The Neighbourhood

Dear diary, it’s been a while since I called you that. It’s hot in this city, I feel like I need to shower three times a day. I can’t keep up with the shirts. White’s turning gray. I sit in these stuffy cabs, little hot pods trawling through the swarming madness and noise of this traffic. I turn the driver’s meters on myself now, though, to avoid arguments. Click that little flag down outside the car. Tip 10 rupees. That’s water for nearly a week if you live in the slum.

I been down there a few times these last couple days. I didn’t want to sit around, this city needs so much help. This country. I found Dev through some googling and emailing. He runs Down to Earth- a charity organization for slum kids. It’s not big, it’s not old. Dev got a hut built on stilts in the middle of the slum beside the World Trade Center, South Bombay. It’s beside a vacant lot that’s a CEO’s helicopter landing pad and a popular cricket ground for the kids. Open space is precious.

A couple youth that live in this ‘neighbourhood’ are helping Dev out- he wants these kids to build confidence and knowledge, so he facilitates school-type learning as well as recreational; sports and arts. These young guys are helping kids from the different slum areas put on a show- mainly dancing. The kids are out of school now, so they rehearse every day. I’m too late to help out with the show, so I’m teaching the young guys guitar- they’ve always wanted to learn. I bought em a travel guitar which Dev will let them have when they’re ready- he doesn’t believe these kids should accept too many handouts because it breeds dependence which destroys confidence and ambition.

The ‘neighbourhood’ I’ve been shown around twice so far- once by Dev, who spends most his free time there, and once by Sameer, who lives in the middle of it. I don’t like the word slum sometimes- because millions of people in this city call these places home- they make these places Home by the sweat of their brow. But at the same time, ‘neighbourhood’ or ‘village’ conveys the wrong images. The hotel room I’m sitting in right now is more than twice the size of Sameer’s home- he lives there with his mother and father, grandfather, sister and her 2 infants. A neat little kitchen area in the corner occupies about three square feet of floor space, with modest tin dishes hung on the wall. They have been here for longer so they’re lucky enough to have a hut made from cement- newer arrivals have to become architectural artists in the medium of corrugated metal, plastic, jute, bamboo and palm leaves. Down where the mangroves used to be the huts teeter on stilts and the filthy Bombay tide washes underneath their floor as they sleep. These are illegal homes, though. Where Sameer and my other students live is a ‘legal’ slum, and one that’s lucky enough to garner a little government attention. The narrow walkways that used to be a sludgy muck have been crudely paved. Electricity is no longer stolen from the nearest office building but is provided by wires strung at eye-level down the walkways. The toilet is no longer the nearest garbage dump or beach- a three-story tiled shithouse has been erected for the thousands of residents here- 1 rupee per shit. The water is privatized- a man comes around noon everyday in a truck, and doles it out from a black plastic well. Women scramble and cuss in jostling queues with all manner of plastic containers- 20 litres is 2 rupees. Most fill 2 large containers- cooking and drinking water for the whole family for the next 24 hours.

It is a mad little world. Privacy is non-existent. Dogs prowl and are known to bite and the air is thick with flies and dust. Women work in the houses, cleaning, cooking, caring. If the mother is away during the day sweeping floors in the nearby high-rises then the eldest daughter takes care of the chores. This is a mindset Dev is working to change. Almost no girls have joined his activity programs- their parents think it’s a waste of time for them. Even school is a waste of time for the girls. Most of the women here can’t read the names and numbers on the buses they take to work- which are written in Hindi. But Dev is patient. He figures if he can prove the worth of his programs with the boys then more girls may be allowed to join.

I just wish I had more time. Dev say any contact these kids can have with an outsider is good- it opens their eyes to learn little by little of the big world outside their tiny cramped one. And hopefully open minds can look beyond the workaday struggle of their parents and see possibilities of college studies and less mind-numbing, low-paying labour jobs. It’s hard to break out. But Sameer has studied to be a chef at a local college- he hopes to find work in one of the bigger hotels.

I don’t get sad when I walk around the slums. I see poverty like I’ve never seen before and people living in ways I didn’t think people could live. I see people surviving and kids being kids, which they’ll do wherever they are. I mostly look around and see so much that needs to be done and wish I had more time here. These people are virtually ignored in the economic boom that is India and they stab themselves in the back with their cultural norms- the illiterate women, the alcoholic and abusive men, the large families and kids becoming their parents. Dev must feel like he’s looking up a forested mountain which he needs to clear of every tree; chip-chip-chipping away with the ax at that very first one. He must be so overwhelmed. But he’s here everyday. Trying to let these kids know that they can pull themselves out of this world. Trying to give them the tools.

