Monthly Archives: November 2005

 
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Quote of note


“The administration is setting a dangerous example for the world when it claims that spy agencies are above the law… Congress should reject this proposal outright. Otherwise, the United States will have no standing to demand humane treatment if an American falls into the hands of foreign intelligence services.”

— Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, condemning the recent proposal for a presidential waiver for a measure — approved only earlier this month — that would forbid the CIA and U.S. military for using “cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment” on any detained individual, regardless of his or her location.

The waiver would exempt non-military counterterrorism operations abroad against foreign citizens from the earlier prohibition against “cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment.” This is not to say that torture doesn’t routinely occur around the world under government auspices; however, the U.S. would be breaking new ground if it creates a legal justification for something approaching torture. The repercussions of such an allowance, Malinowski warns, would be to fling open the doors to outright torture.

—Mimi Hanaoka

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Jesus, ghosts, and goblins


One of the best possible uses of a lousy movie comes from enjoying the tangents your brain makes to avoid smothering boredom. The Australian existential slasher movie, Lost Things, has all the intellectual overkill and execution underwhelm of a D+ student art film.  Essentially Groundhog Day meets Friday the 13th, the movie centers around horny teens caught in a loop of repeating their last day on Earth that starts over once they realize that they’ve already been murdered. As I said, the movie itself was less interesting to me than the idea that, beneath the surface coherence of our belief systems (e.g., Christian, Muslim, etc.), we adopt passively syncretic worldviews.  Watching Lost Things, I started to think about that fact that, despite all our culture’s putative religious fundamentalism, some people have an uncanny ability to incorporate beliefs seemingly at odds with their core values.

Of course Christianity is famous for this, borrowing traditions while burying cultures.  The Catholic Church was particularly adept at the brutal barter, slaughtering local gods but doling out a few Saints in exchange.  We have Easter eggs, Christmas trees, and an erroneous birthday for baby Jesus in part because, in absorbing paganism, Christianity kept a few of the nicer dresses for special occasions.    

It’s interesting to watch these cobbled beliefs play out on television.  Jennifer Love Hewitt talks to the dearly departed on Ghost Whisperer, a popular series in which she sorts out the problem-ridden world of the dead, where petty souls skulk around Starbucks waiting for supernatural waifs to listen to their bitching.  This dovetails nicely with The Medium where Patricia Arquette receives corpse communiqués in her dreams from people pissed off the police can’t solve their murders.  The only untapped entertainment angle would have to be a show about the backstabbing, sexually charged adolescents who party and betray each other in purgatory.  

If these dramatizations aren’t enough to quench your desire to shoot the breeze with the undead, then there’s always Jonathon Edwards whose carnie-in-chinos routine allows audience members to believe that relatives from the other side, speaking in muffled voices, have nothing to offer other than clichés and treasure map hints about sacked-away valuables.

I’m amused by this because, for a culture with so many religious purists, this seems to be an odd assortment of views to hold simultaneously.  Where in the ideology of heaven and hell are ghosts?  Why do these spirits skid past their life deadline only to fret and obsess over the details of the past?  Can the afterlife be this boring?  When did we start stealing from Buddhism so shamelessly?  Part of my sarcastic tone comes from living in Texas, where people with absolutely no understanding of their own religious texts, history, or theology seek to impose their moral order with the sort of ferocity that only people who have no idea what they’re talking about can muster.  Next time a fundamentalist Christian talks about ghosts, you should ask them if that’s their religion or just static cling.

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Far from home


issue banner

With time off of work and school lurking around the corner, many of us look forward to visiting exotic destinations and escaping the seemingly oppressive routine of daily life. But as the stories in this month’s issue of InTheFray suggest, the grass isn’t always greener across the pond.

We begin with John Liebhardt’s exploration of what happens when young men journey to the big city in Burkina Faso in hopes of finding good work and accumulating wealth. The water pushers he profiles in A drop in the bucket find that simply getting a hand on a rung of the ladder requires innovative thinking and a great deal of persuasion.

Meanwhile, in part two of his photo essay Vanishing heritage, Pulitzer Prize winner and ITF Advisory Board member John Kaplan documents the indigenous traditions of the Tibetan, Aymara, and Akha peoples even as immigration and industrialization threaten their disappearance.

Even in the imagination, there’s no going back to a place of sufficiency. In her pair of poems Marissa Ranello contemplates the way hunger and need transform us. And Katharine Tillman explores who bears responibility for our lost innocence in Land of enchantment, her tale of a teenager who runs away to be with her boyfriend, only to wind up pregnant, broke, and more alone than ever.

On a lighter note, ITF Contributing Writer Ayah-Victoria McKhail struggles to fit in on a Spanish nude beach, where she ultimately decides that her native Toronto’s beaches, dirty as they may be, might better accommodate her penchant for clothing.

Finally, be sure to check back on Monday, November 21, when JDGuilford unravels age-old myths about gay black men in his review of Keith Boykin’s Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America, and ITF Contributing Writer Emily Alpert exposes the abuse and harassment faced by transgendered prisoners in California.

Laura Nathan
Editor
Buffalo, New York

Coming in December: ITF publishes its 50th issue and brings you something old and something new to commemorate the first 49 issues.

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Fiction & Poetry

My blue angel and Women

Two poems contemplate our hungry unsatisfied souls.


Women  

Since the beginning, women were sharks,
rocking their pain and causing waves in the ocean.
On moonless nights, their hearts throb; by morning
their love floods the shoreline.

A woman is a finicky shark, swimming
in a male dominant sea of obscurity — waiting
to swallow man’s fish-eyed soul
or fillet him of all living lies.

