Mali – A Future Untold - Swimming in a Day or Two

Heat of the night inside this house,

The walls and ceiling exuding the temper of the day's sun,

Which beat on the concrete roof for twelve grueling hours,

And I move slowly,

Padding across the tiled floors,

Drifting in a narcotic sweat,

Desperate for something,

Bed,

Oblivion.

My daughter, not three years old,

Perspired from her brow and back,

Spread arms wide on her mattress,

Sunk heavily far away in her first hour of sleep.

Her brother, likewise,

I removed his shirt,

A whisper of relief from his skin,

Air brushed across his moist back.

Over by the wall I reached and clicked the switch

Of the ceiling fan from zero to low speed

And watched it ache into rotation,

The blades lethargic, unwilling,

Forced semblance of movement,

Then I closed the contact for the air conditioner,

Dull roar groaning under compression,

Cooled air like molasses,

Brought into motion,

Only to fade in the heat,

And I turned, stopped in the doorway,

Peered into the darkness

Where my children slumbered deep.

Move to my room,

Bend down and crawl under the mosquito net,

To my mat

To lie upon the floor,

On my back,

Hands clasped behind my head,

I stare up past netting

To the shadow of a whitewashed ceiling,

And notice the itch of insect pricks

Two on my legs and one on my wrist,

And wonder about malaria,

My stomach churning slightly ill

From the copious cold water I quaffed,

Which failed to quench my thirst,

From the raw nicotine of tobacco,

Which I had spit out in the toilet

And flushed down watching it swirl away

In viscous, tepid water.

Today I had met Americans and Belgians…

In a house not far away,

A swimming pool and servants,

Gardens just enough unkempt

To know that no one really lives there,

Technocrats of global organizations,

Allegiances far distant from

A people and their soil

For whom the courtiers profess to care.

There was relentless air conditioning,

The drip drip drip of collected humidity

Into a bent tin can below the machine's spout,

A pool of brown water seeping around its bottom,

Perforated pinholes from gathering rust.

There was fine wine

And pastries

Imported cheese

And chocolates

Passing from one exotic character to the next,

Lips rimming glasses,

Crumbs dusting chins.

All dressed in blue jeans,

International wear for all.

A long haired, pony tailed man,

Thin, breezy cheer, flash threatening smile.

Cropped hair, terse, tense man,

Stout, loud, and slouched.

A bulging, bear sized man,

Long winded, teller of tales among the people.

Odd contrast, all their women wives,

Passive, listening, attentive mice,

Who in another venue

Would profess the power of parallel careers.

And me and my kids

So my attention divided,

As I listen with one ear,

Sip my wine,

And attend to simple needs,

Pees and spills and pieces of pizza no green peppers please,

As I listen to talk of Cote d'Ivoire

Ethnic cleansing,

One hundred thousand refugees

Crossing into Mali in two short days;

I hear talk of faltering fuel supplies

For kitchen propane stoves,

And rising prices because

No trucks dare move on southern highways,

And talk of who is who

Names I know nothing of,

All claims to savvy why for what and when.

Me thinking that the madness surrounding us,

Equals bullets, blood, and slaughter,

An unfathomable poverty,

Not just no food, no school, no vaccines,

But of anger, fear,

Centuries of elusive forces

Dark, unbreechable, seering the skins

Of utterly lost and drifting peoples...

Sweating sick empty men women

Seething mass

Of severed chaos

Of souls and mortal corps atomized

Sweating dew upon their naked breasts

Wet smacking wetness

Fecund stinging stench in their nostrils

Driving madness red coursing through their veins

With triggers in their fingers

Bullets in their belts

Lust bursting through their loins

Destruction flashing in their eyes

Futile bloody murder and defilement,

Pointless,

Helpless,

They rage upon each other.

Me thinking,

Still upon the floor,

Alone on my back, hands behind my head,

Watching the ceiling fan turn slowly,

Pressing down on heavy heat

That I would take up the offer

To take the kids over swimming in a day or two.

War - Baku - Karabakh - Oil - The Middle East

There is war.

Said.

One does not have to accept war.

Said.

There is war.

Said.

Men die.

Children go hungry.

Dirt grows under the nails.

Bottles get smashed.

Crows roost or pick on the unspeakable.

Rain falls and mud thickens.

Cold cuts into fingers.

Low voices dissolve into dark skies studded with stars.

Wind whispers lonely through rattling dried leaves.

Ragged dogs with ribs showing root in forgotten garbage.

Widowed young women hunger after men's bodies they cannot have.

Rivers flow sleepily along empty banks.

Rust gathers on steel posts.

Listless smoke curls from cold stove pipes.

A plant tips, dried, the stem snaps, the pod falls slowly,

Slow through an arc of endless time,

Sweeps from standing tall,

The sun and clouds swirling above its drunken toppling,

Speeding ever so more quickly,

Down,

Plummeting down,

Rabid velocity toward impact,

The ground, now screaming ache, desire,

"Come, Come, Come, Oh God Come!"

