Fandango Jarocho

First draft of a prose poem, after last night's fandango at Muddy Waters café



Six standing against the wall, instruments in hand
Skulls smile from over their shoulders, flowers in their hair.

Two men, un chaparrito y un gordito, welcome the crowd
in two languages, and call on everyone to participate.
El chaparrito teaches the rhythm of the dance – the zapateado –
says "café con pan, café con pan,"
two stomps with the left foot, one stomp with the right, one more with the left.
Then switch sides.

Then they begin to play, the harp,
the marimbol, and jaranas –
the big huapanguera and three others
each smaller than the one before.
The man in the white hat, white shirt
plays the smallest jarana, the mosquito,
and has the smallest voice.

They sing, taking turns
starting and ending each verse with the same line.
These songs are stories, funny and sad.
The first starts, Ay Guacamaya, ¿adónde vas?
A los Estados Unidos, a la pisca, a trabajar.

Still playing, the chaparrito calls everyone to come closer.
The band circles 'round the tarima
more people crowd in the door
a brown woman in a huipil
a white man with a ponytail
a little girl on her papa’s shoulders
more jaranas of all shapes and sizes join the circle.

On the tarima, the dancing platform,
two big mamas learn the zapateado
the "café con pan" on their lips,
smiling big.
No one cares they miss a step or two.

The song goes on and on
verse after verse
circling around the rythym,
the call and response
now quieter, now louder
‘til el chaparrito yells “una!”
the musicians play one more round of chords
their hands drop silent to their sides
in the same moment everyone brings theirs together
to clap and cheer ...

Story

What follows is a chronicle of an afternoon spent in Ankara last summer,
which I meant to post months ago...

Pazar, 8 Haziran
Sunday, June 8

After lunch, I accompanied cousin İnci to the castle district, where she was to meet some friends. We parted ways and I wandered the steep cobbled streets, stopping for a ring of hot simit, or sesame bread, and stepping into a handicrafts shop called Öykü. A man bounded up the back stairwell, out of breath by the time he reached me. When I asked him how much for a painted ceramic fish on a string of beads, he snapped, “I am so tired from running up the stairs to greet you and all you ask is the price?" Then he burst out laughing. He turned the dangling artwork around and said, "Look, it’s on the back. You could have figured that out!”

He asked where I was from. "American?" He lifted up my arms, pantomimed a security search. “Where is your gun?” He made a gun with his thumb and forefinger, and explained that no American goes unarmed. No, I answered his questions, I am not a soldier, and no, I don’t like war. His smile softened a bit. He shook my hand warmly and called me “dost.” (Close to the word “compañero” in Spanish, this means “friend,” “comrade,” or “lover,” depending.) Then he handed me his business card. His name was İbrahim Ö., Proprietor. "But my friends call me 'İbo.'"

The phone rang, and İbo sprinted to the back of the store. (“Yes, I’m here at the store, yes, it’s going well, I am talking to an American.”) When he returned, He saw me smiling and tapping my foot to the Balkan music on the stereo. “Nice song, isn’t it?” he asked. Now it was my turn to laugh. It was the absurdly macho refrain of "Pit Bull Terrier," from the film Black Cat White Cat. Then he laughed, and we recounted our favorite scenes from the movie and its wild, absurd humor. His rapid-fire speech was punctuated by finger jabs, shoulder pats, squeezes of the arm. He was on the short side, with shoulder-length black hair turning gray, a few days’ whiskers. Blue jeans and long-sleeve black Polo shirt.

He asked if I was married, and I told him about my girlfriend. “Do you have children?” he asked. “No? You must have children, lots of children! You are a good man, I can see that from your smile. There are so many bad people having children, good people must have more children than them!”

After meandering conversations and a bit of haggling, I bought the ceramic fish, asked him to wrap it up safely, a gift for some friends getting married soon. "Fish are very good luck," he told me. "This is a great gift, handmade, hand-painted." I thanked him many times over in my poor Turkish and promised to return.

