The Secret to a Long Life

Lately I have been consumed by my father's health. Trips to Cincinnati to visit him in the hospital, phone calls with my sisters, talks with doctors and social workers.

At least twice a day, Sam and I compare his father's health to my father's health. His father is 86, ten years older than my father, but his father is still living in his home. Even after an amputated leg and bladder cancer. My father wasn't able to stay in his home, and now he's on a fast-track to assisted living. Which he, and we, can't afford. It's constantly on my mind.

Sam and I are talking about this--again--just before I walk to the mailbox. When I come back, I hand him the mail that is addressed directly to him. One piece is a postcard from his dentist. Sam was due for a cleaning in January, 2010.

Wow, Sam says. They're just now letting me know that I'm two years late for my appointment.

That's quite a reminder system they have, I say.

You know, Sam says musingly, my father's been doing well for two years. Pretty much since January, 2010.

Spooky, I say. You think there's a connection?

We ponder this for a moment or two.

I think I'll make an appointment, Sam says. Just for a cleaning, nothing else. I don't want to kill my father, I just want him to suffer a little.

Especially Seeking Somalis

Not long ago, I was at the Global Mall and I ran across a neon green handbill. It was a casting call for the Tom Hanks feature film, Capt. Phillips, and it stated that Sony Pictures was "especially seeking Somalis."  Because I found this handbill outside a Somali money-wiring business, and because the auditions were held at the Somali Community Association, I can only assume that some Somalis are on board with this project.

It made me think, though.

On one hand, it would seem to be a step forward to have a film company insist that Somalis play Somalis. Unlike Black Hawk Down which used mostly Nigerian actors. (Or even The Good Wife, a show I love, which has a Somali character who doesn't look to be Somali).

On the other hand, I have actor friends who would argue that it doesn't matter. Actors are actors. They inhabit other identities.

But I think it does matter. When I was writing the Westerns section of my book Adaptations, I did a lot of research into how Native Americans were depicted in film. One of the films I cited, A Man Called Horse, particularly crystalized a lot of the controversy. Ward Churchill, a Native American activist and author, pointed out: "This droll adventure, promoted as 'the most authentic description of North American Indian life ever filmed,' depicts a people whose language is Lakota, whose hairstyles range from Assiniboin through Nez Perce to Comanche, whose tipi design is Crow, and whose Sun Dance ceremony and lodge in which it is held are both typically Mandan."

At the time, most reviewers agreed with Louise Sweeney, who said: "A Man Called Horse does have a documentary realism for several reasons. ... Production notes emphasize the use of members of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in feature roles and behind the scenes, creating accurate costumes, teepees, and weapons." Today, the notion that this film is documentary-like is almost laughable. Watch it. It hasn't held up well.

Our collective opinion has changed because there has been work done to educate people about Native American issues. We've come some distance from images of the Red Man and the Noble Savage.

Which, I guess, is my issue with this Tom Hanks film, however well-intentioned. Pirate is to Somali as Savage is to Native American.

Otherwise, would Jeffrey Gettleman (one of the best and only Western journalists covering Somalia from inside Somalia) have ended a recent article about the drought and famine in Somalia with this paragraph (emphasis mine):

It is important to remember that however plagued Somalia is, however routine conflict, drought and disease have become, however many Somalis have already needlessly died, Somalis are not somehow wired differently from the rest of us. They are not numb to suffering. They are not grief-proof. I’ll never forget the expression on Mr. Kufow’s face as he stumbled out of Benadir Hospital into the penetrating sunshine with his lifeless little girl in his arms. He may not have been weeping openly. But he looked as if he could barely breathe.

Conversation with a Young Poet

I need to write six poems for my poetry project, but I don't know what to write about, Mary says.

Mary is fourteen and in the sixth grade. She's behind in her schooling because she lived in Africa until a few years ago.

Why don't you try thinking about childhood memories, I suggest. Does anything come to mind?

The jumping cats.

Jumping cats?

Yes. When I was little, my father and I used to sit on our porch and listen to the cats jump from roof to roof. The houses were very close together, you know. This was when we lived in Guinea.

How did that make you feel? I ask.

Okay when I was with my father, but scared at night. Loud thumps and scratching sounds would wake me up. The cats were all black with yellow eyes.