My blue angel

In all the circumstance of delight and grief,
my bottle bum is punctual in picking at my garbage
each morning. Embracing beer cans like a lover,
he clenches each aluminum can to his heart
before placing them into his stolen shopping cart.

His tattered blue polyester suit, unboxed
by someone long ago, whirs behind him,
like the frayed wings of a fallen angel; thick hair
like static-electric fur reaching for the empty sky.

On warm windy days, his presence
makes me feel like someone just pissed
in my nostrils, and though I gasp for air, I dare not blink —
for I fear that I might miss
his gullish blue wings take flight.

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News

A drop in the bucket

In Burkina Faso, an unlikely duo works to gives water pushers a raise.


On a suffocating afternoon in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, a group of 15 young men turn a dusty corner and descend upon the Yangoseen Water Pump I. Ten others, who had been napping under a tree, wake to the sound of the men’s arrival. It is not the perfect way to start a revolution, but it will have to do. What transpires in this dusty lot is part family reunion, and part political rally. It is also history: A group of young men attempting to transcend their meager economic existence to take control of their destinies, if only for a few minutes. The groups greet each other with handshakes amidst the noise of broadcasts coming in over the pocket-sized AM/FM radios that seem to be ever-present in Burkina Faso.

These young men are water pushers, delivering water to the many houses built without indoor plumbing. Watching these teenagers, it’s hard to picture them doing anything other than this work. Their uniform consists of ripped jeans, flat-as-a-pancake flip-flops, and t-shirts with the sleeves cut off. Their bodies are hardened from lugging water over pot-holed roads and uneven courtyards in a barrique, a 55-gallon drum turned sideways and placed on two (often wobbly) wheels.

Youssef Ouedraogo and Hamidiou Sandwidi call the meeting to order. They are two of oldest, most respected pushers in the adjoining Dapoya neighborhood. They are also exact opposites. Tall and lanky, 23-year-old Youssef is known around the neighborhood as Capitaine Américain, because he wears T-shirts emblazoned with American patriotic themes, and his red, white, and blue barrique can be seen flying a 14-star Betsy Ross-style flag that a friend purchased in a dollar store in the United States.

Hamidou, in his late 30s, is shorter and quiet, and works under the name Le Gouverneur. He has been pushing since 1983, when a load brought in 12 cents. Today, pushers charge 40 cents per load. This is the point of the meeting: the 40-cent fee has been in place for the past seven years. Isn’t it time that the pushers charged a bit more?  

Capitaine Américain does most of the talking. He’s got sheets of paper in his hand (written by Le Gouverneur) that explain the proposed 10-cent price increase, slated to go into effect tomorrow. He reads a little of it, but the papers are mainly meant for the local radio stations. Capitaine Américain proposes putting the matter to a vote, but is held off by the concerns of the pushers — “How will our customers react? Aren’t these the same customers who break windows at gas stations when the price of fuel rises? Aren’t these the same customers who burn tires in the street when the price of bread goes up?” These are honest questions, and Capitaine Américain knows it.

If all area pushers simultaneously raise their prices, the Capitaine asserts, customers will have no choice but to pay up. By the looks of it, the pushers are not yet convinced. They ask more questions, this time in harsh, aggressive tones: “What happens if the customers reject our price? What happens if they go elsewhere to for their water?”

To some of the pushers, this is beginning to sound like a pipe dream.

Capitaine Américain’s barrique is up front with its patriotism.

Pushing a union

I met Capitaine Américain standing in front of the U.S. embassy. He was patiently asking to see someone inside about getting another U.S. flag. His khaki uniform, colored for desert warfare and adorned with American flags, fell over him like a large dress. Behind him stood four young body guards who, when they spotted me, jumped to attention and majestically unrolled a Tommy Hilfiger bath towel containing the image of an American flag. They held the towel/flag in place while Capitaine Américain looked at me, tightened the beret on his head, and offered a very formal salute.  

“So, someone stole your flag?” asked the guard at the gate. “Yes,” Capitaine Américain explained, wearily. “He is known as ‘Osama bin Laden’ and he stole my flag because he hates Americans like me. I am an American. I am Capitaine Américain.” At this, he was politely told to go home.  

Back at the water pump, Capitaine Américain and Le Gouverneur receive similar treatment: Twenty-five men, hundreds of flailing gestures, and enough shouts to wake the entire neighborhood out of its afternoon slumber. There are very few nice words spoken about the price increase. Their faces all say the same thing: It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

Water pushers live in fear, Le Gouverneur tells me, and that’s part of the problem. Every day, hundreds of people abandon their homes in Burkina Faso’s countryside and set their sights on the bright lights of Ouagadougou — the Promised Land! When they arrive, they seldom find much hope or redemption. Instead, it’s only Ouagadougou, the sprawling, dusty capital of the world’s third poorest country, where under-educated and low-skilled workers need not apply.  

There are jobs in Ouagadougou, but they can only be found in the informal sector: an underground economy of low-wage service or sales positions that barely provide a living wage. These jobs remain outside the legal realm of the state, keeping the thousands of water pushers, street vendors, and parking lot attendants unprotected by Burkina Faso’s generous labor laws that guarantee paid holidays, sick leave, and protection from dismissal.

All of the water pushers were newcomers, at one point. Now, they fear that the latest crop of newcomers will walk off with their customers by undercutting their prices, offering the same services at rock-bottom prices. Customers leverage these age-old worries to drive down the price of labor, leaving the pushers with nothing.

A few younger pushers at the pump tire of the political talk and retire to a foosball table. Capitaine Américain quickly joins the game, and Le Gouverneur makes his way over to personally address Yangossen’s head water pusher. Le Gouverneur speaks in low, hushed tones, almost forcing his listeners to lean in as he speaks. The two look over the press release, and the older pusher summons a few others. Then, something strange begins to happen. As more pushers speak to the leader, the mood of the crowd shifts. People are soon speaking positively about the increase. It’s as if the bitter argument had been purely for show. After more talk, everyone gives their thumbs-up to the increase. A cheer breaks out among the crowd.

