The Abu Nour Mosque, Damascus

(See part I under “November, 2009”)

I wanted ordinary street crossing. Cars stop, you cross safely in front of them. Here you thread between cars moving 25 mph or so. Not just the would-be matadors. Everybody. I stood on the inside of a scarf-headed grandmother and stepped when she stepped. We both turned a shoulder to the traffic as it zoomed past on both sides. We found the middle of the street. There seemed less than twelve inches between the hand that covered my heart and the side mirror of the car that passed. I worked on my breath so as to move purposefully, but the adrenalin was pumping and I couldn’t trust myself to be in charge of my limbs.  Reaching the sidewalk was a victory – We’re alive! I’m alive! I restrained the impulse to hug her for saving my life. This scene repeated after I bought 4 bunches of spinach, 2 carrots, 2 leeks and a kohlrabi – all for $.42 from the outdoor market.

RAMADAN: In the late afternoons I sat writing in my comfortable corner room with windows on two sides.  The hot sun was horizontal, held behind buildings, as all of Damascus focused a swallow of water to break the dry thirst, a sweet date to start up the collective digestion.Taxi drivers were grouchy and impatient (better to walk between now and sunset); Minutes ticked by toward darkness and tables laden with lamb and chicken and steaming vegetables, fruits, cheeses, bread and sweets.At exactly 4:40 on the clock, dusk arrived and a loud canon was fired, somewhere nearby, to signal the end of the Ramadan day. Then began the call to prayer from every mosque: ALLAH HO AKBAR! Tower by tower, green neon light lit up the minarets. Prayer and feasting began. It would have been good to be invited to a Ramadan meal, but it never happened. We’ve been made welcome, but not embraced. There may be anger and suspicion behind the good manners. After all, our government has given this land the humiliating title: “Axis of Evil”. To these people, proud of their history as one of the oldest cities in the world, that’s insulting.In the fast-breaking hours the streets were deserted, shops closed until 8:00 when the shopping began every evening during the month-long holiday. Families with strollers, groups of girls with linked arms, young men in twos – or trailing their large families – turned out and strolled the shops with the intention of buying something. There were sock, watch, and popcorn vendors in the middle of the walking areas. Corn-on-the-cob.  In the souk you could buy a forged damascene sword, beautiful children’s clothing, a hooka, prayer beads and the latest in fashionable covering scarves and modern clothing. I never discovered when the party stopped. By 10 pm I was headed for my room. Business was still open. Then there was a canon at 3:30AM, to wake the city, to give enough time to prepare food and pray and have a big meal before the sun rose.

One of the things that made me feel OK about going to Syria was the assurance that we were under the protection of the Grand Mufti of Syria. What a name! Who could that be? The man who received the Pope on his recent visit, had invited us to be guests at the Abu Nour Mosque for the Jumma (Friday) prayers. We were met in the VIP room and given a stunning welcome by Sheik Salah (Dr.) Kuftaro, head of the largest Muslim social service organization in Syria, son of the Grand Mufti, , and a Nakshabandi Sufi as well. He spoke to us with affection: “I can’t say to you  – you are welcome – because you are in your very home! There is a lot in common between each of us.

about to go into the Mosque

I think the most important thing that joins us is the mysticism of Sufism.” After he spoke, the men were escorted out and joined him on the dais on either side of his father, while the women were led upstairs to a glassed-in gallery with plush chairs and simultaneous translation headsets. The Mufti spoke commentary on a subject from Qur’an, then introduced Elias, our group leader,  to the thousand plus men seated on the vast carpet, 3 floors down from our seats.  I could see him clearly, and Shabda, in his yellow hat and shirt. Elias expressed how happy we were to be there and apologized to everyone there on behalf of the American people.  ~ We have come to break through this wall that is being built between the people of the West and the people of the Muslim world. We have been welcomed with kindness & hospitality even though my country has not been kind in its policy toward Syria. …The simple fact that you receive us with such generosity is a great strength of soul and character that is stronger than any weapon of war. Please know that your kindness is… evidence of living Islam.(The word Islam comes from salaam, and means peace.)

view from the women's VIP seats

We observed the scene and listened to this amazing speech being simultaneously translated into Arabic. I looked around at the faces of the Syrian women near me. They smiled back and nodded. Several of us were in tears. I thought of this as enormous, on the scale of my life-experiences, felt overjoyed to witness this message of peace.