"Ah," he said, shaking my hand, not letting go. "There's one more thing I want to tell you. This store, I named it after my daughter, eight years old."

Öykü was the name. Meaning Story.

Where are you from?

Last year at a party in Seattle, someone asked me where I was from. California. What part? San Luis Obispo, a town halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“And what are you doing in Seattle? she asked. “Are you visiting family or friends or something?” No, I explained, I have lived in Seattle for a dozen years, and I work for the county health department.

“But you just said that you are from California!”

For a few seconds, we just stared at each other over our drinks. We were speaking two different languages. To me, where you are from is where you grew up. I wasn’t born there, but I lived in San Luis from the time I was five until I was twenty. I might live elsewhere for the rest of my life, but I will always be from central California.

Could this woman possibly mean what she seemed to imply, that if a person picks up and lives somewhere a while, if she makes friends in a new place and receives mail there and has a favorite place to take a walk or have coffee, that she is from there?

I was reminded of this the other day in Ankara. My cousin Gülrü and I went shopping recently along the steep cobblestone streets that lead to the castle. In a jewelry store we met a young man named Yusuf, who was friendly and helpful as a salesman and not at all pushy. We chatted a bit, Gülrü bought some earrings, and as we left, he said, “We’ll be waiting for you another day. Come back, we'll drink tea.” A week later I had another opportunity to visit the castle and I took him up on his invitation, arriving with simit, smelling freshly baked and covered in golden sesame. Yusuf cheerfully called from the doorway for a neighborhood boy to fetch tea for us. As we touched on the the standard topics of small talk, I asked him where he was from.

“I am from Erzurum,” he said. “I mean, I was born in Ankara, and I have never been to Erzurum, but that’s where my family’s village is. That’s where we’re from.”

Dear sir,

I didn’t catch you name, as the rain was falling hard
and the heater fan was blowing. I shook your hand,
admired your smile, the glint in your old blue eyes.
I was glad to point out to you the skyline,
honored to pronounce a name you had never heard:
Duwamish. Welcome to Seattle, sir, from Arizona,
whence you came by the will of God, so you said.

You charmed us with your gift of gab, your snow-white hair,
the knowing wink that came along with jokes,
your shiny sateen jacket
from another generation. You start a conversation,
compliment the young banker and his comfy running shoes,
well-deserved, having stood all day in loafers. Your words
were sparks, striking up smiles between strangers,
we who normally ride in silence.

I’m very sorry, sir. Usually I do not yell,
I do not swear at elders.

I began to wonder
when you said calcium was bad for women’s bodies,
that it killed them, but I didn’t blame you.
Each report about our health
is bought and paid for.

The bus arc’d around onto 99
and I felt the conversation turn. Did I hear you right?
That America has prisons prepped
for all the Muslims? I wouldn’t put it past this cowboy in chief,
but I think that’s a little much.

The al-Qaeda, they’re out to get us, just like that September,
only next they’ll go for Arizona, Boston, and every other town.
They’re all around us.

No sir, I tried to say, but I couldn’t get a word in.
It’s all in their religion, you said.
And that’s when something broke.

I’m sorry sir, you’re mistaken.
Al-Qaeda’s just a fraction,
the very smallest portion
of a peaceful people.

No, they’re killers, you said, it’s because of their religion.

How many Muslims do you know?
You only dodged the question.

You, sir. You are al-Qaeda.
You are not like them,
but one and the same, those who only speak of threat,
of danger. You fear your neighbors
but never meet them. You fan the flames
that fuel the tanks. You throw stones
that pave the road to empire. You do not plant,
but only cut the branches
of olive and of laurel. You feed them to the fire
that may broil us all.

My journey to Fort Benning, Georgia. Part one.

Earlier this month I volunteered as a Spanish interpreter at the annual vigil to close the School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Georgia. The SOA, officially renamed the Western Hempisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, is an American military academy known to have trained many Latin American dictators, officers and soldiers responsible for massacres, torture, assassination, and other forms of "dirty warfare." Each November, a vigil outside the gates of Ft. Bennning marks the 1989 assassination of six American priests in El Salvador, their housekeeper, and her 14-year-old daughter. The vigil, started by Father Roy Bourgeois and a handful of others in 1990, has grown exponentially, to include 25,000 participants this year.

