The Not So Absent-Minded Professor

It’s the woman who made me analyze the Oreo box. Contemporary Art and Criticism every other day right before lunch, my stomach growling, she went from discussions of lengthy packets on semiotics and orientalism that I had never bothered to read straight to that frustratingly empty cookie dispenser.

“Think about the font,” she said, wiggling the container at us from the front of the asbestos-laden classroom, her sonorous alto voice competing with the rattling air vents for our attention, “how white and creamy it is. This wasn’t done by accident. Even the background, the blue. Think about the use of a cool color rather than a warmer one. How would that affect your reaction?”

I pretend to ponder this while desperately praying that the hollow grinding in my abdomen isn’t too audible. Not too many days afterwards, she tested our ability to critically assess design by showing us the Burger King website. The woman was killing me. She had unassuming medium-length straight blond hair and an eye color that didn’t really stick with me. Only in her mid-thirties, she was already on her second husband and about 75% of the way through her goal of visiting every bit of art she lectured on. She had the slides to prove it. Well not the husband bit. That part came up one day during a lecture about use of line.

“See how the artist decided to keep the stray lines here, giving it a sense of imperfection? The choice to keep the mistake visible is a very interesting one. And you see how sharp these lines are on the frame of the body and how thin the figure is? Think of how painful it is to have to deal with such bony protruding hips,” her mouth almost immediately retracting the statement after it slipped out of her abundant, matronly frame. She didn’t actually have children, and I don’t think she really wanted to. In a way, we were her children already, grown adults though we supposedly were.

One day she decided to treat us to ice cream after a voluntary weekend excursion cleaning up the beaches. It’s silly that it took that long for me to really like her, and I suspect the ice cream had something to do with it. I was already nearing graduation with copious recitals and exit exams encroaching upon the relative peacefulness of my consciousness. I’m not sure how we ended up side by side that weekend, but her warm smile and knowing eyes disarmed me. We struck up a conversation, and she inquired as to my graduation date. I’ll never forget her response.

“Wow. 2006. It’s funny; it sounds so unreal. Being in this new century makes things sound so much farther in the future than they really are. Like it sounds like we’ll never make it that far.”

She never did. An aneurysm swept her away from us one cruel Good Friday morning. The woman who encouraged my writing, fostered my ability to critically perceive of the world around me and, yes, took us on a random field trip to the mall across the street to discuss the effect of shop design on our spending habits- she died long before I ever knew what she meant to me. But doesn’t it always work out that way?

The Front Has Gone Cold

A crackle of sniper fire echoes against the rubbage that is left of the city, bouncing off anything it can find like a devilish hound in search of a meal. His own stomach growls in contempt, and he cleans out his gun to distract himself from the incessant gnawing. The government doesn’t pay him enough for this.

Though only in his mid twenties, war and lean times have hardened Mustafa, hollowing out his cheeks and scraping the edges of his patience. From his perch on the rubble, he can see the whole of the front lines. And it looks like a whole lot of nothing.

“Mustafa! You on guard today?” a young voice croaks tentatively from the other side of the wall. Nadeem had joined the rebel fighting when he was only fourteen, but his fondness and talent for cooking had won him some favor on both sides of the wall.

“About time you got here,” Mustafa growls at him with as much good nature as he can muster on an empty stomach, “It’s just me now. Emir’s on the north side today.”

“Good news for your tummy then, eh?” the voice chirps back as a small package glides neatly over the wall, landing about a yard away from the foot of Mustafa’s watch tower. He climbs down and ravenously unwraps the parcel. The daily bread. There is a soft thump on the other side of the wall as Nadeem plops himself down to listen to his enemy eating. Is that what they are? Enemies?

“What is this war even about anymore, soldier?” he asks tiredly. The older man grunts, swallowing a morsel of bread that sticks to his dry throat like clay. The younger man continues, “You should come join us. Many pretty girls on this side, you know,”

Mustafa licks his fingers as the last of the bread disappears. “I, for one, enjoy having electricity.”

“Yes, but it would be much easier to hand you bread rather than toss it over that stupid wall,” Nadeem utters dreamily, closing his eyes as a soft breeze tousles his hair. Mustafa folds his arms across his chest, not trusting himself to respond. Both men start as, over the horizon, a pair of girls pry away loose chunks of the wall to cross from rebel territory to the Ba’ath side. Mustafa instinctively reaches for his gun,  but some unspoken force causes him to hesitate.

“Go ahead,” Nadeem says quietly, “shoot them. How else, cousin, can you call yourself a man?”

Cousin.

Nadeem was just an infant when Mustafa had last seen him, all sparkling eyes and innocent trust. The conflict had calloused them both.

The soldier lets down his gun with a sigh. For a few moments, the wind whispers between them in that silvery, ethereal way that only nature can do. In the distance, the girls reverse their journey. Nadeem was right. They are pretty.

“I’ll race you to it,” Nadeem offers, “the chink.”

Wordlessly, Mustafa nods and leaps to his feet. Maybe if he’s lucky, he can get a head start.

[Inspired by this and written for this.]

The 51st State. Maybe.

The press is now oddly silent about a monumental decision made on an island quite close to home. Can’t quite find it?
How about now?

At least a dozen of my family members voted in this historic decision to add an extra star to the American flag. Yet, I’m not entirely sure “America” takes us entirely seriously. Maybe it’s because you can’t tell us apart from Mexico yet?

See, Mexico is the giant hunk of land Texans have been shooting at, excuse me, I mean border patrolling for about forever. Puerto Rico is a tiny dot of an island in the Atlantic Ocean southeast of Florida. And we are NOT Cuban. And no, we do not need green cards. Every Puerto Rican is a United States citizen by birth, and three generations of my family have served in four branches of the United States Army.

This is where my mother’s side of the family is from. It’s a little sprawling city south of the mountains. Sometimes we get a dusty haze that settles over the town due to the extreme heat and lack of rainfall when the storm clouds are held prisoner by the giant mountains. The Spanglish, architecture and culture are indeed a bit different from the rest of the U.S., but no more strange than say, an Alabamian trying to navigate through Chicago.

This is where my father’s side of the family is from, on the eastern ridge of the island. You can see the beautiful patches of farmland hugging the coast at the foot of the mountains. I want so desperately for Puerto Rico to be more than just an exotic tourist attraction to the American people. We’re not just a group of funny accented dark-skinned people who can dance and drink rum. We are American, Hispanic, African, Indigenous, German and Chinese. All of these races have commingled and inseparably embedded themselves into the fabric of our history. In fact, I have never actually lived on the island. Most people I come across assume I am “white,” a category which is as insulting to me as it is ridiculous. Look beyond the xenophobic stereotype, and embrace the soon-to-be 51st state.