To conclude… to protect our children we must do everything we can to break through the masks that are being painted on our faces.  When we truly meet each other, we will have Peace. Let nothing stop us from getting to know each other. Shukran. (thank you).   It was as if the great mosque had become a table of a thousand candles and the women kept lighting and re-lighting one another as we were led to the VIP area where Elias received an engraved plaque. I learned in Morocco to copy what’s done among Muslim sisters who have prayed together, so I began kissing warm cheeks and quietly repeating: As-Salaam Aleikim.

Elias receives plaque

Since the women are conservative here, it was a strong gesture on my part, but they seemed to appreciate the contact. Wa’leikim As-Salaam, They whispered back.

I want to wake up in Damascus with its 3:30 AM Ramadan canon (fired somewhere near the hotel, in the middle of the city – as an alarm clock!), Damascus with its pedestrian insanity, cheap vegetables and blocked internet reception for AOL. I am fond of our hotel – the Al Majed – where they make special day-time vegetable meals for me, where the fourth floor mysteriously floods at night; Damascus, with  its safe-to-walk-at-night streets; its kind citizens who said to us many times, You are from America? You are most welcome!

Oona Beatrix Haggerty. Born August 24th 2009.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:/Its loveliness increases; it will never/ Pass into nothingness; but still will keep/ A bower quiet for us, and a sleep/ Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing… John Keats. It was difficult to find a poetic response to the exquisite moment of meeting my Granddaughter.  A couple of months ago I began to re-read my own mother’s leather copy of The Poems of John Keats. On his tombstone was written [with no name at his own request]: Here lies one whose name was writ in water.  The feeling of great joy and great sorrow can melt one completely, dissolving who we take ourselves to be into the same ocean.

Monday night, just after several of us stood in line for, then tasted the best ice cream in Berkeley, Oona Beatrix Haggerty was born in a hospital just a few blocks from the ice cream store. It seems just after I wrote the last posting about waiting for the baby, Laura went into labor – a long labor, but one mercifully, without complications.

Last night I held her and fell into the eternity the new ones carry to us for awhile. Then I felt the hoop of continual life and death, and my new place along it’s curve. I spoke on the phone to Great-Grandmother Gloria, age 87, and felt her up ahead of me. Shabda sang an evening Raga to Oona and she slept.  I kissed my  courageous daughter-in-law and  hugged my son close, savoring our new roles – Grandmother, father, child.

Sweet and low, sweet and low,/Wind of the Western Sea!…/Over the rolling waters go/…While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps.. Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Everything is going to change next week or the week after.  I have no doubt that is true. For the Sufi there is a kind of elevator that you are in and every now and then it changes floors unexpectedly. Once I was at a sacred place on the white-washed hillside above  Fez, Morocco, bathing in the atmosphere of a saint from centuries ago, when all-at-once I felt as though a large energy filled me and wished me to reach out and touch and empower my fellow travelers. When I felt like myself again, I was different, but my knowing Sufi guide and companion whispered to me, don’t think about it, just let it go. Wise words, because the western mind is always trying to understand stuff, bring experience into something we can examine. There is the human mystery known as labor and birth.. Afterwards, it’s like trying to fit into your 10-year-old shoes when you are 20. Time has marked you. You are on another floor and the elevator door is open and you walk out with your mind blank, changed from the woman who stepped into that “lift,” as they call an elevator in England. A painting can do that. Vermeer’s The Geographer, shows a man, bent over a book and a chart holding a compass. He’s lost in some geographical place or calculation, perhaps inside the flat world with the vanishing edge where boats disappeared… and that mood matches a cool filtered light which enters the painting through the lattice of clear window glass, then falls on the floor and the globe behind him. Great art can put you there, if you are lucky. Step out of the museum washed in that light.

Vermeer, The Geographer

When my son, Ammon, and his beautiful wife Laura become parents for the first time  – very soon–I will enter new light. So they say. In the mean time I am suspended like the geographer; I’m not exactly in the room with the compass and globe, and not quite at some imagined location in his vision. My life will change as when the elevator door opens. I will be a grandmother. My arms will hold a baby and my house will become a grandparent’s house. This is all a normal thing, they tell me; gates across the stairs, child-proof locks, weight training for lifting.  I’m impatient. What will the eyesof my granddaughter see when she looks at me? What will I see in her face? Like all great mysteries, this unseen land will be charted and I will set foot there. There will be a name. And celebration. Oh, yes!