We walk back out to the blinding sun, our crowd swelled a little. Only five more pumps remain.

Pushing and suffering

Who says the informal sector is really that bad? Ask Le Gouverneur. Like every other water pusher, he pays 50 cents a day to rent his barrique. On top of that, he must reimburse the local water company 12 cents for each load of water drawn from the public pump. An average day consists of between five and seven deliveries, which earns Le Gouverneur about $1.40 (after costs). This amounts to just enough to buy breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with a bit left over to send his family in the village.  

His earnings won’t pay many bills — especially if he gets injured while steering his unstable barrique down the unpaved streets, or if one of his cuts becomes seriously infected. “All we do is push water and suffer,” says Le Gouverneur. “You can’t eat with that.”

Still, the informal economy is on the march. Africa’s sputtering commercial sector and shrinking state apparatus lead the International Labour Office to predict that the informal economy will create 90 percent of new jobs on the continent. This unprotected economy is already responsible for more than three-quarters of the non-agriculture jobs in Africa, and more than 60 percent of its urban employment.

We all stand at the next pump, Yangossen II, which lies at the edge of a wide road lined with low-slung houses and a few semi-permanent kiosks that contain small businesses. The neighborhood, Yangossen, is named after a word in the Mossi language (Burkina Faso’s predominant ethnic group) for welder, since metal workers traditionally inhabited this part of town. Metal shops, constructing anything from agricultural tools to school desks to large art pieces, still occupy many buildings here, their stock often spilling out into the street.

Across from the pump there is an earthen mosque, and a few old men in long, white robes sit against the building, reading the newspaper. We all look on as Le Gouverneur speaks to the pump’s lead water pusher, who wears a baseball cap low over his eyes and reclines in a small chair, a radio sitting in his lap. As the Muezzin summons Muslims to prayer, the two mosque speakers crackle with a low, throaty “Allah u Akbar, Allah u Akbar.” The old men fold their newspapers, get up, and go inside.

Le Gouverneur continues his plea. An older woman approaches the group and begins to lecture the idle pushers. “It’s going to start raining soon and nobody is going to buy water anyway, so why would you raise the price?” she asks, indignant. A chunky girl of six or seven years, wearing only underwear, begins harassing Capitaine Américain. “Capitain, Capitain,” she calls. He smiles and gives her a few cents, which she takes before running off.

By the time the prayer is over, the old men are once again reading their newspapers, and the pusher in the baseball cap nods. He mutters something to those sitting next to him, and Le Gouverneur grins. Things are definitely looking up, and a small cheer rings out. “This is just like the Americans: fighting for what is right,” says Capitaine Américain, walking to the next pump. “Cool.”

The African dream

The American dream is that anyone who works hard enough will be justly rewarded. In Africa, the dream is to travel beyond your borders to find good work and riches. This dream is especially powerful in Burkina Faso, a country that is not blessed with many resources. At one point, claims popular opinion, the country’s greatest export was its workers.  

For decades, the Cote d’Ivoire, just to the south of Burkina Faso, was the most popular destination of Burkinabé workers. Packed with thousands of acres of cocoa, banana, and rubber plantations, hundreds of miles of coastline, nearly 50,000 French expatriates, and pragmatic political leadership, the Cote d’Ivoire held the crown of West Africa’s economic engine. It attracted millions of émigrés trying their luck in its rural areas and teeming urban centers like Abidjan, the commercial capital. Before the civil war began there, nearly one quarter of Cote d’Ivoire’s population were immigrants, and half of those immigrants came from Burkina Faso.

It was in Abidjan that Capitaine Américain was born, and was raised with the knowledge that he had to leave Burkina Faso for a better life. His father had immigrated there as a young man, rose through the ranks to become the assistant to the manager of the Treichville market — an endless, chaotic, sprawling bazaar. As proof of his financial success, his father eventually took three wives, and Youssef was the second child born to the first. His blanket of prosperity was pulled out from under him at the age of 10. His mother and father died in an automobile accident, and he was sent to live in central Burkina Faso, where he spent his time tending cattle and attempting to avoid his uncle’s frequent beatings. He lasted two years before running away to Ouagadougou.

He doesn’t talk much about those times, living alone, sleeping on the streets of Dapoya. He first made ends meet by selling cigarettes and lottery tickets in front of bars in the neighborhood, and traveled the city selling shirts and music cassettes. He also tended cattle for a while, transporting a herd down to Ghana on foot.

Six years ago, he was accepted by members of the Dapoya water pushers, where he was allowed to rent a barrique and begin pushing for himself. A friend helped him move into an apartment, where he still lives with his younger brother. It doesn’t offer much for his oversized personality, but the place is neat and organized. The apartment is teeming with American paraphernalia, like the flags that ring the television set that is run on battery power. The Tommy Hilfiger towel hangs proudly on the wall. He will gladly show you pictures of the days before his large flag was stolen. Mostly, the apartment is notable for what it does not reveal. How did Youssef Ouedraogo, runaway, morph into Capitaine Américain?

Last stand

Let it be known that Ouagadougou’s ubiquitous art sellers — dealers in batiks, statues and other forms of folk art — are official members of the informal economy. Let it also be known that a certain art dealer next to the Sankaria I pump can be thoroughly annoying. Flying high after one more “yes” vote at the pump in the Nioksin district, we made our way through a large market area, weaving through hundreds of idling trucks waiting to be filled with sacks of rice and millet. We were about to descend upon the Sankaria I pump until a tall man cut through the group and stopped me in the middle of the road, demanding that I accompany him to his shop to buy some art. Typically large and aggressive, these salesmen beg your pardon, and then require you to just look at their beautiful wares. You don’t have to buy — just look, for the pleasure of your eyes.