***

In every airport – Seattle, St. Louis, Dallas, Atlanta – soldiers walk alone, dressed in desert fatigues and carrying rucksacks. I happen to sit next to one on the flight from St. Louis to Atlanta, dressed in civilian clothes. He’s a member of the National Guard, and spent two years in Iraq, securing a section of Baghdad’s Green Zone, right at its edge. He shows me photos of himself and his buddies in sniper position atop high-rises, and posing with Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and other bigwigs. Other photos are of car bomb scenes. Iraqis are such a resilient people, he tells me, that once the debris is removed, people go back to their regular business. “If a car bomb exploded in Westlake Plaza, no one would come back for a long time.”

In another photo, a man stands in a jail cell, his hands on the bars, his eyes looking into the camera. His graying hair and beard are getting long, but he looks well kept, and has a warm smile, despite everything. He looks to me like an uncle I haven’t met. The caption reads simply reads “Card_Guy,” meaning he is one of the men most wanted by the U.S., whose pictures were distributed to soldiers as decks of playing cards. I wonder who he is, what Bush & Co. say he did, and how much of that is true. Then my seatmate closes his laptop and says it’s the end of the show, that I wouldn’t want to see the photos lower down the list, of people with their heads blown off. "Of U.S. soldiers?" I ask. "God no," he says, incredulous. "I would never take photos like that."

I ask where he’s going. “To Benning, to see my little brother graduate from basic training.” I tell him I’m headed to Fort Benning, too. He asks about the white arm band I’m wearing. I explain it has written the name and age of someone killed by a graduate of the School of the Americas. He looks confused a moment and then his face changes, hardens a little, but we keep talking. I explain to him about the SOA, the training manuals leaked to the media detailing lessons in counter-insurgency: torture, assassination of civilians, targeting priests, students, union members. “War is a very nasty business,” he says, “by definition.” He doesn’t explicity condone such tactics, but he doesn’t condemn them either.

Two years in Iraq marked him. When he returned to his family, his eight year old daughter always wanted to be with him, to hang her arms around him, to sit on his lap. He asked his wife to keep her away from him. About the same time, the nightmares began and he began drinking heavily. “Luckily I caught myself before it got too bad, went and got some help from the V.A.” Later he starts to rant a bit about politicians, saying taxes are too high, and that if people need drug treatment or the like, they should pay for it themselves.

I am thankful this man chooses to speak so openly with me about his own experiences despite our political differences; he says he feels the same. When we transfer to the 30-seat plane that takes us from St. Louis to Atlanta, I hear him share a few words with a young female soldier already buckled in, her hands gripping the armrests, staring at the seat in front of her. “You coming or going?” he asks. I don’t hear her reply, but he pats her on the shoulder and says, “You take good care, now.”

***

At the Denny’s on Macon Road, in Columbus, Georgia, a group of peacenik Spanish interpreters gathers to discuss how we are going to tackle the weekend of workshops and rally speeches. At the two nearest tables sit military families. At each one, a young man wears fatigues and sits next to his girlfriend, along with parents and siblings, eating burgers and salads and sandwiches. One of the soldiers looks barely 18 years old. He sips a chocolate milkshake and the waitress calls him “sweetie.” Both families are quiet in their celebrations.

***

We are definitely in a Southern military town. Almost every block and shopping center along the broad suburban avenues has a military surplus store, a tattoo parlor, a strip club, or all of the above. Even the Cannon Brewpub, a hip hangout spot in the polished Uptown district, displays Dixie flags among its eclectic décor. I am constantly reminded I am a stranger here by people’s rich Southern accents. To my ears, some sound tinny and nasal, but most voices like cornbread dipped in honey-butter.

