lands that our tribes have fought so hard for. King Dasharatha, we need you to lead your armies with this great Gods given skill!”

Dasharatha looked steadily at the excited old man. It bothered him how the Sadhu did not avert his eyes. It annoyed him that he put this thought into his mind, he knew that he could easily do this. After many centuries of his people wandering and then arriving in this land, they had finally started to mix and live peacefully with the ancient inhabitants. He could not understand why there were all these sudden attacks by them.

His spies had told him that Ravana, the old King of Lanka was busy with the internal affairs and building of the infrastructure of his own kingdom. He had also heard about the great things that King Ravana did, like the amount of time he spent time in the mountains with yogis learning meditations. Dasharatha did not agree with many of his pundits who insisted that it was their people’s duty, coming from their Gods, to continue on and conquer Lanka along with their Gods.

Leaving these thoughts, he looked away and laughed. “I may be King, but I must always follow my gurus.”

“Your skill would make you a greater king and it is going to waste.”

Waving his hand, Dasharatha replied to the Sadhu, “My greatness will not come from this power alone, but by respecting my role. Besides, there is nothing lost or wasted in this life.”

The old man became quiet and stared into the embers of the fire as if annoyed about how the conversation was going. The pot of water on the fire started to boil and a breeze made the night feel colder.

“We are going to need a bigger fire. I will collect some more wood.” Dasharatha got up and started looking around the large tree. When he had his back to the fire, the Sadhu sprinkled some brown powder into the water from the tip of his fingers. The old man then poured some of the hot water for himself and Dasharatha.

“You probably don’t even know how to perform this special archery skill without your guru with you.”

Dasharatha came back to fire and dropped a few more branches into the pile. He was growing tired and ignored the obviously baiting comment. He took the hot water from the Sadhu and chuckled, “Either way, I am glad to have your company Sadhu. I did not get your name…?”

The old man’s black eyes went from the pot back to fire and he watched the embers glow. “I am also pleased to meet you. I hope you guess my name.”

“What a strange person,” Dasharatha thought to himself. He leaned his head back against the tree and closed his eyes.

Substance

The glow of the fire formed an orange halo in the blackness of forest that surrounded them. The holy man was asleep on his side with the flames lapping against his back. Dasharatha’s head started to nod when he heard the deafening sound of what seemed like hundreds of elephants in the distance. The sounds were then followed by the shouting and marching steps of soldiers, their rattling swords and the beating of drums. His throat tightened. They were the sounds of King Ravana’s army. The fire went out, and the pond’s surface and the top of the large tree caught on fire as streaking torch tipped arrows rained down on them. Dasharatha and the old man both quickly scattered behind the trunk of the large tree.

The Sadhu frantically looked to Dasharatha and nudged the bow and quiver towards him, “Now is your chance to prove that your power works! Show me! Save us and I will tell all the people how a great King cut down King Ravana and his army!”

Dasharatha’s body was drenched from his sweat and his blood boiled with anger. He slowly reached for his bow and felt it at the tip of his fingers. “How could I be such a fool thinking that there was peace?!” he exclaimed.

“It is okay if you do this! Seek refuge in the knowledge of Brahman and perform this action with your heart fixed on the Supreme Lord!”

Arrows continued to rain down all around them and the ground shook harder from the approaching army each second. Dasharatha closed his eyes and forced his hand away from the bow. The old man’s eyes widened, “No! What at are you doing? You are going to doom us all!”

It somehow became very evident to Dasharatha that this was a test. He drew on his teachings and quoted, “Should even my enemy arrive at my doorstep, he should be attended upon with respect. A tree does not withdraw its cooling shade even from the one who has come to cut it.”

A sudden heavy wall of rain poured down for several minutes and put out the fires. Dasharatha sat in the steaming ashes completely puzzled about what was happening and also about why the Sadhu was now nowhere to be seen. Dasharatha looked down at his drenched dhoti and, exhausted, he fell over into the mud asleep.

Temptation

Dasharatha was awoken by the earth rumbling underneath his body. “Is this another attack?” he asked himself while pulling himself up against the wet tree.

The ground beneath him surged into the air until he was coming to the height of the tallest mountains and could see the Gods’ kingdoms nestled in the clouds. For the first time could see his own kingdom’s settlements and outposts on the tip of the land bordering the island of Lanka. He even had a vision of all the kingdoms of the world including those of the snake, bear and monkey people. Their glory stood before his eyes and his jaw dropped in awe.

The Sadhu stepped forward with his walking stick to stand next to him and paused as if also to appreciate the view. “All these shall be yours; you shall be the king of all the earth if you obey me and use your power.”

Dasharatha was shocked and quickly became aware of the absurdity of his surroundings. He pushed the Sadhu to the ground and stood over him, “Leave me and my kingdom. I am King and will serve my role. Go and perform your rituals and superstition elsewhere!”

