stranger in a strange land

Here I am en route to America. Already in Charles de Gaule airport I feel a strange tingle of confusion at this intense commercial hub, combined with a bit of giddiness and nausea (but that’s probably from the parasite my body is busy making comfortable). As Soliba said, I left as the moon began to die, and I will be back when a second new moon begins again. To count days by the moon – there is something so existential about that, so much realer than looking at a calendar, staring at these symbols for something that is right in front of us anyway. I showed them a postcard I had of the stature of liberty, explaining that it is a symbol of my home. As I told them of the enormous figure of a person made of stone, they look frightened. “Does it kill people?” they asked me, and I realized they thought that LIberty was a “jeni,” the spirits that live in the rock cliffs near our village. I’ve heard stories of these jenis. They were the apparent cause of my 12 year old friend Gosu’s black eye, which he claimed was from by the rock hurled at him by a jeni he came too close to. My PC friend stationed in the village next to me told me of animist rituals for the jeni involving hanging monkey corpses at the mountains they live in. Him and our photojournalist friend went up to the hills, curious about this legend, and ended up running, frightened, after seeing a giant two-legged creature that was throwing rocks at them after they got too close.

Recalling the last talk I had with Soliba, we sat squeezed next to each other despite the long wood bench in her hut, her 2 year old son Amadou leaning his head on my lap and her daughter Domandou exploring my white fingers. This airport suddenly feels cold, disconnected. It is so large; vast and vacuous, there is no danger of being invaded by another traveller’s tired coffee breath, no chance of a shocking contact with anothers’ arm, the air conditioning thwarting any disastrous odors that dare to escape the human skin. We all sit in the terminal, equally separated by our chest level armrests and stare at our computers (I’m no exception). Along we float on aerodynamic soles, eyes averted, and I feel so tiny in this chrome fortress. Yes, we are as elusive as the jenis, frightened at proximity we throw rocks into any collective culture, not a body of people but scattered hermits in our hills. I hope Mali avoids the avalanche, the Nike-colored debris are just beginning to flake away. . .