Boukornine

This time of year, the call to prayer echoes out across the city just a few minutes before my alarm goes off. The dark is still deep and quiet and the greatness of God echoes out from a thousand minarets with no competition from traffic or birds or music. We’re lucky to have a neighborhood mosque that plays a quite resonate recording of the muezzin, nothing too nasal or jarring. It’s a beautiful way to be pulled out of foggy dreams or freed from the confines of a restless night.

Another day is starting. We are still here. Pray without ceasing. Wake up, there are hungry things to feed.

Balti is usually the hungriest of those things in our house. The small orange bell on his collar tinkles politely as he pads into our room, purring. Never in a million years did I think I would reach a point of condoning the presence of an animal in our house overnight. (A couple days ago as we crawled in bed, B said “This is the first night in our entire married life that we’ve gone to bed with animal in the house,” and I almost said something about the years we spent pulling rats off of sticky traps and swatting at bats with large kitchen spatulas but since he did the majority of the heavy lifting in that department back then, I left it alone).

After three of my four decades spent on this continent, it still feels weird to have a mammal we can neither eat nor milk living in such close proximity to us. But it’s been in the low 40s the past few nights. And rainy. And he makes us happy. And, I’m realizing that “this continent” is a phrase that has even far less meaning as a cohesive idea than I even realized – it’s not uncommon to see old men welcoming street cats onto their laps at sidewalk cafes and some of my neighbors walk around with slices of turkey jambon to feed the gangs of feral cats that rule the streets. Yet one more reminder that “normal” is a fairly useless concept 90% of the time.

B usually takes the girls to school in the morning, but he just landed in New Orleans for a quick trip back to help family. In fact, as the girls were brushing their teeth and I was pouring milk in my coffee I got his text message: “Speaking Arabic with my Mauritanian Lyft driver!” Imagining my jetlagged husband chatting about global politics in Arabic while crossing the Lake Pontchartrain causeway makes me feel like my brain is bleeding. But. It also makes me smile. There are two happy men in that taxi right now.

We shuffle out the door with backpacks, coats, lunchboxes, trumpets. Balti slithers through our ankles, and disappears around the corner. He likes to sit on the jasmine shrub in the back where there is sunshine and birds. While I lock up, the girls have their chins pointed upward and are exhaling vigorously. They remind me of me at this age, weird TCKs, – still not over the marvel of living somewhere that breath is occasionally visible.

Traffic is already picking up when we ease around the rond-point and on to the main road to school. The sun hasn’t yet crested Jebel Boukornine’s bulky shoulders; the purple mountain is perfectly outlined against the citrus sky, it’s two peaks like a fish’s open mouth pointing heavenward. When we first moved here I was mesmerized by that mountain. I couldn’t believe there were people who got to see it every single day on their commute. And that I was now one of those people. I remember loving it, but also feeling like it wasn’t mine to love. Like I was a passing admirer but had no real right to such a mountain. It’s been two and a half years now. And slowly, I’m feeling a touch more possessive every day.

The girls’ school is off of a busy highway and the dog-leg to get all the way into the neighborhood is a nightmare in morning traffic. So, like many other parents, I ease to the right with my hazards on and sidle up as close to the sidewalk as possible and stop. Traffic liquefies around us and lurches slowly by. The man in a suit sipping black coffee from a small glass teacup. The woman in the blue hijab putting on mascara while honking at the taxi that just cut her off. An old man in a sheshea drives the taxi and he waves his hand apologetically at her, ash falling from the cigarette between his fingers to the road below. The girls scramble out like long legged camels weighed down by books and snacks. Their friends are waving as they also arrive with happy sleepy eyes. Stooped last I-love-yous and goodbyes and have-a-good-days and then a terse honk behind me. Doors slam shut and they are off. I ease back into traffic, nodding in acknowledgement to the driver who lets me back in. His small white truck is packed cab-high with crates of bright orange tangerines. I glance in the rearview mirror as I head off. I see three sisters in blue school uniforms greeting the guard and then disappearing into the school walls.