That does sounds scary, I said. I think that story would make a really good poem. What else do you remember?

There was a European boy in our village who walked on his toes all the time.

A European boy?

Yes, he had an accent.

And he walked on his toes?

All the time.

Desmond, who has been listening in, jumps out of his chair. Like this? he says, walking with a bounce.

No, Mary says, like this. She gets up and stands on her toes, like a ballerina on pointe.

Wow, I say. He walked like that all the time?

Uh huh. We laughed and laughed and laughed.

Writing About Real People

I recently published an essay about what it's like to live with someone who is struggling with a neurological disorder. (To be specific, his disorder might be multiple sclerosis, or it might be a form of ALS. We don't have a definitive diagnosis. All we know is that it sucks.)

I published the essay (called "Toadal Chaos") in Gulf Coast, a wonderful journal out of the University of Houston.  I was really proud to be in this issue, because it's very beautiful and contains some very fine work. The problem was ... I couldn't tell anyone.

While I had implicit approval from Sam to write about our struggles, I hadn't shown him the essay. It was hard to write and I knew it would be hard to read. I was afraid it would hurt him. To be honest, I was sort of counting on the fact that only writers read lit mags. But I felt guilty. Since I've been writing nonfiction I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about privacy and trespass and truth, etc.

Then a friend gave me a copy of Sharon Solwitz essay, "The Witness Complains," about living with her husband's MS. Our stories are remarkably similar, although we expressed them in very different ways.

So I wrote to Sharon and asked her whether she had shown her essay to her husband. How would someone react, seeing himself exposed in such a way? She kindly wrote back immediately and said that it had been difficult for him to read, but that he was grateful. Her words had shown him that she had seen and understood what was happening with him. Illness is so isolating.

Still, I didn't show my essay to Sam. He had to ask for it. He said he wanted to read everything I've published in the last year. I prevaricated. There isn't much, I told him. Which is true. It's been a dry year. He persisted.

I went into the other room while he read. His sobs were so loud I had to come out several times to make sure he was okay. I cannot even say how difficult those minutes were.

When he was done, he said it was honest. He said there was no reason for me to have kept it from him. He said it was hard to read.

The story doesn't end there. Last Sunday, he took my essay to his family's holiday reunion. He set it on one of the tables with a sticky note to mark the place. He did it because he wanted his family to know about what I do. Such bravery astounds me.

Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events

I'm on the phone, again, with my father. This time I've called him. To get his side of the story.

The story is something I won't go into here, for many reasons, including legal ones. Let's just say that it involved provocation, violence, an evil neighbor, and his golf handicap. Familiar tropes.

Our discussion ranges far and wide, backwards and forwards. People have been after him his whole life, my dad says, for no reason. There was that guy at the steel mill who tried to knife him. Good thing he was able to talk him down with a quote from Thomas Payne. Then there was the guy in the army who tried to shoot him. That time he talked him down with quotes from Shakespeare.

I'm exhausted by the speed of his chatter. By the mental leaps necessary to follow what he's saying. Dad, I say. Have you ever wondered why so many people want to kill you?

See! he said. Your Old Man is a great character! You should be writing about me!

I've been hearing this for years. What a great source of material you have! people say.

It occurs to me that this is just another untruth in  a whole rat's nest of untruths. No matter how you look at it, the vessel is half-empty.

The Golden Years

Oh, the ways in which I can procrastinate are many and varied. I should be writing, and if not writing, grading papers, but instead I am packing. (We are moving.) And instead of packing, I am googling Philip Gibbs.

He was, apparently, the author of over thirty books, and, in his day, a famous WWI journalist. For some mysterious reason, I have a novel by him called The Golden Years on my bookshelf. The spine is cracked and the pages are yellow and the cover is a rather unattractive plum color. I am trying to decide whether to keep it or throw it out.

The first line is promising: "It seems incredible that I should know a lady who once danced with the Emporer Napolean ..." The last line is coy: "Did you say two lumps of sugar, my dear?"

I'm never going to read this book and I guess I'm never going to get rid of it. If it were more contemporary and in better shape, I would donate it to the library--but they will, I think, throw it out. (Too much like calling the Humane Society about a stray cat.)