I tried to pass him, but the grotesque fanny pack hanging under his shirt blocked me. From afar, I glimpsed Capitaine Américain and Le Gouverneur beginning their arguments. The art dealer was pointing me in the direction of his shop, and I watched the Sankaria’s lead pusher interrupt Le Gouverneur by holding his hand in front of his face. For the pleasure of your eyes, my friend. But my eyes don’t have any money. You know, I don’t make very much money, myself. I could only watch from a distance as Capitaine Américain tried to interject before a few pushers with thick necks began to mock him.

By the time I escaped from the vendor, I heard the head pusher impatiently explain to Capitaine Américain that a lack of houses near this pump forces pushers to charge a mere 150 West African francs (30 cents) a load — far less than the going rate. This puts any increase out of reach. Capitaine Américain was openly agitated, talking loudly and gesturing wildly. Le Gouverneur, who had walked away and turned his back to the small group, pleaded with them to reconsider. Nothing came of any of it.

The group walked off, heads down. Half a block away, a few younger pushers violently turned back and started back towards the pump. They huffed at Sankaria’s pushers, forcing others to rush back and restrain them. Capitaine Américain was incensed. “They’ll have to respect the boundaries between neighborhoods,” he said of the pushers at Sankaria I. “They can’t cross the line and sell water for 150. That’s taking away our food.” What happens if Sankaria pushers will not respect the boundaries? “There will be combat.”

The pushers at the next pump are waiting for us. They are all young and aggressive. Groups of three or four chase each other around, punching and kicking. Others harass the young women walking by. Capitaine Américain is still too angry to talk; Le Gouverneur finds few people willing to listen.

“It’s not easy, working this hard,” says Idrissa, another pusher, between fights. “You can’t find enough money for food.” He is 21 years old, and began pushing water six months ago. “I’ll be doing this for the next three to four years.”  

Capitaine Américain entered the tent that covered the pump. Pushers crowded in, jockeying for position. Voices boomed, but Capitaine Américain’s was the loudest. It was the same debate as before. Pushers work too hard to get paid so little, he’d say, which elicited a great cheer. Multiple discussions broke out for a few minutes before people began laughing and clapping, signaling their ratification of the price increase. Finally, Capitaine Américain emerged from the tent with an older pusher in a grey cutoff shirt, grabbed his hand, and shook it. The older pusher pointed at Idrissa who, with the least seniority, had to chip in for the radio advertisement. “He’ll help pay,” he said. The other pushers stopped running around as Le Gouverneur approached Idrissa, who placed his hands in his pocket and turned it inside out, indicating he was empty. “The other one,” asked Le Gouverneur. Idrissa gave his boss a distressed look, but the head pusher repeated the command. He pulled out a wad of coins and glumly handed over the equivalent of 50 cents.

52 States of America

That left only two pumps, and they were pushovers. Looking back, Sankaria I proved to be the only hurdle to the water pushers’ first raise in seven years. Most pushers, as Le Gouverneur and Capitaine Américain had predicted, were only too happy to go along with the plan.  

Nearly as impressive, the customers had only mild reactions when the price increase went into effect. Most grumbled, but everyone was resigned to paying a bit more. This, of course, didn’t stop people from trying to sweet-talk their way into a deal. “I have been like a mother to you, so you should charge me 200 [the equivalent of 40 cents],” a woman pleaded with Capitaine Américain. He smiled. “If I do that, Le Gouverneur will find out and he’ll be all over me.”

For Capitaine Américain, the euphoria over the price increase only lasted a few weeks. By then, the rains began to fall more frequently and customers cut back their water deliveries. He was already starting on his next project: to get a visa to the United States. I should have guessed it all along, with his dropped hints, and his complaints about life in Burkina Faso. His friends made the first overtures (“He’s so American, it scares me,” someone said), but one day he finally broached the subject himself. He showed me his new tattoo, for which he had paid a fortune. It had the name of his latest girlfriend next to a large American flag, and the words: “U.S.A. — 52 States.” I was angry about the money he had spent. As for the visa, I told him I couldn’t promise anything. There just isn’t a big market for water pushers in those 52 states. He took it in stride, letting me know that he won’t give up just yet. “I am American; I need to be doing better,” he told me. “That much is clear.”

A final salute.

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Photo Essays

Vanishing Heritage: Bolivia

Best of In The Fray 2005. Photographing rural ethnic minorities in China, Bolivia, and Thailand before it is too late. Part two of a three-part series.


Click here to enter the photo essay.

Three nations on opposite sides of the globe are linked by indigenous culture and the threat of industrialization on its preservation.

In China, Tibetans have for decades struggled to regain their freedom. But now, for the first time, Tibet’s people are becoming a minority in their own homeland as their culture is quickly evaporating into the Chinese landscape. To many there, political freedom is no longer a realistic quest but the freedom to preserve a centuries-old cultural heritage remains in question.

In Bolivia, the autonomy of more than 300 minority ethnic groups is threatened by the rapid modernization of Bolivian society. Tibetans and the people of Bolivia’s largest minority community, the Aymara, share a striking physical resemblance; some anthropologists claim that an ancient migration across the continents may in fact connect the cultures by blood. I photographed at elevations ranging from 11,000 to 17,000 feet in each country while seeking to compare and contrast two cultures sharing common bonds.