Instantly, as if awoken from a dream, they were back next to the tree and the large pond. The old man smirked and became quiet again. The sun was now slowly coming up with the sounds of the morning birds chirping. As Dasharatha watched, the Sadhu got up, dusted himself off, and started to walk, disappearing into the forest. Dasharatha looked down to notice the footprints all over the inside of his protective circle and that the Sadhu had left behind his walking stick. “I still don’t know his stupid name,” he muttered.

Regret

After getting some sleep Dasharatha washed himself in the pond and then meditated under the shade of the large tree. The sun was hot again and the macaques of the forest were back to their howling. He smiled as he got up, becoming pleased with himself. He thought about how the Gods probably witnessed his mystical trials with what was probably a demon in disguise. “I can’t wait to tell Guru Bhargava about all this! He might also finally now trust me to use the skill without him.”

Dasharatha bent over to pick up his pot from the ground and drank what was left of the water. He walked up to the pond and started rinsing the pot when he noticed the growing cloudiness within the pond. He took a step back. He started to hear a hum. His reflection remained still as the reflections of the tree and sky transformed behind him into something unworldly. He looked up to see that the sky was still blue. Dasharatha stepped further back, frightened. The entire pond transformed into the deepest darkness, chaos, and what felt like infinite vastness. Knowing this was not his imagination, he felt as though his heart was going to jump out of his chest. The sound of the hum grew louder.

A deep and familiar voice spoke to him, “Oh, so you can see me?”  Dasharatha could not tell if the voice was coming from inside him or from inside the pond. As painful as it was he could not turn his eyes away from the churning images. He felt horror and euphoria at the same time. It was sublime. The voice spoke again, “Would you like me to reveal myself to you?”

No words could form in Dasharatha’s head or leave his lips. He felt that he was being pulled apart into pieces the size of grains of sand, as if he kept watching that he would disappear.  “Was this…?” he thought. It hurt too much. “Please, no!” he finally cried.

The images disappeared; the pond returned to the reflections of the tree and blue sky. The normal sounds of the forest returned. Dasharatha looked at his hands. He then touched his chest and his legs. Oddly he felt fine, like nothing had happened, and cautiously stepped out of his circle feeling exhilaration. “I can’t wait to get back to my palace and tell my wives about these mystical experiences!” Dasharatha thought. He eagerly grabbed his bow and stopped in his tracks.

Cocking his ear up to listen carefully the young king thought he could hear a small deer several miles away. He looked down at the Sadhu’s walking stick and kicked it into the brushes. “Haven’t I proven myself to the Gods? After these trials, isn’t killing a small deer a harmless enough act?” Dasharatha launched his arrow and pushed on into the forest as a small boy with the darkest blue skin watched intently from a branch of the tree.

The new student came to consult with his advisor in order to establish his curriculum. The professor tried to point out to him the nobility of culture and while doing so was attempt­ing to discover the freshman’s tendencies,

“What is your prospective major?”

“I did not make up my mind yet.”

“Is there something that attracts you especially?”

“Well, you know, not really. Gee! Nothing turns me on.”

“Do you mean that everything amounts to the same for you?”

“Yeah, more or less.”

“Perfect, we are going to make out of you a Renaissance man,”

“What do you want to say by that?”

“That we are going to try a bit of everything.”

“Like what?”

“An introduction to philosophy, a course of universal history, human geography, theory of music . .

“That’s plenty.”

“And next term Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, Latin.”

“Why all dead languages?”

“That is only the beginning, then you will take Italian, Spanish, Provençal, Catalan, French, German, Esperanto.”

“Why an artificial language?”

“To correspond with your Asiatic and Scandinavian friends, unless you prefer to study Swedish, Chinese, Urdu instead.”

“No, that’s enough for the first year. And then?

“Perhaps Biology, to know the mysteries of life, and later Physics and Chemistry, and all natural sciences.”

“That seems quite a lot”

“But you want to be an accomplished young gentleman who can hold a decent conversation when called to the Learning Skills Center for a check up”

“And what about my body? Didn’t the Ancients say “Corpore sano sine mentis?”

“You mean “mens”. No, let’s forget that, of course you’ll have to play ball, swim and lift weights but let’s not under­estimate the importance of mathematics.~

“But I know my four operations pretty well”

“With modern maths you have to start again from scratch and go up to cybernetics, randomness, stochastic series,and computer science.”

“It’s quite a program, and then?”

“Of course, you have to be introduced to the science of finance, know your economics, be able to budget the deficit of the Ministry of Treasure in the next quinquennium, perhaps even to convert your miles, pounds, gallons into their metrical equivalent.”

“Is this a new fad?”

“According to my butcher it’s a new form of torture, but how would we be able to sell our coke to the Russian before the Chinese stole our market?”

“True. But after all that can I obtain my B.A.?”

“Yes, but you have to think in terms of an M.A. if you want at least to become a garbage collector, or in terms of a Ph.D. if you want to be on the welfare payroll in 2020”

“And what else can I study if I want to be more than a Ph.D.? A member of the Academy or something like that?”

“You have to become more familiar with numismatic and pedology, philatelics and tribology, astronautics and ento­mology, Bask and Schwitzerdutsch, Ugro-Finnic languages and structuralism, linguistics and phenomenology.”