Desperation grasping, clasping, gasping,

The pod growing ever so larger as it races closer,

Closer,

And closer,

Toward impact,

Rabid impact,

And shattering,

Shattering explosion!

Crash!

Aaaaahhh...

One of a thousand seeds falls gently,

Gently,

Oh ever so gently,

Into the warmth of urging soil.

War.

What is this thing

Which we call war?

Only today I am asked:

These foreigners who go early to Baku on Fridays,

While nationals must stay until 5:00 p.m.?

Only today I am asked:

Do you like your job,

When it is nothing more than U.S. foreign policy?

Only today someone says:

With Allah's grace,

I will return to the mountains of my Karabakh.

Why I stay behind,

I do not know,

I cannot stomach something,

I am the manager,

My office, my child,

Even while my Imishli office

Grows silent on a Friday evening.

Development workers gone.

Work done,

By clock and by calendar,

Workplan, strategic plan,

Development work is done.

Yes, to Baku,

Three hours away,

Brand new donor funded

Automobiles and vans,

Hurtling, hurtled toward,

Baku,

Oil rich,

Derrick pocked

Cosmopolitan city of the East.

Persia's canker.

Shops.

Electric lights.

Two, three, towering hotels

Oasis of the rich.

Women with curled smiles,

Cosmetics,

Men with cigarettes,

Mobile phones,

And bureaucratic jobs in their dreams.

Yes, the Imishli office,

A propaganda machine,

Paid with foreign dollars,

Civil Society's Speakers Corner,

Leaves blowing round its corners,

Blood empty of bodies playing roles,

Even before Friday's dawn creeps in the sky,

Halls and walls and barren yards

Grown silent for the weekend,

Infinite weekends,

Eternal weekends,

Through to coming Monday.

I know,

That this weekend,

Several recruited renting men sit in Baku,

To discuss what they call

Post‑conflict society,

Meaning:

The snapshot of time

When the dust settles

Following the last spark of flame

Tearing from a rifle's barrel,

When the air still scintillates with tension,

When tension breathes from every voice

Impregnating words

Which pass the wet warm lips of every person,

Young, old, crippled, passionate,

From every breath across the land.

And of these recruited renting men

Yet another wrestles lasciviously with his computer,

In a windowless office,

Fingers tapping plastic keys,

Fingers tapping business plans,

For people he has never known,

For whose daughters he never has desired.

And yet another prints black ink,

Single spaced reports,

Times New Roman 10,

Headers, footers,

Tables, graphs, appendices.

And somewhere

A woman Gender expert,

With her lover,

His arm squeezed round her shoulders,

Drinks whiskey in a bar,

Telling stories about her ruined passport,

Which she ruined by spilling juice on it,

Surrounded by English speaking foreigners,

All laughing,

All in the pit of their stomachs worrying,

How they too would replace their papers,

Their umbilical cords to other places,

To other wombs far away from the echo

Of the cold, hard, black paved streets

Of the voiceless wind from the strange wet sea

Which whips in from the docks

Wrap, wrap, wrapping its stranglehold

On the cutstone buildings

Lying outside the door,

From their cigarettes,

Their drinks,

And the young woman telling her story

Of spilled juice on a passport.

Funny that,

This weekend,

Elsewhere in Baku,

Born and bred Azeri,

A young man seeks his friends and streets,

Black leather coats,

Jocular banter,

The company of humanity.

Another, not so young man,

Rests with his wife and daughter

Reading books

Listening to his family's

Small events of the week.

Several women watch the tv

With their husbands by their side,

Turkish melodramas, love,

Or broadcasts of the government.

Others drink tea,

Play cards,

Smoke,

Talk of weddings,

Or plan one.

Even others have gone to bed,

Faces snuffled into pillows,

Digesting their first home cooked meal in five days.

This weekend in Baku.

But in Imishli...

Three hours away,

The electricity fails to come until nine p.m.

And then with insufficient voltage

To turn the stiff compressors

Of ancient Soviet refrigerators.

In Imishli,

The dogs bark,

The wood smoke hangs in the air,

While the full moon spreads her vapour

Over quiet ground

And children sleeping

Buried beneath aging blankets.

In Imishli,

The hulks of Soviet central school heaters

Rust against the night,

Thick natural gas pipes sag their shadows over cracked sidewalks,

Webs of desperate wires hang from leaning poles,

The vacant spaces between walled homes

Called streets,

A mysterious limbo of emptiness

Only rare single souls with hunched shoulders

Hands sunk in pockets,

Passing quickly from secret departure

To even darker destination.

In Imishli,

The world waits for market day,

Saturday morning,

When the bazaar springs to life

From six in the morning to just after noon,

When everyone is out,

And the streets are alive,

The children poking their noses out from metal doors,

The chickens scratching in gutters,

The sheep grazing the medians.

And then the afternoon is empty.

The void is there before dusk.

The tension seeps between the cracks.

War.

His words echo in my mind,

I will return to the mountains of my Karabakh.

For Monday I wait no more.