I’m just teaching guitar. Hoping the older guys will pass on the knowledge. The seeds of music. Telling the kids about what I do, where I come from. That the world’s actually a pretty big place though it may not seem like it.

Burning Twigs

Standing in my tower gazing down at the slums. Some king. This city goes forever. If I had a speed-dating service, 5 minutes meeting with everyone that lives in the range of my vision, could I complete the rounds in my lifetime? In an hour I’d meet 12 people, in an 8-hour workday, 96. 100 people a day. 500 a week. About 22000 a year with a few weeks off.. 220 000 in a decade. And in a lengthy 50-year career of briefly getting to know as many Bombayites as I can, I’d reach a grand total of approximately 1.1 million. Within the bounds of my vision from the top of this castle tower, modern day fortress of luxury, immune to the fracas and frenzy of the street-dwellers below, there are probably more than 10 million souls. Beyond the pollution haze and deeper into the Northern suburbs are probably another 5 million. There are too many souls to count.

No wonder they worship so many gods here- hard to imagine a single god’s army of answering machines, blinking like distant stars, ‘You have 280,161,544 messages’. Prayers flood upward, translucent puffs of smoke, rainbow in the sun like oil on tarmac, they grow thick in the stratosphere, oily, airborne rivers are born, cascades of invisible rainbows lost between here and space, angels caught in the prayer paste like cormorants in oil spills, slick and frightened, suffocating from the Earth’s truths, humanity’s silent desperation and terrible fate. Beings of light floundering in invisibility, broken by spider-webs where the black meets the blue. Couldn’t it be we’re fending for ourselves? Temporarily, at least. Ant farmers. Science project employees. Truth is, I’m no further down the road than when I started. Been through the Holy Land where some kids have bombs and some have guns, some live in mansions and others in slums. Where the world’s greatest prophets rose to the sky, and the people cry because they finally made it. I’ve been through the land where Buddha was born, bisected by the holy Ganges, the sustainer, lifeblood of Shiva and Vishnu and Brahma.

And I’m starving. I am dug deeper into my disbelief. I keep building this fence so high and I won’t be able to sit on it, gaze out, search for that truth on the horizon. This wall made of twigs I been tearing out of the forest. I’m screaming in this dark forest, the treetops are warm in sunlight and I’m scrabbling in pine-needles, tearing at branches and twigs, rippin em off the trees for firewood, for my fence, to keep warm and tall- but standing on a wall of broken twigs doesn’t bring me towards the treetops- I’m not closer. I just have lots of fuel to burn- this is what I’ve earned with my rational mind. If God isn’t on lunch, if he did indeed give me a brain, then why does it seem to lead me further and further away? The more I think, the more I look around, the more reasons I find to avoid this whole scene. And no, I’m not ignoring my heart, Joe Christ, it’s beating loud and strong, I’m fierce with my love and I’m listening hard. Wilderness of words here, I’m lost again.

It’s all or nothing, I think sometimes. I see the Buddhist monks in Ladakh- saffron robes and shorn skulls. I think of their quiet minds, their connection to the soul of the Universe which is their soul, their Middle Path, their truth and tranquility. And the next day I see poor boys who didn’t want to be farmers like their fathers, who spend their mother-given lives sitting cross-legged, eyes closed on mountaintops, so silent and alone that their minds play tricks and give them false paradises. While they never know the love of a woman, never see the sights of their planet or know the warmth of a stranger’s home a thousand miles away from theirs. It is All. Or Nothing. You want enlightenment, you better suit up and dive in- there’s no halfway. You think Jesus died for your sins? That a man, the son of God, took iron nails through his flesh and bone, hung in the heat with blood in his eyes until his very ribcage gave out and suffocated him- that a man did this as his ultimate teaching, his ultimate sacrifice- if people would only see it and rejoice in God? Then for you there is no halfway; there is no, ‘I like some of the things the Bible has to say’- Jesus knew it was the book of his father. It is the book. You better jump in. And yet I see the hate. And the one-track minds. I can see that people might say that they love their neighbours as themselves, but then they distrust them because of their culture, their religion, their sexuality. I see people who have jumped into faith, and from the top of my fence I see that I don’t like the way they behave. I don’t like how they see people, the world. How can I possibly jump in? Testing the waters with toes, that’s me. On the shore for eternity.

And so it comes back- I will look for the wisdom in these books made by man- these Bibles and Qu’rans. I’ll look for the wisdom in how holy people live, the recognition of the good in everyone, the soulful practicalities of having membership in the human beast. But it is all Wisdom. It is tied to the very earth by a spinal column and two strong legs. It isn’t whistling in the winds with the prayer vapours. It isn’t the singing spirit. That is all or nothing. And right now I’m busy burning twigs.