“And after that?”

“After that you can publish articles, books, treatises, essays, encyclopedias on your findings.”

“And after that?”

“After that you will be invited to the White House for a reception with Gallo wine and cheddar cheese.”

“And after that?”

“Think of God and study all religions, schismastic and charismatic.”

“And after that?”

“After that, well, after that perhaps you can rest.”

“But why také the trouble to go through all that instead of resting right now, to begin with?”

P.S.There is a variant conclusion to the story. “Besides, Professor, I know that at this point Ionesco would give me a toothache, but the Super Bowl is on, so may I be excused to watch it? We’ll continue this some other time,..”

I have a recurrent dream in which I am flying over a large body of turquoise water. The air is balmy, the water is deep, transparent, welcoming.  Just as I am about to plunge, I wake up.

I have been flying every since I was a little girl, back when propeller planes where the norm  and the word security evoked a mother’s embrace, a glass of warm milk and the certainty that all was well with the world.

All is not well with the world today, yet I continue to fly because as we all know, or should know, flying is the safest mode of transportation per passenger mile. Yes, that is how statisticians calculate our chances of making it or not making it at the end of the run.  But we do make it and we do repeat our performance year after year, holiday after holiday, conference after conference or as the whim strikes us.

But flying is not what it used to be. In many ways it is much better, smoother, safer. In other ways, the thrill has become mundane, the aggravations that precede a flight a trifle annoying, not to say distasteful, the rewards taken for granted. But that is not the airplane’s fault, but our own. We have become jaded with flying, with  what was Da Vinci’s greatest dream  and the stuff of which myth and  legend  are made. Garuda , half-man and half eagle, carried the wisdom of the Vedas on his wings to inspire generations  of Hindus in their search for the truth. Icarus suffered a meltdown when he flew away from Crete and carelessly got too close to the sun. Quetzalcoatl, half-serpent, half-bird, flew away from his Aztec home only to sail back centuries later in the guise of a bearded Spaniard.

My own experiences with flying are more modest, but no less visceral for that. When I was a little girl, my parents had a little cabin in the mountains to which we retreated over the long winter break from school in Mexico City. To get there, we had to take the milk plane, or more accurately, the chicken plane, for I remember the hens cackling in their cages at the back of  the small plane. People gave little thought to what we now call security concerns, but Mexico in the late forties was in the throes of a foot-and-mouth epidemic that threatened to decimate the livestock of the country and its economy as well. In order to prevent the spread of disease, passengers had to wipe their feet on a sawdust  trough soaked in disinfectant before boarding the plane. I tripped and fell flat on my face. A kindly airhostess, for that is what female flight attendants  were called in those days, picked me up, carried me to the plane, took me to the lavatory and wiped my face and dress clean. I don’t remember my body having hurt, but I still remember the injury to my pride.

Flying became an exciting adventure when our whole family  went to India in 1949. My Indian-born father had been invited on a long-term agricultural  mission and we were to fly after him. First we rode a bus from Mexico City to New York, which took several days and several nights. It is all a blur in my mind.  Then we flew from New York to Europe, via Gander, Scotland and Belgium. In Gander we stopped to refuel. It was winter and the trek from the plane to the small terminal was rather longish. I had never seen snow in my life, so I scooped some in my bare hands and was surprised by the way it stuck to my palms making them bleed. After living in Canada for thirty-two years I now know better and wear nothing but mittens in different thermal grades.

At some point in our week-long trip we flew over Istanbul, but for some reason, did not land there. I still remember the sight of a brightly-lit crescent moon coasting dark waters. It  looked like a diamond necklace,  a fitting sight for passengers riding in a Super Constellation. Many years later in Canada during the eighties  I would  get to see an old Super Constellation converted into a pesticide-spraying plane for agricultural use. That was a far cry from a plane that had  proper beds in first class and lavatories with several stalls and washbasins surrounded by ample counters. But it looks like the beds at least are making a comeback.

In 1965 I had to fly from New Delhi to Mexico City via Italy. This was my first experience with jet planes and with the fear of remaining stranded in the middle of nowhere without the proper documentation  or sufficient money in your pocket.  After an overnight stay in Rome I headed back to the airport in the airline bus (yes, in those days the airlines would provide transportation from their downtown office to the airport free of charge) where I discovered I had been bumped off due to overbooking. The term didn’t exist then, but the concept was beginning to creep into airline culture. My desperate tears, my obvious lack of money and the fact that the next connecting flight was one week away softened the heart of the airline employee who upgraded me to first class where I was treated to champagne.

In the sixty-odd years  that I have been flying as a passenger, I have had many adventures, all of which ended very well. During a flight to India over the Middle East the pilot said: “Oops, we have to move over, the military say we are encroaching on their airspace”. I was not paying attention to the announcement because  I was busy snapping a photograph of a plane flying over our right wing as if wishing to give it a friendly nudge. We had just been intercepted!