   

Tiger Lillies...

Touch a silky floral creature and you risk being pricked, bitten, pecked, growled at, or licked. Imagine this tiny, furry or reptilian beast tugging flower petals around itself, trying on greenery, snapping at the others, or roaring fragrantly like the Tiger Lily does when provoked. Which of these deserves to spring from the patrician rose stem, with its history of bloody elegance? The Mousecup doesn’t. Expect tears from those whose leaves dry out before the blossom, and some bud will likely embarrass itself by popping out from a weedy nettle stalk.

a rare sighting of the Roosterbag

Staghorn, Frogwart! What hostess will let you bring that arrangement inside? There’s always the danger that the animal might overpowers the flower. Let’s say a dragonwing grows a second wing, a body, large jaws, and yanks out the roots to make a tail.

Dandylion

Call the Dandylion. (Mention diversity.) Plant the giant, mythically strange Roosterbag in your yard. Plant two or three! Many avoid the lovely, flowering Dogwood tree that barks at anyone pushing a stroller, while Dogtooth Violets just whine and snap at your legs. Foxgloves usually flower cleanly,without incident.

foxglove

 The Cock’scomb is often grafitti’d by adolescent boys, while the Cat’s Claw bush outside a party can catch and tear a girl’s dress.

 For rank geezerhood, try the Goat’s Beard, yellowing like aging teeth. In those tabloid moments, observe the Lambs Ear and Pussywillow in strapless evening gowns and stiletto heels, made up lambs and kitties as small as your thumb, each decorated with red, white and pink petals, and smelling like cherry chapstick.

I’m in a cabin, somewhere down off 23 South, in North West Arkansas, no phone, wifi or interference from the outer world. Tall forest everywhere! To touch in with the outside world or announce The Sound Journal (the brand new on-line version Kyra and I put together  thesoundjournal.org), I drive a few miles to the Carnegie library in the nearest town, Eureka Springs. California is as a dizzy flight or two away, like Oz was from Kansas. I know I’m a city girl when this place seems way more exotic than Marrakech, Morocco. How about this Palace Hotel sign on the old 1901 brothel?

 And take those two upside-down armadillos we drove past this morning – well, drove past one, then spun around to take his or her photo, there in the right lane. Wendy TC, my gracious host, was telling me what they do to gardens when they are among the living. There is a frantic kind of digging for what they need, insects and worms – like when you can’t find your keys or glasses and you might miss a flight if you don’t go right now. An armadillo can be described as a cross between a big-tailed vole and a raccoon wearing a tortoise shell back-pack.

 We went to a barn party a couple of nights ago, thrown by a giant puppeteer – the puppets are giant, the man, George, is just tall. His enormous puppets are mounted on the walls; gravel covers the floor. We were celebrating Barbara’s birthday. Most were wearing tie-dye and the food was good. I never met Barbara, but joined in the large circle, singing happy birthday. I liked the outhouse there. The sound system opened with Jimmy Hendricks’ Purple Haze. We were of the age where some of us had actually heard Jimmy Hendricks play, like at Winterland in 1968.

But the real reason I am here is to write poetry with uninterrupted happiness for hours. I’ve got a small kitchen, AC, and my best writer friend, Wendy TC is in the next cabin. I’ll be going to the library to post this. Now, back to my last version of my new poem, “Just Who Do You Think You Are?”  Where was I?

one of the many chicken trucks on the highway...

Ready for a few words from Walt….

at the barn party...

“I have perceiv’d that to be with those that I like is enough,/ To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,/ To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, laughing flesh is enough,/ To pass among them, or touch anyone, or rest my arm ever so lightly around his neck or her neck for a moment – what is this then?/ I do not ask any more delight – I swim in it as in a sea….”

Walt Whitman, excerpt, I Sing The Body Electric 4.

As magical as Morocco seemed in the last two posts, it is beginning to feel like those home movies you get your friends to watch when they come over, and some of your good friends have seen them before….  So it’s time to go from the “royals” to the frogs. 