Wailing at the Walls

They took Jesus down from the cross over here. Under this stone is where they washed the blood from his wounds. People are crying. Here’s where his cross stood. People are crying. This is where the first Tower of David stood. It was demolished. People are crying. Wailing. Over there’s where Mohammed ascended to heaven. I’m sure they’re crying too. I feel like crying. People come from all over the world to moan and wail over a pile of stones, over a hole in the floor; for the past. Meanwhile, people still die for these memories, these ashes. Surely somewhere a clean Jesus or a heaven-bound Mohammed are crying too, looking down through telescopes-for-a-quarter from on high, looking down at the antswarms around the holy sites, shouting Look up, Look around, Look forward, not back, and for God’s sake forgive each other for once.
There’s a lot to cry about around here. And everybody tends to look the same when they cry. I wish they’d realize that.

I put a little letter in the wailing wall too. While people wailed. Swayed and nodded at the stones. Most the big crevices were over-flowing. Found a little nub emerging from the smooth stone, tucked my note in its tooth.

Traveling Curse

VI- Amman, etc.

Isn’t that just the traveling curse, meeting people who become fast friends in a mere 2 days, then being untimely ripped from them as the friendship is mid-bloom. There is yin and yang to this system. I respect Qasim so much, we are like kindred spirits in many ways. I feel for his sorrow, he is an intellectual outsider in his own society. I don’t know what to say. But he has such good in him. I just feel sad. Sad. Off on another lonely bus.

Belly dancing prancing dancer jingly jangles, a time gone by, those Wahhabis ruined it for everybody, now I don’t get to see no Arabic girls shake their shakers, janglin hips, hiding in their hijabs. -God made girls for men, for men and men only, it must get lonely in the house I’m thinking. I don’t make eye contact with most of them. Trying to be “respectful”. Sometimes I do though. Specially the ones in the burqas. Sly big brown eyes are peering through a slit, furtive glance at the foreigner. A little curious perhaps? Kill the infidel!!
I’ve got Arak in the brain. Distilled four times in “wooden” barrels, so the bottle says, made from asine seeds. Taste like sweet ouzo, looks like milk or a sperm donor sample if you add water. feel fuzzy like a peach.
At the Turkish baths steam kept making my eyes sweat and my vision’s still blurry. Then the little guy comes out in BugleBoy jean shorts to scrub me down with something like a camel-hair loufah. Taps my back when I should turn over. Pours soothing warm water over me to wash away that dead skin. Then they change my loincloth and another guy massages oil into my back, arms and legs. Doesn’t linger long on the feet- curses and drat! Drums my back too. I don’t go get massages often. They usually hurt. Plus I associate them with sex and I’m nervous my blood will betray me and pool in the wrong place at the wrong time, by association. Fortunately not. I lie on the side-bench with the tube pillows when it’s done, look at the ceiling, listen to Arabic football on the TV, wait for my tea to cool.

Last night Nahar wants me to come to this pre-wedding street party. We catch a cab and head to East Amman. How come the rougher sides of cities are almost always the east? East LA, East London, East Vancouver. We ask someone where the party at, but our eardrums are already telling us. It’s a sausage-fest street party bachelor night, light-bulbs strung from telephone poles, synthesizers set to “Arabic”, and a guy wailing on the mic. Plastic chairs all around, head-covered women leaning to watch from upper-story balconies as the young men, arm in arm, dance around in a half-circle, step, step, all together, KICK, step, step, squat, KICK- the kid with the pit-stains and the wooden stick leading the way, feet this way and that, I’ve never seen so many men dancing together except at punk shows, but that’s not really dancing, now is it? Step, step, turn-and-kick, laughing, stumbling, drunk from paper-bag booze down the street, just watery tea and pastries allowed here, the guy with the feathers and traditional red pajamas will see to that. Now the groom is hoisted on a plastic chair, his father laughing, shouting to Be Careful in Arabic, probably remembering his chair-hoisting day years ago, and then CRACK CRACK, the greasy hair in the corner returns his revolver to the small of his back after letting off a couple celebratory rounds. -That’s nothing, says Nahar, In the village it’d be everybody doin it and they’d all have Kalashnikovs. Now I’m wondering how many of these drunken dudes are packin heat, barely a woman in sight, testosterone thick in the air. But it’s pure joy- they take turns leading the dance with the leading stick, jumping over it, twirling it, passing it on, singing along, more gunshots ring out while me and Nahar sip contraband Amstel. What is the bride doing right now, while this is going on? I ask. Nahar says, She’s probably having a party with her friends, dancing and singing too. A house-party though. Indoors. They gotta stay indoors.