During my first flight to the Soviet Union in the late seventies the plane took off from Mirabel Airport in Montreal as if it were a fighter jet, straight up. I was later told that any Aeroflot aircraft, while civilian, could be quickly stripped of its seats to become a fighter jet in no time, and that commercial  pilots  were actually  military pilots in mufti. I do not know whether this was true or not, but I found the flight thrilling.

During a recent flight from Montreal to Chicago, our small feeder airline  plane suddenly dipped its left wing, dived towards lake Michigan and then quickly  recovered its altitude and  righted its course again. I heard a few muffled cries from the passengers, one of which might have been my own. But it was nothing. Or rather, it was something, something to be thankful for:  our deft pilot had just managed to stop us from getting sucked into the wake of a large jet. Such close calls are the effects of decreased vertical and horizontal separation between planes, which in plain language translates into crowded skies. But not to worry, highly sophisticated equipment and an ever-vigilant satellite navigation system make sure that planes do not collide. Not often, anyway.

On another flight from Chicago to Montreal, bad weather forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights throughout the United States and Canada but I managed to get the last plane out of O’Hare. Climbing out of that heavy snowfall felt like trying to surface  through whipped cream but when we cleared the weather system, we were rewarded with the sight of an unbroken circular rainbow made up of several rings. Apparently all rainbows are complete circles but we are seldom high enough in the skies to see the complete picture. Yes, Dorothy, it is indeed possible to fly over the rainbow…  .

Such sublime experiences, however, don’t have to be the result of bad weather. I once took a short sightseeing flight along the Himalayan range out of Katmandu airport. As soon as we were seated, the pilot warned us not to get up when we neared the range to have a better look since the passengers seated on the wrong side would get a good view on the return leg. When the snow-capped mountains appeared in all their glory most passengers disregarded the captain’s instructions and almost tilted the small plane to one side. Perhaps because I had  behaved myself and remained seated I was rewarded with an invitation to the cockpit to get a better look. Perhaps. I can now understand why so many people have risked their lives and some of them lost it, just to get a glimpse of Mount Everest radiantly facing the sun.

Talking about cockpits, have you ever eaten an ice-cream cone while sitting on the jump seat watching the plane moving along the centerline of the tarmac? I have, courtesy of  the airline that had bumped me off, and very rightly so, for having arrived late. But they let me ride in the cockpit so I wouldn’t miss my business appointment  the following morning. Unfortunately, by the time we left Malaga and reached Madrid, I had no more ice-cream left.

Flying in a chopper is, pardon the pun, a choppy experience, especially if the craft is hovering over Niagara Falls. There you feel as if the cataracts are sucking your  innards  out of your body. Stomach-churning is the only description that comes to mind. But hey, who wouldn’t pay this price to see  the Falls away from their tacky surroundings! On another helicopter ride I was surprised to see the snow that still lingered on the crest of Whistler Mountains even in summer.

Gliding is what I imagine heaven feels like. The sight of a Quebec pasture with tiny cows  while you are sitting in the cockpit of a glider is an almost mystical experience. After you get over the initial shock of  disengaging from the motorized plane  that tows you up, and the sensation of  having your umbilical cord abruptly cut off,  you are ready to enjoy absolute silence and stillness. And the landing is as easy and as gentle as that of a timid  paper plane landing on the teacher’s desk.

Flying in a balloon is similar to gliding, but with a touch of elegant retro glamour. I did not get to fly over the Loire Valley in France, but did experience the luminosity of the Arizona desert at sunrise. Our pilot miscalculated and made us land on a golf-course which annoyed the golfers but a good-will toast from our stash of  mimosas  mollified their irritation.

Flying as a passenger is one thing. Piloting your own plane is another.  After going to ground school for weeks trying to understand the physics of flying,  the mechanics of the cockpit and the vagaries of the weather, I took one glorious thirty-minute flying lesson out of St. Hubert Airport on the South Shore of the  St. Lawrence River. I taxied on the runway until the instructor ordered “take-off!”. I understood it was now or never, so I did just that. I took a deep breath and took off. Just like that.  Once in the air, the plane started bucking like a skittish horse. I tried to hand over the controls to the instructor who ignored my pleas and told me it was quite normal on account of the breeze. He then instructed me to turn around a low hill and to return to the airport where he would land the plane for me. While we were up there he asked me to admire the scenery which I was too terrified to do. The following morning, when I woke up stiff and aching,  I understood that the instructor had been merely  trying to get me to relax.  I have not taken any more flying lessons because you have to drive  to get to the airport and I am afraid of driving.

I have been talking about the joys of flying but have not mentioned airports. Airports are a necessary evil. They  have become cities onto themselves with their own shops, places of worship, clinics, hotels, streets, plazas, food-courts and even jails. Yes, there are mini jails in some airports where the customs and immigration authorities have the power to detain unruly passengers or stop undesirable people from stepping onto foreign soil. They are then handed over to the proper authorities. But that is a well-guarded secret. Forget I said anything.