In Thailand, the society of the Akha minority group is now losing its cultural identity. As electricity comes to each village, in turn, its inhabitants begin to realize the homogenized and idealized life portrayed on satellite television. The young often choose to leave the simple village life behind, in search of work and the other lures of city life.

As each culture rapidly modernizes, its cities swell with rural peoples, many of them ethnic minorities seeking economic opportunity. On the surface, life in the countryside remains largely unchanged. However, the autonomy of ethnic peoples, such as the Ani and Tumu in China, and the Quechua in Bolivia, becomes endangered as community members leave traditions behind and migrate to urban areas.

In 2004, I had the opportunity to witness rural life in mountainous regions of Tibet, southwestern China and Bolivia.  Each country is undergoing dramatic change. Rather than photograph such transition, I decided to try to do my small part to document the traditions of country life.

I believe that it is of significant importance to document the traditions of indigenous cultures that are rapidly fading throughout the world. As a documentary photographer, it is my goal to document such traditions before they disappear and it is my hope that viewers may consider assisting in their preservation.

Part 1: China

Part 3: Thailand

For information on obtaining prints from the Vanishing Heritage series, please contact John Kaplan at kaplan@writeme.com.

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Commentary

Full disclosure

A Canadian attempts to shed her inhibition — and her clothes — on a nude beach in Spain.


“Te enseño una playa nudista cuando vienes.” (I’ll show you a nude beach when you come.) “I’ve never seen so many penises in my life.”

And with that, my friend Beth, a fellow Torontonian, signed off on yet another email to me. She was living in Cádiz, a port city in the southern Andalucía region of Spain where some of the country’s most beautiful beaches are located, and I was going to visit her in two weeks. I had just learned that a nude beach was on the itinerary.  

Going nude was not an option for me.

My friend Joe tried to convince me otherwise over drinks in Toronto one afternoon before I left. “No one knows you there anyway, so what difference does it make?” Yet to me, it made all the difference.

I have always equated nudity with intimacy. Being naked with someone makes me – especially as a woman – feel vulnerable to that person. When we’re nude, we reveal ourselves in a profound way where nothing is hidden. The mere thought of being nude in front of people I didn’t know made me cringe.

But I didn’t rule out making a visit to a nude beach. Curiosity, and that sense of adventure that takes hold of me as soon as I board a plane, got the better of me.

This beach is too permissive …

And so, a day after arriving in Cádiz, I found myself — a tall, slender 25-year-old woman — lying rigidly on a beach towel under the searing sun at Caños de Meca, a nude beach 45 minutes from the city centre.

No, I wasn’t nude. I was wearing a low-cut, black designer bikini with ivory-hued straps. The loose ends on each side of the bottoms tied right at my hips. Top and bottom fit perfectly, and flattered my hourglass figure. (Not that I was showing off, lying prone on my towel.)

From that awkward position, I began to take in the sights. This was my first trip to a real, functioning beach. Born and raised in Toronto, Lake Ontario never looked very clean to me, despite those safe-for-swimming “Blue Flags” awarded to the beaches once certain environmental criteria were met. City Hall must have shared my doubts because they strategically placed a public swimming pool directly in front of one of the beaches.

The beach at Cádiz was stunning. Hidden beneath a hilly terrain, we had had to hike down to reach its shores. Golden sand glistened beneath the sun and gentle waves whistled a soothing melody in our ears.

Eventually I mustered up enough courage to check out my fellow beach bums at Caños de Meca. What I saw were far too many harried potbellies, dangling private parts of the young and old, sagging breasts flopping about, and yes, bouncing bums. I saw pierced nipples being erotically rubbed; people sensually lathering sun block on their partners’ most private parts; nude families building sandcastles as they shared refrescos (cold drinks) with each other. Dozens of random strangers willingly sharing their bodies with me.

And there I was: A subdued, self-conscious Canadian in a bikini who, rather than feeling covered up in the midst of all these naked people, was feeling rather naked herself.

I found it difficult to believe that so many people could be comfortably naked in front of each other. But that’s what my eyes were telling me. People frolicked about playing Frisbee, the girth of their bellies visible to everyone in their midst. Lumps, bumps, stretch marks, and all that cellulite we normally try so hard to hide, on public display.

I felt like a criminal, surreptitiously stealing glances at the women around me, comparing the size of my waist, hips, thighs, and breasts, with theirs. When naked men walked by and smiled at me, I couldn’t look. Perhaps it was my conservative Palestinian background, but I felt I shouldn’t look. That I would be invading people’s privacy if I did.

Carlos, a Spanish friend and regular nudist, playing the guitar at Caños de Meca.

And this beach is too restrictive …

My only other memories of being at a beach are from ten years ago when I last visited family in the Gaza Strip. I was 15 and I remember the sense of peace I felt while I was there. At Gaza of all places, it was easy to forget your worries while staring into the vastness of the Mediterranean and listening to the lapping of its calm waves. Everything — from the laughter of the children bathing in the sea to the sight of ladies from the local refugee camp carrying pots and pans back and forth to be washed at the shore — remains etched in my memory.

I wanted to swim in those salty waters so badly.

But I knew that I would have drawn a lot of unwanted attention to myself if I dared take the plunge. We were in a predominately Muslim area and, only in the still of night, when the lurking eyes of men were fast asleep, did a few intrepid women slip off their sandals and lift up their long flowing gowns for a quick wade in the calm waters. I spent my time sitting in a hut drinking diet Pepsi, chatting with my brother, or adding to our growing collection of seashells.

Fast forward 10 years. Here I was on another beach and not much had changed.

For the most part, I had overcome the self-consciousness about my body that plagues most young women my age. But I still wasn’t home free. Even in my bikini, it took me a long while to muster up the courage to get up off my beach towel and take a dip in the Spanish waters, or walk along the shore with Beth. Even clothed, I felt that all eyes were upon me.