Twigs

V- Amman cont.

Me and Nahar hit the bars last night. No, it isn’t all camels and burqas- girls in tight jeans with blonde highlights, muscle-bound tight-tee boytoys sipping cosmopolitans on the patios- sounds like somewhere I know..
Amman has this part. Like Bombay. The upper mids, the daddy’s Mercedes kids- I guess I should’ve expected it in a big city.

Me and Nahar share pitchers of local Amstel beer. He explains King Abdullah to me, the ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with his self-appointed advisors and “publicly” appointed puppet parliament. He tells me to hush when I exclaim, You guys are ruled by a f-ing King?? Hey, this is Jordan, man. And the royalty was originally appointed by the Brits, no less, to earn public support for the revolt against the Turks in the 20s. King Abdullah’s gigantic photos and banners are everywhere, public billboards and private shrines, and he lives in palaces and makes decrees. Decrees! He’s a king!

More beer, more chat, it’s good for that. Me and my new Jordanian friend getting drunk together, my mind getting educated through the haze. It’s a strange case of realities here. I ask Nahar if people date; Girls will go out with a guy more than a few times only if they’re seriously considering if he’s marryable. Will they have sex? No- they may make out, do other things- but virginity is a woman’s honour. Men in this society have many ways of being honourable, he says- their work, their piety.. Women have only one way, and it’s between their legs.
And men don’t have female friends. Nahar went to play squash at the University with a female European friend of his who’s living in Amman- they wouldn’t let them on the court. Then, a couple weeks ago Nahar found a comfortable two-bedroom apartment to move into, and his European friend suggested they become room-mates. When the landlord discovered this idea (the potential roomie came over to look at the place), he screamed the house down, accused them of filth and sin, ordered them out, and Nahar lost the apartment. It’s hard to imagine this surrounded by the university crowd here, laughing and smoking hookah. These traditions run deep. These twigs, these pine needles obscuring the tree-trunk of spirituality for humanity. These rules. Nothing but twigs.

Nahar’s a gentle guy. An articulate but soft-spoken guy. A guy who wore a camouflage uniform to every day of public high school in Syria, just like every other kid, and knew how to dismantle and reconstruct an assault rifle by the age of 16, just like every other kid. –Everyone in the Middle East keeps a gun in their house, he says. Nobody trusts the government. They could be toppled tomorrow and people want to be able to fend for themselves.
People laugh on the patio. The waitress is Filipino, local women don’t normally work after dark. There’s guns under the pillows. Guns under the pillows… We finish the pitcher.

Like This

IV- Amman

I hope tomorrow to find an oud. A real one, not a souvenir piece of shit. Qasim is hosting me, he said he’d go with me. Qasim has sadness in his eyes. He’s separated from his wife recently, and the 15-year old daughter has gone too. But 20-year old Mahmud is with Qasim - they stick together. You can see Mahmud loves and respects his father immensely, it is a beautiful thing to witness.

Drinking tea after downing a Ukrainian omelette another guest taught him how to make, Qasim and I talk about the cancer of religion. He reads and reads and he knows so much. He tells me the historical facts of Mohammed, the baselessness of Wahhabi claims to Quranic truth which they use to control simple-minded people. Sounds like Catholics 500 years ago. He tells me how this sect has infiltrated places like Egypt and Jordan in the last 25 years, how before them Muslims were spiritual but free to have choice and live their daily lives as they saw fit. Qasim tells me how when he worked in Saudi Arabia for 2 months a while back, if you were caught walking down the street during prayer time the religious police would give you a beating. These are the Wahhabis. They began giving free lectures in Egypt and Jordan in the eighties, handing out free hijabs to the women, and by the mid-80s suddenly the women are all covering their heads. It’s like this, yanni, says Qasim, like this. And his wife held out, kept her head bare till she started to feel naked amongst all her covered friends. She began wearing the hijab. And husband and wife began to grow apart. While Qasim learns more and more about the origins of monotheism, the links to Sumerians, the truth behind Quranic tales, he begins picking his way toward God- peeling back layers, searching for the truth. God gives us a brain, yanni, he says, so that we may use it to think and to find our way to him. But this talk scares Qasim’s wife, and it scares his friends, the fear of wrath and fire is embedded in them from childhood, from society- husband and wife grow still further apart.

It’s a quiet house, here. Qasim reads for hours everyday, picking his way toward God, making his own path- it’s a search for truth I can relate to. I guess God gave me a brain too…