Once while waiting for our plane to depart  from Amsterdam on our way to New Delhi, I asked a novice  flight attendant why our flight was delayed. He explained that a couple of passengers were missing. I asked him whether he had tried the Casino (yes, there is a Casino  and even a museum at Schiphol Airport). He answered he hadn’t had a chance. What I had meant to say was that the passengers were most probably delayed there! When the flight attendant saw me fiddling with my eyeglasses because a screw had fallen off its hinges, he volunteered the Captain’s services to fix it.  “Does he have the necessary tools?” I asked. “His cockpit is fully equipped” he told me proudly.

So while  modern airline crew members might not wipe the muddy face of a weeping child you can be sure they will certainly  fix her eyeglasses sixty years down the road. That is a comforting thought.

Yet I would rather dream of flying over a large body of   turquoise water than actually have to endure the vicissitudes of post 9/11 travel. Really.

“Hello, did you just say that there is a special on flights to the Caribbean? Get me two tickets please!”

Welcome to the Hotel Chanson de Geste, for once again it is pillow mint in Paris time, where the Frosty Jacques and Tom Peepers crowd the Sunday street like savages to supper, and sing how they’ll stand tippy-toes on the brink of infinity, or thereabouts, and tell in tune how they value their lives no more than a pigeon and no less than a prince. It’s here I first see you, smiling above the godless heights of their lowdown voices. It’s here I stitch my narrative threadbare.

I don’t know you, and because of this, I don’t know myself. In this glorious nowhere, where once memories gathered murk, we drink of dandelion and burdock, talking of towns we once walked, and play innocent in a deceased century of monocle-fogged ankle-gazers, looking to let their minds race around the swell of honeydew, beaded between your nape and nectar.

For you, I’d gladly stumble seven deadly snowbanks, buttons undone and daring, snow-blind to icy looks and cold stares, my warm front moving in my old country ways, and sway away from highballs and holy-rollers, to perchance Freudian slip into someone more comfortable, someone cannibal-friendly.

I watch you watch me climb a streetlamp above the minstrels and music. In carnival-text I testify to all the white-laid and paper-cut people of how they’ll live long with lives tucked inside short pants, their thoughts shivering like a couple of elderly, tweed passengers in their skull, taken hostage for seventy-oddball years, where the candy-bright kiss-and-makers are hollow on the outside, always looking inside where wolves at the door look out for lambs dressed to slaughter their thirst for long-wrist, mutton-mouthed mamas, with nipples making points where t-shirt slogans suffer, and the fruits of their labor are kiwi-fuzzed and parted in Bengali-pink promise, to break in and steal away heartfelt words like big, brass bandits.

I pause, inhaling all of France in winter in a lone breath. The gypsy troupe rap their fingers across their flugelhorns and trumpets. My eyes lock down on a blurred, papier-mâché man in the crowd, seizing something inside him that punches through his public face, and with my human tongue I inform him that if he puts down a towel, life pulls up its pants, and if he takes a wander to wonder why, that old kitten-sack river rolls belly-side up, exposing an imposing ex, posing with her new, cricket-faced, arm-scratched beau, and they shall look through each other with September in their eyes and June on their lips.

The papier-mâché man collapses like a marionette cut loose. I descend the streetlamp and make my way through the crowd, toward your secretarial smile and wishing well eyes, toward the woman that sees me as I see myself, the darling one who finishes sentences I’ve yet to begin. The gypsy troupe open their throats and wail of ancient legends. I en-wrap your coffee-warm hand in mine, and in silent surrender we ascend the steps of the Hotel Chanson de Geste, for once again it is pillow mint in Paris time, and our time begins now.

Of late, however, this hitherto productive sea has been churning, spewing out not fresh fish but stale discontent.  Several moons ago a satyr who lives in the boot kissed the hand of a madman who lives in a bunker presumably for  having initiated him into the mysteries of the bunga bunga. Or was it to exchange gold for oil? And many more moons before that another descendant of the Pharaohs fell off  his seat as his heart was  pierced by a shard of metal leaving his seat vacant which was promptly warmed  by his best man. This new Pharaoh only gave up his seat when it became too hot. Such stories are the stuff of which epics are made.

Why should people, people started asking,  starve to death  in a land that has  produced a  diet that health gurus claim ensures longevity? So the inhabitants of this land of plenty surrounding this deep blue sea  have learned a new word: R-E-V-O-L-T. First somebody whispered this word to someone else who  twitted it to a third person who pressed the send button and copied it to a fourth person until it hit  Facebook. Images went viral, imaginations were inflamed.  People took to the streets. Because, you see,  newspapers can run out of newsprint and TV screens can go blank  and journalists can meet untimely death, and the internet can suddenly freeze, but the voice of the people cannot be silenced.

Actions have consequences. Some bad rulers have been run off the land, others have been kicked into the sea and some have taken flight. Blood has trickled and then flowed, tainting the once azure waters the color of rust.  Who will replace them is a question that sages are still pondering.

But if actions have consequences, how come it is only the people under the boot who are restless? Not so! Take a closer look at the mappemonde. Inside the boot you will see the women with their brooms chasing away the satyr who once kissed the hand of the madman who taught him the bunga bunga.