***

The interpreter team is about half people who I worked with last year, half new to me. There’s the Nicaraguan man whose humor sometimes has a bite. The DC tenant organizer, young and sharp. Her housemate, a silver-haired Colombian woman who is as warm as a winter wool blanket. Her friend, a former nun, all smiles. Both work for a community clinic in the DC area. Then there’s the gringo who married a Puerto Rican and speaks fantastic Spanish, often quoting literature and off-color jokes, and the fabulous, funny gay Mexican-American man from the historic Highlander School. We all quickly establish a good rapport. It’s easy to do, because we have a lot in common. Everyone is charming and ready to work hard all weekend.

***

For the second year running, I celebrate my birthday the night before the Vigil, the centerpiece of the weekend gathering. We take turns buying round of drinks, but mostly I drink for free. I never knew that shots of Patrón Silver tequila went down so smoothly. I have quite a few of those. Later the gay man and the young woman from DC and I go another bar and and the conversation goes deeper, on topics personal and political. We sip Mexican beer, dance to Michael Jackson songs, and improvise our own karaoke to “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

***

At the end of the weekend, the interpreter who is a former nun gives me a handful of “goals for 2008” on colored construction paper, the size of raffle tickets. Each has a calligraphied message in Spanish, such as:

To strengthen my sense of humor, since Satan fell to Hell for being annoying!

Spread the Word: We need more extremists: extremists of love (-Martin Luther King).

To be the loyal memory of those who gave their lives for their people.

Crime and Punishment

Mel Kay, President and Founder, and Michael McLaughlin, a manager of Golden State Fence Company, ran a tight ship. They were contracted in the late nineties to build a fence 15 feet high and 6,100 feet long near the U.S.-Mexico border, to hold back the tide of immigrants. The Army Corps of Engineers called them “professional, reliable, and extremely competent … We have never encountered any problems with any personnel they have used.” Their revenue grew to $150 million in 2004. Their motto is “Home of the American Dream.”

In late March, a federal judge sentenced Kay and McLaughlin to house arrest, community service, probation, and fines of $300,000, for knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants between 1999 and 2004. Their business was also fined $4.7 million.

But does the punishment fit the crime? Perhaps a more appropriate sentence would have included a fine of a few thousand dollars each. That, and being made to run through the desert. With no food and little water, risking death by hypothermia, dehydration and the violence of bandits. That, and spending years wondering when the knock might come at the door, whether tomorrow they will be taken away from their wives and children. Years of seeing only photos of the other kids left behind.

This, perhaps, would be a just sentence, but not for hiring workers who lack the right papers. For building fences to block their passage. For building cages.

Where are you from?

In a Seattle neighborhood lined with shady trees and pampered bungalows, a campaign volunteer knocks on a heavy oak door. A woman with white hair and brilliant blue eyes answers. When she hears the unexpected visitor is there to talk about a candidate, she cuts him off with an apology.

“I’m terribly sorry, I should invite you in to sit down, but we’re just about to leave, and in any case, I’ve already made up my mind. I’m voting for the other guy.” She points over her shoulder at a man reading the newspaper. “You could talk to my husband, but it’s not worth your time. He doesn’t vote. He’s from Norway, and he’s still a Norwegian citizen. He’s only been living in this country for 46 years.”

The big man Berlusconi

April, 2006. The big man Berlusconi, richest in Italy, is feeling desperate in the days before elections. He tells a crowd of shopkeepers: I have too much esteem for the intelligence of Italians to think that they could be such coglioni as to vote against their own interests.

Coglioni. Literally, "testicles." Millions of countrymen and women reduced by their Prime Minister to anatomical unmentionables.

Then something happens. In sunlit piazzas, under stone arcades, where old men in knit caps smoke filterless cigarettes, in country towns where Roman ducts still bring the water, in fashion capitals, everywhere, on people’s lips, on buttons pinned to smart sportcoats, on t-shirts, on stickers adorning the bums of small cars, above the din of motor scooters and factories and loud insistent conversation, the same phrase stands out, steps up, everywhere and everyone together says WE ARE ALL COGLIONI.