I wasn’t brave enough to break local customs in Gaza, and I wasn’t brave enough to follow them in Cádiz. Where did I fit in?

As my friends and I stood up to leave, a middle-aged man with piercing blue eyes made eye contact. Keeping his intense gaze fixed on me, he began stroking his penis. It was definitely time to leave. I lowered my head as I quickly stuffed my belongings into my beach bag and scooted off.

As I walked back up the hill to my friend’s car, I made a mental note to myself to give one of Toronto’s staid beaches a try when I returned to Canada. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Maybe that beach would be just right, for me.

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Fiction & Poetry

Land of Enchantment

Best of In The Fray 2005. A relationship withers under the New Mexico sun.


Though they’re advertised on license plates, billboards, and in roadside souvenir shops, I managed to overlook my first three New Mexico sunsets. My boyfriend kissed me under the fourth one. So, I do have something nice to say to my grandchildren about the time I dropped out of school and hitchhiked across the country. New Mexico sunsets are really pretty.

Also, there are plateaus. I grew up in a town where the ground was flat and I learned what the world outside was supposed to look like from a diagram that crammed every possible geological feature into one neatly-labeled color-coded box. River, hill, plain, valley, delta, fill-in-the-blank. The hardest vocabulary word was plateau, and judging from the awkward illustration, I suspected that these decapitated mountains had just been made up to give public school children something to memorize in Social Studies class. But here, in New Mexico, there are plateaus.

It’s early morning on sleepy I-25 South, surely one of the least-used stretches of highway in the country. The cars don’t come and, when they do come, they don’t stop. For hours we sit by the side of the road, waiting. Far away there are mountains, covered all over with trees. There’s no tree line. A manicured RV park lies on the other side of the freeway, before you get to the rusting piles of construction junk further on down. There are the green Interstate signs, always, and the same well-known logos floating in the sky. Texaco, McDonald’s, Pedestrians Prohibited.

The light is relentless, and a broken-limbed black umbrella serves as my parasol. I’m this sitting girl, held impossibly still by the heat. The shadow of the crippled umbrella falls on my dirty, sweaty clothes, graying out my patchwork sketch-palate jeans (ripped at the knees) and the faded yellow head-scarf that hides my greasy, unwashed hair. A dog barks. The bark crosses the freeway from the RV park and settles in my shade. I try to see myself from a driver’s eyes. A speck in the distance, slowly coming into focus. This skinny, raggedy, overgrown child, rained on by the New Mexico sun. A queer, enchanting sight. I could pass for a mirage. Maybe that’s why no one pulls over.

A few feet away, my boyfriend reads from our tattered, rained-on, duct-taped copy of War and Peace. In his other hand, he holds the sign: SOUTH TO ALBUQUERQUE. His long, matted hair drips over a black t-shirt plastered with a gray wolf howling up at a yellow moon near the left shoulder. On the bottom, it says “Texas.”  It’s from a truck stop – three for $10.

My boyfriend feels me staring, looks up from the gnarled book (attacked by a pack of dogs after I finished it and before he started) and asks, “When was the last time you remember having fun?” An accusation. Our trip was supposed to be an adventure. We were supposed to be seeing the country.

Maybe he is still seeing something when he looks out there, but when he looks at me, he sighs. He sighs a lot. What does he expect? After all, I stood in the sunset. I let myself be kissed in a photographic style. A pink glow rose and fell upon my cheeks. That was only last night. Still, his fairytale is no longer my problem. Conjuring happiness is no longer my concern. What I wouldn’t give to become scenery.

“Fun?” I reply, “I like playing checkers.”

Occasionally, we play pennies against nickels on a hand-drawn board. We do this in air-conditioned fast food restaurants, filling the brightly-colored booths with our hiking packs, sleeping bags, water bottles. We sit and play checkers with our change until some stranger offers to buy us a pair of Value Meals. One such stranger actually complimented my boyfriend on me.

“Dude,” said the long-haired man, dropping some quarters on our table, “I hope you know how lucky you are to have such a beautiful companion on your awesome trip.”

Of course, he said he knew. You have to keep up appearances for the ones who wish they were you. If you’re a young couple hitchhiking together, half the people who help you do it because they wanted to be you in the 60s. But not everyone.

There was the man with the blue shirt and cigarettes who walked up to my table at Wendy’s, where I was making a friendship bracelet from embroidery floss. I was dressed in a threadbare hippy skirt and dirty red tank top from a California Goodwill store, and my boyfriend was in the bathroom.

“Hey, do you need a job?” asked the man.

“No, we’re just traveling, but thanks.”

“You need money?”

“We’re okay.”

“‘Cuz I could give you a job.”

I didn’t catch on. I didn’t want to be mean. “What kind of a job?”

He sat down in my boyfriend’s chair. “It’ll just take 15 minutes.”

“I’m not interested.” Staring at the thread in my hands.

“I’ll give you $50.”

“I’m not interested.” Staring at the floor.

I must’ve said it three times before he finally said okay and walked off. My boyfriend passed him on his way out, coming back from the bathroom.

“Don’t leave,” I told him, as soon as he reached the table. I meant that.

Checkers was a weak answer. I should have said, “When was the last time we had sex?” An accusation. We ran away for love.

Not only is he no longer able to view our sex life – in the tent, under overpasses, in truck stop showers – as a form of escapism, he avoids it specifically to make it easier for him to escape once this is over. It is one thing to say you want to leave someone you’re completely isolated with and fucking regularly. It is another thing to say you want to leave someone you’re sleeping with in close quarters and refusing to touch. Someone whom you’ve already touched in the ultimate way.

“It must be hard for you, doing this now,” he offers.