I now know for sure that Santa Claus does exist, provided you believe in him, and that my parents were indeed very much mine, thanks to the laws of consanguinity and bonding. You see, my sister had only been trying to test the dual tenets of transparency and freedom of information.

Or had she?

© Ludmila Armata

Les rayons du soleil sont diffus en cette matinée fraîche. Ils dissipent l’humidité du printemps naissant et jettent leur lustre sur l’angle de ce muret en perçant un filet de lumière qui se glisse dans l’interstice de la façade de pierre pour couler le long d’une fente et aboutir comme une lame de rasoir là où on voit danser des fibres de poussière. Cet espace créé devient la cible d’un cafard qui avance gauchement, trébuchant sur la paille désordonnée, et traverse le faisceau lumineux pour être aperçu par ce barbu grisonnant qui cherche à l’atteindre en allongeant le bras droit. Il lui manque un doigt pour le toucher, mais comme il se dresse voulant se donner plus d’extension, il tire sur la chaîne déjà tendue et la douleur aiguë causée par les fers qui enserrent son poignet devient insupportable, l’obligeant à renoncer à sa proie. Le cafard continue sa route et s’éloigne irrévocablement hors d’atteinte sous l’observation hagarde du supplicié dont la pointe d’élancement se noie bientôt dans sa carcasse marquée de maux de différentes intensités qui se mêlent, se superposent et finissent par n’être qu’une masse informe et endolorie, secouée par des gémissements que depuis longtemps personne n’entend plus. Il s’efforce de deviner la plaie cachée par les fers qui menottent son poignet gauche et glisse le petit doigt pour sentir s’il reste encore de la chair sur ses os, mais la partie couverte de son avant-bras est tellement ankylosée que même en grattant avec son ongle noirci, la sensation est presque absente. Sous l’ongle, une pâte poisseuse se ramasse et son odeur putride lui fait monter plus d’acide dans l’estomac, le forçant à se tordre davantage.

© Ludmila Armata

Par moments, il regrette les premiers temps où des pensées plus claires lui venaient. Il se disait alors que, malgré les souffrances de son corps, son esprit lui appartenait. Les passages de son bourreau qui ouvrait sa geôle pour offrir à des spectateurs sadiques une séance de torture avec une chaîne ou une pierre lui avait rompu la colonne vertébrale et enlevé toute sensation des jambes. Maintenant, il se pisse dessus sans ressentir la chaleur de son urine et de son sang. Après ces séances répétées, il se disait qu’il lui restait sa dignité que personne ne lui enlèverait jamais. Mais ses pensées sont plus confuses à présent, et il n’a que faire de sa dignité et de son humanité qu’il avait crue permanente. Ce qui l’obsède, c’est ce cafard qui ne semble pas décidé à s’éloigner pour de bon. Il sillonne le foin, s’enfonçant dans la pourriture pour resurgir un peu plus près, presque à portée de main. Il avait essayé de mettre fin à ses jours en s’étranglant, mais ses chaînes n’étaient pas assez longues. Puis, il avait essayé de s’éclater la tête contre la pierre, mais il n’arrivait pas à cogner assez fort, trop frêle qu’il était devenu. Il aurait dû s’y prendre quand il avait assez de force, car tout ce qu’il réussit à faire c’est s’infliger des ecchymoses, puis s’éveiller après avoir perdu connaissance, l’oeil presque fermé, maculé de sang gluant et de croûtes qu’il doit gratter pour se libérer la vue. En ce moment, il peut voir le cafard se rapprocher et cela lui donne un grand espoir, l’emplit de joie même.

© Ludmila Armata

Quelle fût son extase lorsque l’insecte, ayant grimpé au bout d’un monticule de paille, perdit l’équilibre et retomba sur le dos en ballotant les pattes dans le vide pour se trouver à sa merci.  Il dégagea prudemment un petit tas de foins, et jouant du doigt, réussit enfin à se saisir du cafard. Bien agrippé entre les ongles noirs du pouce et de l’index, il l’éleva comme un trophée et l’observa dans le filet de lumière qui s’était déplacé vers lui. Il voyait cette petite bête impuissante se débattre et se sentait le coeur d’un conquérant. Il voulut faire durer ce plaisir, mais la faim le tenaillait trop et déjà ses sucs digestifs se mettaient en marche, lui causant encore plus de crampes. Alors il porta l’insecte à sa bouche et se mit à le grignoter et à tâter de sa langue les jus salés qui se libéraient, avec la saveur exquise de noisette qui se répandait sur ses papilles, en avalant peu à peu cet inestimable et précieux repas.

© Ludmila Armata

© Ludmila Armata

© Ludmila Armata

Ludmila Armata is a Montreal artist who has travelled the globe and taught art. Her works are represented by Gallery d’Este in Montreal.