I bet you didn’t know about the Frog Walls in East Germany near Berlin. This cannot be common knowledge. The Germans seem so level headed and practical. Their country is a grown-up place, compared to adolescent america.  Nothing prepared me for those 10″ walls along the road on the edge of the forest. Not the 10′ walls that divided Berlin – No. These are the famous walls to keep the local frogs from jumping in front of cars, or crossing the road at a bad time; or simply hanging out on that smooth black surface. I made R.R.Rahima stop the car so I could take a picture at tire level.  So now the question of motivation arises. Is it a kind of clean-freak thing — no squished frogs, flattened outlines to disturb motorists? Or is it animal (reptile) protection, environmental carefulness? Was there a swarm of frogs in this area, Communist frogs that have been hiding in the woods for a few decades? Or did an eccentric naturalist just come up with this idea and make it into a crusade? “Save the frogs along here!” (I missed taking a photo of the caution sign with a red exclamation mark and a frog.)

I googled to see what they have with “Germany” and “Frog Wall” and I found Frog Pond Life Prepasted Wall Boarder, in stock for

$8.99.

So where am I going with this? I’m not about to kiss a frog wall to see if it turns into a castle with a prince but I can show Lady GaGa who appeared on German Television last week wearing a green coat made up of dozens of Kermit-the-frogs. Here she is! it makes me wonder about those frog walls… Did Lady GaGa see the frog walls and become inspired with reptilian fashion possibilities? Or is she merely trolling for her own hoped-for Royal Moment?

May all frogs be well and happy.

I’m in the Moroccan desert city of Marrakech, as people from all over arrive. We await the large Sufi Conference sponsored and paid for (airfare, accommodations and meals) by the Royals of Morocco. Sufism in Maroc is a hedge against fundalmentalism, promoting tolerance, inclusiveness and goodwill. It is a mystical tradition, the fragrance from the flower of belief.

We are in a 5 star hotel, and I write from a lobby with fountains and inlaid marble floors. Internet access is patchy, and I sent a few letters from the far corner of the balcony on the 5th floor which overlooks Marrakech, standing in the hot wind in the cooler afternoon, now that the temperature is under 100 degrees. Of course there is airconditioning. I had lunch with my friend Hamza who lives here with his family. Nine years ago he rode on camels with me in the Sahara.

Why am I here? I’ve been invited to read my poetry – from my forthcoming book – at the conference. There are many men, but few women here. It is amazing that anyone could just up and come here with ten days notice. We were in England teaching when we received the formal invitation. So it was easier. Then we were asked on the phone to bring teachers from the Chisti Ruhaniat Sufi Tarika. Cinda Basira and Tansen from England will be joining us Thursday,and Rahima from Germany arrived with us from Berlin. We had breakfast with the Nigerian Tarika. Every few hours more people arrive. I have no idea what will happen. Our good friend Ahamed  – Jonthan Granoff –  just arrived.       Stay tuned. Hu!

Thursday morning, July 9th….

Last night a van drove us to a part of Marrakech I don’t remember at all. At 9 PM we were led through a small, very old keyhole arch down narrow lanes on a soft dirt path. Ancient doors with beautiful detailing appeared in the gray walls on the left and right. Cats. The beginnings of cool air. Then lanterns and a carpet, an open door. Voila! A palace? A restaurant? The ceiling was 4 stories high by American standards, exquisite carved wood. zelige (intricate tile design) walls and white, diaphamous, curtains. We sat at round tables and counted the plates to see how many courses we would eat. A Moroccan ensemble of 12 or so musicians began to play. Bubbley water or plain? Conversation. Prayers before dinner. The Niger / Mali Africans arrived with wonderful headdresses and sat at the next table. We copied them and ate with our hands. They seem like kings. There were maybe eighty of us by this time. More arriving all the time.

Then the olives and eggplant and delicious small dishes, the targe tagine with the meat and apricots, another tagine with chicken, vegetables and couscous. And finally…. fruit.

It was midnight. Ahamed and Pir Granoff wanted to see the square the “square” the Djemaa el Fanaa with the tall  Koutoubia Mosque. I can’t upload any photos, but it was like noon on Saturday in the US. People and bikes and motorbikes were everywhere. Berber boys line-dancing to hand drums. Henna artists, and much to Pir’s delight – piles of cooked snail shells with their occupants steaming in butter.

Today the conference attendees are treated toa visit to the Zawia of Tamslot outside Marrakech. Time for lunch with Khalifa from Nigeria and Shabda. I may not be writing such detailed information now that the conference gets underway. Hu, Hu.