I want to say, “You have no idea.” I want to tell him all about it, how I cannot experience anything outside my own skin anymore. How even his ambivalence is dulled to me, like those famed New Mexico sunsets I daydreamed through for days. How every place we go is the same. The changes in landscape are miniscule compared to the changes happening inside.

I cannot tell him these things. I write them down in my hand-softened journals. I think about them, and the tears peek out. They sometimes, silently, fall. I open my mouth to tell him how I really feel, and the only sounds that will come are complaints. I complain constantly. I say that I am tired, I am dizzy, I am sick, I am hungry, I am afraid. I say these things even though they are obvious. We were supposed to be in love. We’ve been on the road for five months now, and we’ve finally passed the point where things could not possibly get better, and things cannot possibly get worse.

Today is the last day I could’ve gotten the pill. I think of sharp and silver things; my stomach turns.

We have $65; we need at least $300. The signage blitz isn’t working. TRAVELING AND HUNGRY, ANYTHING HELPS. It was for food, once. We were even happy, really, in the beginning. We flashed peace signs at the SUV’s waiting at busy intersections on their lunch breaks. We believed the stories we told the strangers who picked us up. But the charm wore off, even before we found ourselves worse off than broke.

We try to fake it now, this idea that our life before was the limited, slave-like one. The bullshit of the daily grind. Commercialism, television, academia, responsibility. Oh, to simply see. Oh, to be alive and free.

Maybe the intersection strangers know they’re being duped. Maybe they know that I’ve never appreciated a 99-cent corporate hamburger so much in my life. That whereas before, TV was merely a procrastination tool, now, I would give anything to be able to lose myself in a stupid sitcom. Not that there are even any intersections to try here. We’re in the middle of nowhere, trying to get to…

“Do you have a better idea?” he asks. “Do you want to try something else? Do you want to call your parents?”

No. My parents haven’t heard from me in months. I ran away for love.

When my mother was pregnant with me, she dreamt she gave birth to a kitten instead of a girl, and after bringing it home from the hospital, she accidentally left it in a dresser drawer, where it died. I haven’t dreamt of children or of cats, but I’ve dreamt of becoming huge. I am scared I will just wait and wait, until I’ll have no choice. The highway is no place for children.

I also dreamt of tearing open chickens. And I dreamt that a man picked us up in his car and told us that he knew that there were people like us, people with our very names, but he did not know that we were those people. He told me the version of my boyfriend that he knew cared for me so much more than for anything else in the world. But my real boyfriend, who sat next to me in the dream, only snickered.

I want to rest. I want to sleep in. I want to eat something that isn’t from the 99c menu, that isn’t peanut butter sandwiches or oatmeal. I want to get away from the sun. I want to wipe out the red, the orange, the yellow. These New Mexico colors are everywhere: on the ground, in the sky. My tan is spattered with this paint. I am burning; I feel like I’m going to vomit up a sun-baked baby.

I’m sitting on a rolled up sleeping bag. He’s sitting on his pack. A Jeep just passed us by, with talk radio spilling out its windows. If I stood up, I would fall down. One of the floating signs says there’s a Holiday Inn at the next exit. I want. Our water is tinted with Hawaiian Punch, from the soda fountain where we filled up our dented plastic bottles last. It tastes bad and I don’t want to drink it, but I’m so thirsty and my yellow piss says I’m not drinking enough.

I take down the umbrella to write in my diary. The sun squints my eyes and muddles my thoughts. My nose is stinging. My arms are stinging. Sweat drips slowly down my neck, leaving furrows in the dirt. Next to me on the concrete shoulder are a small pelt and a smear that used to be an animal. On the entrance ramp, I saw a mummified dog, the grotesque version of those animal skins that sleep in the parlors of the rich, with their heads still on. It occurs to me that if I never moved from this spot, the highway’s next rug could be me, the fried remains of a girl who ran away for love, climbed her first plateau, and died trying to see the country.

Such a death is too pure for me. I am not so idealistic as I used to be. Eventually, I will get up. Eventually, I will come down. I will get an abortion and I will get an apartment. I will let him leave me. It will be hard, but I will do it. I will live to tell the tale. New Mexico sunsets are pretty.

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Blog

“We will find a way out of this … But I don’t know how long it will take.”


With over 1,300 cars torched and destroyed, and with 800 people — some of them boys as young as 13 — arrested, France is literally up in flames. And there is no end in sight for the root causes of the riots, according to the government’s own admission.

The riots began in Parisian suburbs ten days ago when Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, boys of Mauritanian and Tunisian background, were electrocuted while hiding from the police. Their deaths sparked the tinderbox of frustration that has been building among the nation’s immigrant population, with poverty, unemployment, and discrimination fanning the flames of resentment.

Commenting on France’s North African immigrants and their locally-born children, Secretary of State for Local Government Brice Hortefeux stated today on French radio that “For 20 years, urban policy has been plugging holes but has not resolved the fundamental problem of integrating … We will find a way out of this with determination and firmness … But I don’t know how long it will take.” An honest but grim appraisal of the situation for a country in which 10 percent of its 60 million residents are immigrants. Even when order is restored in France, the root causes for the riots have only been highlighted, with no particular solution in sight to the grievances of the nation’s immigrants and issues relating to the nation’s immigration policies.

—Mimi Hanaoka

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Blog

A Texas-sized constitutional mistake


Come this Wednesday, November 9, 2005, my mother and stepfather may no longer be married, according to their home state of Texas. Same for my married friends. And their married parents.

No, it’s not a mass divorce orgy. This is, after all, Texas we’re talking about.