I was a teenager the last time I saw Fatma. I had just returned home for my summer vacation after my first year of university and she had come to visit us with her two children. One was a small boy of three or four, the other one still a baby. We sat in the living room of our cottage, facing the bay of Izmir while she changed the baby’s diaper on the sofa. It was one of those searing July days when the lodos blows down from the mountains, making the air dry and the sea, icy cold. She was wearing a sleeveless lilac dress with ever-growing sweat stains under her armpits and milk leakage over her breasts. It had taken god knows how many dolmus minibuses to finally get to Kalabak from where she lived. I watched her pick up her baby and place him on her left side, so that he could look around over her shoulder. His head was bobbing as she rocked around the room patting his back to prevent possible wails while at the same time telling her little boy to sit still and behave, which he was already doing. In fact, he spent his time mostly looking at his toes until he was told to run along and play with the sand. At that point, he furtively got up and went to the beach where he gingerly crouched so as not to dirty his immaculate shorts and sandals. Fatma, whom I always called Fatosh, placed her finally sleeping baby on a bed in a room. When she came back, her face was harsh. “Do you have a fiancé?” She asked me, frowning. I smiled and said, “No, but I’m going out with someone.”

“No!” she shouted, alarmed. “No! Don’t ever get married. Listen to me. You’re going to school, you’ll get a job, why marry? Don’t let men near you.” Her eyes were wide open; she looked so exasperated she could hit me.

“You’re not happy, Fatosh?” I asked furtively.

“No. I was stupid. I was so happy here with you all, and I didn’t know it. Now, I’m sorry every single day.  Men are awful. All of them. They’re animals. You stay away from them, you hear?”

I was heartbroken, as a child, when she had announced she had a fiancé that she was going to marry and started preparing her trousseau every evening. She had no time for fun anymore. She no longer secretly passed me her tabloids filled with pictures of scantily clad second-rate Turkish actresses having steamy affairs with mustachioed leading men, because she now spent her money buying sheets, tea towels and other boring objects. She didn’t show me how to squeeze pimples or my all time favourite, how to squeeze your nose to get tiny white worms of grease to jut out from the pores. She could get a hundred to squeeze out simultaneously like charmed snakes simply by moving her nose upward. But she no longer had time for such frivolities. When she finished her trousseau, she got married and moved to her own house far away, and I hardly ever saw her after that until this final meeting in Kalabak. I thought she had come to see me, especially, as I had left the country and had been gone for a while. Years later, I found out she had come to ask my mother for help because she was having serious financial problems. Her husband had lost his job at the textile factory where my father had placed him through connections. He was a hot-headed, good-for-nothing fool, apparently. And so Fatosh scolded me, wagged her finger and pushed my face away in lieu of a slap even as we kissed and hugged goodbye, making me swear I would never marry. 

 As a small child I must have been a nuisance to her, second only to my nonagenarian grandmother who suspected Fatma was stealing her immense white cotton boxer shorts and therefore kept asking her to return them, in Greek. She had learned a few words of Greek from my granny and would shout “ohee, ohee, Néné.” Néné would calm down for a while, then start again, pulling at Fatma’s sleeve, taking her to the dresser to show her drawer filled with a dozen ironed shorts. Fatma would nod her head once backward going “tschk” to mean “no”  and would shout “ohee Néné, ine poli megalo”, meaning ‘no, granny, your undies are too large for me.’ Néné would mutter something under her breath and shake her head as if to say, ‘you think you’re clever, but I’ll get you next time’. Fatosh would leave the room going “Öff, aman be Néné, yeter artik!” (Enough with this, Néné!) shaking the front of her t-shirt with her fingers to indicate how terribly fed up she was. When she saw me observing her, she would say “Va jouer dans la chambre!” She had a knack for languages. I was in awe of Fatosh and would not be dispensed with easily. So I interrogated her.

“Where is your home Fatosh?”

She would shrug and say, “here with you.”

“Do you have a mom and dad?”

“My mom got very sick and died.”

“Do you have sisters and brothers?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In Soma.”

“Where’s Soma?”

“North of here.”

“What does it mean, Soma?”

“It’s just a name.”

“What do people do there?”

“They work in coal mines.”

“Your father too?”

“No, he’s an imam.”

“What does an imam do?”

“I don’t know… He prays, I guess then there are circumcisions, weddings, funerals… He tells people what to do.”

“Do you miss him?”

“No. He beats us too much.”

“Do you miss your mom?”

“She’s dead I told you!”

“Do you want to go back?”

“No.”

“Why do you live with us?”

“You don’t want me to?”

“Sure I do. Do you go to Soma on weekends?”

“No.”

“Where do you go?”

“My aunt’s house.”

I would spend hours sitting beside her as she scrubbed something or other, drilling her with all manners of senseless questions to which she responded in curt, irritable spurts.

We slept in the same room. We gave each other good night hugs and colds and had to do steam inhalations with eucalyptus, putting towels over our heads at the kitchen table. She would show me her white nose worms once in a while and we would giggle putting our noses back into the steaming hot bowls.