However forgettable, I'm sure it took Mr. Gibbs a sizable chunk of time to write this book. And, while writing a book myself--one that is probably forgettable and certainly time-consuming--it just doesn't seem right to heartlessly toss his away.

Before They Were Pirates

This morning I heard that, in Egypt, the streets are ringing with protest poetry. This is wonderful, and even surprising, but nothing new for that part of the world. In Somalia, many believe poetry helped bring down their dictator. In honor of the moment, I'm excerpting a little from an unpublished essay of mine. 

Long before the Somalis were pirates, they were poets.

Poetry was present in every facet of life. Everything merited a poem, from churning butter to herding goats to visiting a friend to turning down a marriage proposal. If you wanted to request something, you did it with a poem. If you wanted to object to something, you did it with a poem. If you wanted to explain something, you did it with a poem. Somalia was (and still is, to a large extent) an oral society and poems contained the information needed to live. They taught botany, animal husbandry, geography, history, ethics, philosophy. Poetry was also a political force. Each clan appointed a poet who played a key role in making war or protecting peace. In fact, some say it was poetry, as recently as a few decades ago, that finally brought Somalia’s dictator down. 

I’ve read everything I can find on the subject, although there’s less than you might think, given poetry’s importance in Somali culture. Nobody knows how far back their poetic tradition goes. British explorer Sir Richard Burton, one of the first Westerners to venture into the land of the Somalis, made note of it in the 1850s:

The country teems with “poets, poetasters, poetitos, poetaccios:” every man has his recognized position in literature as accurately defined as though he had been reviewed in a century of magazines.

The complexity of the art form he described has led people to believe that the practice stretches much further back, but, mysteriously, there are no surviving poems prior to the 1700s.

Poetry contests, much like our poetry slams, have long been a common form of entertainment in Somalia. Canadian author Margaret Laurence, who lived in Somaliland in the 1950s and who made the first attempt to translate Somali poetry into English, describes a competition in which the objective was to write a poem about the vagina without using the word and without offending public sensibilities. One can only imagine the neologisms that were created in the service of that set of constraints.

Sometimes the contests weren’t as playful. In the early 1980s, when Somalia was nearing its breaking point and its president, Siad Barre, had shown himself to be just another corrupt and cruel African dictator, two poets decided to challenge one another to a poetic duel that would directly confront the regime. Where do these Japanese cars come from, one poem asked, when most people have nothing? Cassette tapes, which had been enthusiastically adopted by the nomads, became the delivery method. Poets from around the country, and the world, added their voices to the debate. Poetry cassettes were everywhere. All told, around sixty poets contributed about one-hundred-and-twenty poems.

Not long after the contest began, the SNM—one of the first and largest resistance movements— was formed, operating out of a base in Ethiopia. Some say the country’s turning point came when the two poets who began the contest defected to Ethiopia in the middle of the night and began to actively work with the resistance. “And the armed poetry started,” as one poet put it.

For the years I’ve been teaching Somalis, I’ve searched for evidence of their poetry. Not amongst the intellectuals in African Studies programs, but in the homes of newly arrived refugees. I’ve heard that poetry cassettes still circulate, but I’ve also heard the old poetic tradition, based as it is on the pastoral lifestyle, is being wrecked by war and usurped by the Somali love for new technology. So who knows? Once, when I was trying to buy a Somali-English dictionary, a Somali friend gave me a ride to the market where they are sold. Her car was old, low-slung and rusty. Beneath the sound of the exhaust, I heard something verse-like coming from the cassette deck. It was in a language I didn’t understand. Is that poetry? I asked excitedly. No, she said gently. That is Qr’aan.

When I’ve asked Somali women about their poetry, they tell me to talk to the men. (The women’s poetry is usually private and domestic, the men’s is far more public.) When I ask the men, they shrug, but not unkindly.  

Is it because it is too difficult to translate? Or because I won’t understand? Don’t know enough about camels? Or drought? Or clan politics? Or is it because they are refugees, and have other things to think about?

  
Note: Alexander Stille's The Future of the Past has a wonderful chapter about how technology is impacting Somali poetry. He talks at length about the impact of poetry on Barre's downfall.