Possibility and Pow

I was playing with Reda in the indoor-outdoor courtyard in our house yesterday. I'm not sure I know how to describe what went down.

First, though, let me describe what happened immediately preceding that with my sister (who is turning 21 the same day as me, as in we were born the same day in world history; as in, as my mother here put it, there will be food and joy from wall to wall). She is the sister who attends Mohammed V University, majors in English, has a tantalizingly beautiful 5 month old baby (I haven't had the balls for pictures yet, but they are imminent), and spoke to me the first time I met her about how really she couldn't imagine living even 20 years ago; how Morocco is so much better than it was...for women, especially. That time, she wore striped pant suit pants and like a stylish tight v-necked sweater and her incredible black hair was resting on either of her shoulders and it was gravy, if not interesting.

This afternoon I'm writing about, I go to the open door, and this is the first time I've presumed to open the door to the house, and in strides my sister, who I haven't seen in several days, and she is wearing the veil and a black jellaba and as she brushed past me, head down, she maybe whispered a salaam to me in my response to my sincerely joyful salaam aleikum. I don't know how to justify this...but it hurt. I felt completely shut off from her, and it was clearly her choice. It was shocking, really, maybe pathetically, like she had some alternate personality that she put on when she wanted; this meant, of course, that I could only communicate with her when she wanted; that there was no real her, but only the her she chose to offer the world. (This is what I was thinking). Now, I know, slow down; still, it hurt, shocked, even if that's somehow a good thing. I don't know why.

And then over tea like an hour later, when her husband, Said, who is twice her age, had arrived, he was wearing another of his purposely-wrinkled leather jackets over a hoodie and tight dark jeans, groomed as hell, and smelling like the cologne they sell on Mohammed V (the thing about men's fashion here is that it is so slick and nice, but it is all the same; all the clothes a well-dressed man buys are on full displayed on Mohammed V, and I think fashion, to work, should be a sort of secret, like even though we all know where so and so shops, or can find out, we can't see that place, and that matters). I suddenly notice how Said often grabbed her wrist (I did see this, right?); how he makes as if he's going to spit at her; how he never looks at her with love and finds their child amusing. She responds with her own nasty gestures, severely mocks him--but why hadn't I seen this before? And how did they create such a child, Rita, that pinpoints you with her eyes, lights up and smiles hugely when you return her gaze?

What was all that talk of it being better for women? Is this something people--not just women--have been saying all throughout history, i.e. that it is better for X? Or is it something Fati has heard in the university and is merely, if convincingly, recycling? I'm realizing now that, at first, I granted her ultimate authority, immunity, even invincibility, to hypocrisy; that I felt like it was my job to reconcile her sudden change in appearance and demeanor with my own conceptions. It didn't seem possible that she, being this mysterious beautiful "subject", could be hypocritical, confused; but so maybe she is. Maybe that confusion, that pulsing hypocrisy, is a good sign, in fact..

After tea, feeling dark, I played with Reda. Actually, I was on my laptop under the stars sitting in a seat way too small for me, and he was being annoying, tapping buttons and all (maybe I shouldn't have been on my laptop). And so then he is showing me how he can lift Rita's baby carriage, how he can lift a tank of water, and so obviously I decide I'll show him arm wrestling, if he doesn't already know. He likes that, especially that he wins, and suddenly he really likes me and he says, Look--which is the only word in English he seems to know--and does some failed flips on his skateboard for me.

Then he gestures for me to follow and he takes me through the open door into the alley outside the house where two kids, one really fat, the other really thin, are waiting (for us? in general?), and I don't know how he knew they were there, and they look either really sullen and beaten or threatening, or both, and together then the four of us walked to the neighbor's door and a fifth boy answers and nods and comes out to wait wit us. A woman called Reda's name from some second or third floor in the shadows--you don't think of shadows being in corners above you--and the 6 year-old says something mockingly vile in response and leads me back inside.

Back inside, I'm back on my computer (come on: I have bad academic writing to read), and Reda is pressing buttons again, more persistently, and I have to say La La La when he goes for the Power, and I actually started writing these thoughts about him as he was reaching under my arms to try to mess me up; and the more he tried to mess me up, the more I needed to write about him; write about him that very every moment, I mean, record every second, feeling...

I tried to stop us both. I showed him the map of Africa, which I have made my backdrop, but he didn't dig that; he put a necklace on the edge of my screen and then flung it at me. He put a toy gun to my head and said, Pow, which I'm not sure if Pow is English or not. I opened a document and typed his name, and then I made it big and bold, and he liked that okay, but what he really liked was when I let him type random letters and I read out the words/sounds he was making. I could have made any noises/words for him, but for some reason I was very loyal to whatever he was putting on the screen, e.g. 8uwqron2r-r21j1m3.

And it occurred to me rather darkly that he was making fun of me, the way I furiously focused and typed on my superior white machine; worse, like he was playing the anthropologist observing my anthropologist observing him...! It was getting ugly and also delirious, and we were equally wrapped up in one another.

I heard Fati yell at Reda to leave me alone from the other room...and so in defiance of that I got up, shut the computer, just begin to chase him in an elaborate way (it is too fulfilling to swing a 6 year-old in circles with one arm) around the courtyard...and Reda at one point runs into a room I have not yet been into and comes out brandishing a real one-foot knife, bigger than his head this fucking knife, a nice-looking wood handle, too...and Reda is grinning and drooling at the corners of his mouth like a really cute maniac, shoving the knife at me from the distance, now, of the courtyard.

I had to approach him really slowly, like a negotiator in that movie, take it from him, and love him, tell him it is alright--I don't know why I did that, coaxed him into giving me the weapon like it were him with a knife being held to him, but it made sense. And the worst part was, holding him after that, feeling most of the night and his little warmth, was one of the best moments I have had here.

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