Fatma struck me as the picture of solidity in those days; she tamed brooms, buckets and chairs into submission with her quick determined movements. She had a wide open face with high cheekbones and a low forehead, thin eyes slanting upward, a soft wide nose, and well-shaped taut lips.  Her arms and legs were muscular, her fingers stubby and her toes, plump and square. Her dark brown hair was parted in the middle and tied into a pony tail. I enjoyed the timbre of her voice when she laughed. It gave a sense of thoracic fortitude and of being connected to the earth where edible things grew, like the rest of her. She wore mini shorts in the summer, like my older sister, but I don’t remember what she wore in winter. I loved her wooly smell, and the look of her. I admired her for learning Greek and French and felt secure when my parents repeatedly told us that she was part of our family. I wanted to know what she would do later on in her life, being so smart. If she was part of our family, I expected she would get an education, get a good job, then marry someone educated and refined, while at the same time suspecting this was not really the plan for her because she was working as our maid and had a life outside of our home which involved a vague family in Soma and an aunt on mysterious hills. I worried that one day she would inevitably grow up to live a sad life- marry a brutish uneducated man and live in her aunt’s hills where her intelligence would wither away.

I used to do as she bade when I was young except this one time, again in our summer cottage in Kalabak, where our house had an ‘upstairs’, unlike most of my friends’. The wooden staircase was a fascination for us, first for sliding on the banister and also, for spying quietly on happenings in the living room without being observed. The rooms upstairs intrigued my friends, who were deprived of such mysteries in their own cottages. We had two sets of bunk beds in the children’s room which served as sailboats during afternoon naps. My brother, cousin and I would deck the sides of the beds with sheets for sails and have seafaring adventures against pirates. It did not occur to us to be pirates ourselves; we were, invariably, the good guys and whenever we caught the dastardly pirates, we would magnanimously let them back into the sea the way fishermen release unsavory fish into the water, issuing warnings to change their ways “or else…” There were falls from heights in the middle of the night, cousins sleepwalking into attics to pee on suitcases, vomiting sessions from eating too many lokums, and all sorts of drama that only seemed to happen on the second floor of our house. We had two long attics flanking the sides of the second floor, filled with strange objects and cobwebs. Naturally, these places needed further exploration and I proudly offered tours to my eager buddies.  One had to circumvent Fatosh for this, and it wasn’t easy. She was the keeper of the ‘upstairs’ and under my mother’s strict orders no kids were to be allowed there to play, or hide, on account of bringing sand to the rooms with our dirty feet. So Fatosh somehow heard us as we tiptoed up the stairs and ran to the living room to chase us out. “Shht!” She shouted. “ Get down and out you go. You’re not allowed upstairs.”

“Yes, we are!” I shouted back feeling cocksure.

“No, you’re not and you’d better come down this minute!” she yelled back.

“No, I won’t!” I insisted louder to impress my friends and stomped my foot.

“You will get a spanking if you don’t!” She countered.

Then I said the words.

“This is not your house, it’s my house, and you can’t tell me what to do.” They hung in the air for a moment. No one moved. Her eyes widened, as if she had unexpectedly been slapped very hard. Quickly, she recollected her face, shrugged and muttered I was a spoiled brat with bad manners before walking away.

The words continued hanging there, small, deflated and loose like balloons on sagging garlands after a birthday party. They trailed after me upstairs to the attic where my friends squealed and giggled irritatingly in their afternoon dresses and white socks. I found an excuse to make them leave and sat alone in the semi-darkness of the waning afternoon, wanting to punish myself and not knowing how. I never apologized to her from sheer embarrassment. I wanted her to forget that moment as soon as possible and the apology would serve to remind her of the insult. She would pretend to forgive me while nursing the wound I inflicted on her, in her deeper thoughts. She would perhaps pretend to love me, out of a sense of duty, as part of her job. I hoped she would say something mean and hurtful to me, so we could get even. But she didn’t. That fall, she started looking for a fiancé.

Fatma’s contact with my mother became sporadic over the years. Once in a while, she would visit; occasionally she would call or send word. Whenever she resurfaced, there were issues like joblessness, illness, hunger, need for clothing and my mother would put together money and packages for her. A few years ago she got word that Fatma was very ill with a kidney problem and had no money to go to the doctor because her husband had left her and her sons were jobless. An envelope was sent to her via the son who came to collect it. I don’t think she ever heard from Fatma after that again.

Recently, while reminiscing about earlier days, my mother told me the story of how Fatma came to live in our house. She was a teenager, barely thirteen, when she was brought to our house by some lady’s acquaintance, as a girl looking for work. My mother hired her on the spot. On her first day, Fatma told my mother she was never to be left alone with my father in the house. It was her condition for working with us. At first she would not say why. When my mother pressed her, she said she was afraid he may do something bad to her. Like what? My mother asked. Like rape me. She said. Why do you think he would he do such a thing to you? My mother asked, cautious. Because men do these things. She replied. Did someone do this to you, my child? My mother asked. Fatma looked down. Did someone rape you? She insisted. My older sister is pregnant. She said. Who did that to her? Fatma looked up, her chin trembling. My father… My father… and I was next.  I ran away. I ran from the house. My sister gave me some money. I took the bus to Izmir, to my aunt’s house. Please don’t leave me alone in the house with your husband. I will sleep with the kids, in their room. Never alone. I will sleep on the bare floors, I don’t care.