Instead, it’s the potentially fatal error of Texas’ Religious Right, which seeks to add Texas to the growing list of states that have outlawed gay marriage on Tuesday, November 8. (Never mind that the Texas Constitution already prohibits same-sex marriage. Texas legislators just thought we needed a not-so-subtle reminder of that fact that gays remain second-class citizens even after the Supreme Court had the nerve to legalize sodomy in its landmark 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision.)

It seems that when Texas legislators took time out of their brief, 140-day session to draft an amendment to the Texas Constitution banning gay marriage, they failed to take the time to actually read — much less edit — what they came up with:

Article I, Texas Constitution, (The Bill of Rights) is amended by adding  Section 32 to read as follows:

Sec. 32.  (a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.

(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

So is section b just a subtle — but potentially radical — cry for equality? If gays can’t marry or enter into legally recognized domestic partnerships, then neither can heterosexuals?

Unlikely. After all, the Ku Klux Klan didn’t come out in droves in Austin this weekend to show their solidarity with gays.

If voters approve this so-called Proposition 2 on Tuesday, Texas will effectively be outlawing domestic partnerships for gays and heterosexuals alike. But the poorly worded section b will also make it all too easy for divorce lawyers to argue that their clients can’t be granted a divorce because, well, they were never married in the first place. Just what Texas needs — more court clog, less legal reform.  

At least divorce rates would take a drastic downward turn…

The passage of this amendment seemed certain a couple of months ago. But with every major Texas newspaper coming out in opposition to the proposition in the last few weeks, Proposition 2’s fate is less certain.

For the amendment to be approved on Tuesday, its hateful intent will have to trump its inevitably disastrous effects in voters minds. And if that happens, it will only go to show that the time the Texas Legislature used to draft, debate, and vote on the amendment would’ve been better spent passing some much-needed education reform to ensure that Texans learn how to read before they’re bestowed with civic responsibilities.

—Laura Nathan

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Political Prose

Our faith-based energy policy

The science radio show Explorations recently rebroadcast an interview with energy expert Tom Mast that is worth listening t…


The science radio show Explorations recently rebroadcast an interview with energy expert Tom Mast that is worth listening to if you’re more than a tad concerned about rising gas prices and heating costs. Mast, a mechanical engineer who has worked in the oil industry for decades and is author of the book Over a Barrel: A Simple Guide to the Oil Shortage, offers the best analysis I’ve heard about what today’s high oil prices mean and what we should be doing about it. Instead of getting caught up in secondary questions like automobile fuel efficiency or drilling for oil in Alaska, Mast focuses on the key problems: the supply of oil is finite; the world will experience oil shortages within a decade or two; and the current crop of energy alternatives are either too unreliable or too polluting to replace oil.

“The high prices of crude oil — and therefore gasoline — these days are a symptom of the problem, and not the real problem,” says Mast. “The fundamental problem is that the worldwide supply of oil is having a hard time keeping up with the demand.” About half of the world’s oil reserves have been used up in a single century of production and consumption, Mast notes. Given an ever-increasing world population with ever-increasing energy needs (China alone accounted for 40 percent of the growth in oil demand last year), there’s every indication that we will blow through the remaining half of the world’s oil reserves much more quickly. Conservation, increased fuel efficiency, new oil production technologies, drilling in not-yet-exploited wildernesses like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (which lawmakers seem intent on opening up) — all these tactics may buy us a little time, but in the absence of a serious, “Man on the Moon”-style government initiative to develop alternatives, we will soon arrive at a worldwide energy crisis.

When that oil shortage strikes, we’ll have much more to worry about than having enough juice to feed our SUVs. Oil accounts for 38 percent of the world’s energy — by far the largest chunk — and the consequences of a shortage would be catastrophic for the economies of every country. Scarce oil supplies would sharply increase oil costs and slam inflation into high gear. It’s not just commuters who rely on oil-based fuel, after all: The price of shipping every sort of good, from groceries to TV sets, would increase, making businesses of every niche less efficient and ultimately leading to nationwide recession or depression. The United States would suffer in particular, because a substantial portion of its trade deficit — 35 to 40 percent — is devoted to oil imports. With oil prices rising, the country’s debt would mushroom, weakening the dollar and wreaking further havoc with the economy. Finally, a shortage of oil would inevitably worsen relations between gas-guzzling nations who have grown dependent on cheap energy but suddenly have no easy way of obtaining it. (The much-anticipated, much-feared future clash between the United States and China, in fact, may not be over Taiwan but over oil: An expansionist China sniffing everywhere for oil is already butting heads with the United States in central Asia.)

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has not yet made the search for energy alternatives a priority. Instead, it seems to approach the impending oil shortage with the same faith-based reasoning that it applies to global warming (and that it applied, until this past week, to the influenza danger): Nothing bad is going to happen. Why worry? If the oil crisis of the 1970s taught us anything, it was the danger of not being prepared for the unexpected — of not having a Plan B. These days, we’re dealing with the very-much-expected — and yet we’re still woefully unprepared.

(To listen to the Mast interview, click here. The interview starts at 28:48 in the program — right after another interview worth listening to about the dangers posed by bird flu.)

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Political Prose

Quote of note: All I really need to know I learned from the Taliban

You know, we have a beautiful highway landscaping redevelopment in our downtown. We have desert tortoises and beautiful paintings of flora and fauna. These punks come along and deface it.… I’m saying mayb…


You know, we have a beautiful highway landscaping redevelopment in our downtown. We have desert tortoises and beautiful paintings of flora and fauna. These punks come along and deface it.… I’m saying maybe you put them on TV and cut off a thumb. That may be the right thing to do.

—Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, offering a modest proposal Wednesday on a Nevada talk show. Another panelist on the show, State University System Regent Howard Rosenberg, suggested that Goodman “use his head for something other than a hat rack.”

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also: