A Process of Elimination

Deaf she may be, but my angry face hanging so close to her puzzled one, my gaping mouth out of which springs furious sounds she cannot hear, delivers the message. She turns, slips mournfully upstairs. Accomplished? Nothing remotely useful, other than chagrin and regret on my part. She is incapable, now, of ingesting that message.

Small and delicate-boned as she is, her inconsiderable weight landing on the rug from her place on our bed, alerted me. She is dark-haired, but the white nightshirt we dress her in at night casts a soft glow, picking up the quiet light from the bedside clock that reads 3:30 a.m. The shirt a concession to the season, the cool night-time temperature we maintain in our bedroom, and her venerable age.

I watched, with half-cocked eye as she silently padded to the door, her nails faintly clicking when she reached the rug perimeter, crossed the hardwood floor. I reminded myself, still in a fog of sleep, that she needed her nails clipped. No easy task, these days. She shies away from being handled in those ways. Her hair is too long, it’s unruly, and needs a good trim. She won’t permit that, either. She always had her own mind, never was particularly biddable, but now, in her dotage, she’s positively impossible.

I waited, not quite yet willing to hoist myself out of my comfort. Sometimes she does that, rouses herself, jumps off the bed, stands quietly for a while halfway between the bedroom door and the adjoining hall, and just remains there. Then, as though somehow satisfied with the little exercise, or whatever it portends as of a silent voice speaking inside her head, she turns back, leaps effortlessly to the bed and settles back to sleep again.

Not this time. She stood in the doorway of our bedroom for what seemed like an interminable intermission. She finally began moving forward, and I got out of bed, reached for my dressing gown. Which was when she turned back, to see if I was there. Not having heard me, nothing like that, just exercising, it seems, the kind of intuition that she seems capable of. I followed her down the hallway, down the stairs, across the foyer, into the family room, and finally stood beside her, at the sliding doors leading to the deck. She waited, and I obliged, sliding open the door for her to exit.

Sometimes that happens. She will forget, when she is put out after eleven and we’re preparing for bed, why she’s gone outside. Spending her time leisurely sniffing about. Picking up scents; squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, raccoons, cats. We’ve seen them all in the backyard. The raccoons not so much now that we’ve tightened the lid on our compost bins with bungees. Busy out there, reconnoitering, interested in the evening breeze and the emanations it wafts over from other yards. And she forgets to pee.

So now, when I’ve let her out, she’s likely doing just that. Or evacuating, who knows? I don’t exactly feel like going out with her. The temperature has dropped below freezing. Peering out the sliding glass door, over the rails of the deck, I can just make out her little white nightie-ghostlike presence moving about, and then she’s out of my sight. My fingers begin to rap, as of their own devices, on the glass door. And, miraculously, she appears, and I admit her.

Why was I angry with her? Well, we’d bought a new kibble for her, thinking that would help to tempt her appetite toward a little more enthusiasm. We’ve spoiled her badly. Too many ‘treats’. It’s not the biscuits she usually gets after her meals as extras, but the other ‘extras’, the chicken, the cheese, the heaping little salads of chopped bell peppers, green peas, kernel corn, cauliflower she is so fond of. She would happily ignore the kibble, even with those extras, and dine exclusively off the salads, if it were up to her. It isn’t. We still want to ensure her good health.

She’s lost a lot of teeth, the last few years. She’ll have reached her seventeenth birthday next month. As it is, I’ve got to help her by wetting her kibble before presenting it. I keep a small jar of chicken soup in the refrigerator for that purpose, then quickly heat it all up in the microwave for a few seconds. Sometimes she eats, sometimes she doesn’t. This morning? Well, it depends so often whether or not, when we’ve come down first thing in the morning and let her out, if she’s managed to evacuate successfully. No evacuation, no appetite. And then, no telling when we’ll be surprised.

It’s peculiar, but she will never have a urination accident in the house, never. At least not yet. But the other? On occasion. Where once she was accustomed to letting us know, verbally, by a low growl, a light bark, when she wanted to be let out, alerting us to her need, she no longer communicates with us. She will stand at the door, silently, waiting to be noticed. We’ve got to keep attuned to her needs. Else be stuck with the results.

Usually, one of us does a quick check in the backyard at her usual deposit sites, to determine whether we’re in the clear, can expect her to eat, then settle down while we have our own breakfast. Oh, and that’s another thing. We’ve managed to spoil her there, too. She knows if we’re having eggs, and waits for her portion to be served up. It’s become an unfortunate little routine. Ditto if we’re cooking bacon, or sausages. Bagels, she also loves those. I used to bake a lot more than I now do, and regularly baked croissants, even bagels, and the fragrance of the fresh-baked goods wafting through the house would drive her to distraction. Then, while she still had her hearing, she would verbalize, let us know she was there and she needed to share those delicacies with us.

She may be small, but she has a powerful personality.

Funny that. It’s almost as though she lost her language when she lost her hearing. Ever since we became aware of her inability to hear - a slow progression to be sure - we also became aware that she had fallen silent. So, if we aren’t aware of her need to go out to evacuate, on the assumption she’d already done so when she was let out first thing, we can be in for the occasional surprise.

That’s what I meant. This morning when I set down her bowl with that great lamb-rice kibble (complete with glucosamine for ancient joints) she was so interested in - replacing the chicken-rice kibble she was so bored with - she just began doing that ritual, as though she was burying it. She does that often, too. Acts out the burying routine. But this morning there was no burying routine. I just looked around for one second, busy sectioning our breakfast grapefruit halves, and there, sitting alongside her untouched bowl, was a steaming pile.

And that, my friend, is why I screamed at her. Even though it’s happened before and I’ve told myself her memory is lapsing, she’s forgetting what she’s always known, and simply responding to her body’s instructions. We love her, and cannot imagine how devastated we will be when she has finally reached the end of her life. Amend that, we can imagine how miserable we will be, and that’s what makes us apprehensive now, about her.

It’s not that she’s suddenly lost her energy, become lethargic, disinterested in everything. That’s not so, at all. Far from it. She does sleep quite a lot during the day that’s true, but most dogs do once they’re beyond puppy-hood. She gets taken out for a hour, hour-and-a-half vigorous woodland walk each and every day, regardless of the weather. She thrives on it, forges ahead, interested in everything, all the calling cards left by other dogs ambling through the woods. She no longer leaps forward and runs like the wind when there’s squirrels nearby, but she does a respectable little sprint. And sometimes she runs like a whirling dervish in a small circuit, speedy as the wind, in an exuberance of love of life.

She no longer allows her teeth to be brushed, something we’ve done regularly over the years. So we don’t press the matter. She will biddably - actually, looks forward to it - approach me when I seat myself on the floor after her dinner, preparatory to giving her an evening brush-down. She lays herself down before me, thrusts her head into my lap, and digs it in, one side, then the other, in an excess of lavish rubbing. She will emit a low moan of pleasure when I rub behind her ears, and massage her body, before brushing her hair.

Her large and beautiful, darkly-moist eyes look occluded. People, seeing her, cry out: poor thing, she’s blind! She is not. Her peripheral vision is slightly impaired.

And her magisterial entitlement remains undisturbed. She is offended, in the winter, when we put boots over her slender paws. Else, if the temperature is low enough, the snow underfoot freezes her feet and she can’t go on. First time in the season we put them on her, she walks in an exaggerated movement like one of those Lippizaner horses on pompous display.

And now that she’s elderly she no longer minds the indignity of a winter garment sheltering her from the excess of winter cold. In fact, she seems to downright appreciate it. Helpfully lifting one paw after another to be inserted into one of those sherpa-like coats of hers.

Losing her hearing isn’t all bad. When someone comes to the door she no longer barks, because she’s unaware. The sound of the vacuum cleaner no longer disturbs her. Nor do loud sharp sounds, which used to. She’s always been skittish that way. That too, only manifests itself occasionally, say for example, if something porcelain falls on the ceramic tile floor in the kitchen and shatters. She can hear that. And hustles herself out of the direct vicinity.

So, it’s clear she’s earned a certain latitude. Unpleasant in the extreme it may be, her occasional lapses, evacuating in the house. I keep telling myself we’ve got to be more aware, more attuned to her needs, scout out the premises more rigorously to ensure we know she’s already done her business. At least first-thing-in-the-morning business. There’s another evacuation that follows like clockwork, in early afternoon. Which is when we’re usually out walking. Which is why one of us carries her up to the entrance to the wooded ravine near where we live.

She has been known to suddenly squat right on the road the last year, if she’s on the leash walking up to the ravine alongside us. We try to eliminate all those embarrassing possibilities.

 

Shangri-La!

While I was rolling the sleeping bags, I saw two people cresting the mountain. The breathless young woman mentioned last night’s storm. I said the storm was exciting, but at 58, I’d found the climb exhausting. She laughed, said she was 37 and hadn’t thought she would make it, said she couldn’t imagine her mother even attempting the climb.

We’d left Vancouver for the three-hour drive to Long Peak. Travelling the narrow coastal highway I felt nervous seeing signs warning of falling rocks from the steel-netted cliff face.

On the winding, narrow logging road I worried about squeezing past hell-bent logging trucks. When we finally parked the car, dusk was falling in the shadow of the mountain. We camped on the shale beach beside the lake, cooked dinner, admired the clear night sky, and went to sleep.

Early next morning we began the drive to the trailhead. The car struggled up the steep rock-strewn road and we soon realized we weren’t about to get much closer. We shouldered our backpacks and began the hike to the forest. Either side of the road grew pearl everlasting and other floral offerings in abundance, and we continually heard the sharp squeaks of pica darting for cover.

At the trailhead the pitch was considerably intensified as we climbed the steep path. At times the scree was so loose, the path so narrow I experienced vertigo observing the valley below. Our son, a biologist, was in his element; my husband was in no distress. Their backpacks were far weightier than mine, but my legs were turning to stone, and my lungs felt like bursting.

Our son had been there before and said we’d soon be reaching the Gates of Shangri-La, a widespread rockfall over which we clambered. The rocks were huge, the area wide, and it took quite a bit of effort to find our way through it. The views, too, were spectacular, looking across from where we slowly wound our way through rocks each as large as a car, a small shed.

Another milestone; a mountain hut and around it, a vertical green meadow dissected by a narrow trail. We peered into the hut and stepped inside. A big old stove, a long table, some chairs, and upstairs a sleeping loft. There was a visitor's book, signed by people who obviously slept over, intent on a longer hike than ours, presumably. A number of the messages noted the appearance of packrats, swifting away with anything not nailed down. Not far from the hut stood a reliable and stout out-house, of which several of our party made use.

“Not long now, Mom!” shouted our son encouragingly. As I struggled up and upward following a well-worn, but quite narrow pathway ascending the green meadow. Finally, it appeared that he was right; we were approaching what appeared to be another landscape entirely.

A marmot greeted us as we forded a stream shooting over the mountain from a blue-green glacial lake. Above the lake, after our 8-hour climb, we pitched our tent. On a bit of a shelf in the rock. A 'bit of a shelf' is the operative word here. The floor of the tent slanted downward slightly, toward to the lake. At the far end of the lake was the dominating presence of the glacier that fed it, roaring as it melted, for this was late August.

On day-trips ascending from our camp we discovered other, smaller glacial lakes and glaciers, some blooming with red algae. We crossed other rockfalls and accessed crests where we ate our packed lunch and gazed over unending peaks across the Stein Valley.

On one of these excursions clear skies turned suddenly dark; a thunderhead began its journey toward us. We scrambled to descend. Thunder, lightening, great gusts of wind, sleet and rain pummelled our little tent, with us huddling inside, as the temperature plummeted, but it stood fast.

When the storm finally subsided, we began to think about something approximating an evening meal. Everything around us was completely drenched. And it was, by then, quite dark. Suddenly, we saw what looked like a flare across the valley, on another mountain top, opposite to where we sat. And as the flare grew, and we understood it to be someone's camp fire, we set up a loud cheer. Obviously heard on the other side, since we heard a faint response of a cheer from them.

(Made me wonder if in their distant proximity, I was as private as I thought myself to be, squatting over a fissure in the rockface, half-hidden behind a knobbly shrub.)

We slept soundly that night, though waking occasionally. I kept thinking we were going to roll off the side of the mountain. In fact, I shifted myself sometimes, with the feeling that the slant was compelling me in a direction I had no wish to go in. And when we awoke, it was to the rushing sound of the melting glacier, at the end of that fabulous blue-green lake below us.

The clear skies of the day before, that had made yesterday such an adventure, had given way, when we awoke, to a completely overcast, bruised sky, threatening to dump once again. We made another morning excursion after a good hefty breakfast of pancakes and tea, and mandarine oranges, scrambling over the rockface to find yet another rosy-crusted glacier. Returning to our camp site, with the threat of rain undiminished, we decided to break camp and descend.

As we descended the valley I felt good and brave and happy post-adventure, yet anxious anticipating the car-sized rocks at Shangri-La, the steep, narrow defile through the forest. The extent of my surprise (and deflation) cannot possibly be imagined as, halfway through Shangri-la we passed a young man with a paniered Labrador, then a family with two young children making their way up the mountain, happy in their enterprise.

How Canadian can you get?  

Our Lives in Brief

 

Our little black poodle whimpers and twitches. The feel of my hand reassures her. She falls back to sleep. I do not. Not so my husband; even after submitting to the nightly urgencies of his prostate, he slumbers. And I recall, and cannot sleep, even when I don’t seek out these memories.

Before she plunged into the abyss beyond awareness, I heard her mumbled satisfaction that her children had turned out well. Perhaps we have, some of us, despite having been sucked into the vortex of her anger, in our formative years. Her unpredictable, bitterly incendiary nature, her untranslatable curses frightened and silenced us.

My sister is four years younger than me. I’ve a memory of my mother with this baby, my longing to share the imagined closeness. When I was seven, my parents rented a cabin somewhere along Lake Ontario. By then I also had a brother. On the shale beach, my sister tossed a stone at our toddling brother’s head. Both children were carried off, shrieking. In the days that followed, I found comfort in solitary hours clambering among boulders lining the lakeshore. There I dreamed, limbs wet with spray, watching clouds take whimsical shapes, rotting fish hurling themselves at the rocks, gulls shrieking overhead.

I recall being taken to Massey Hall when I was about five, where I saw an array of seated people holding musical instruments on a stage below the balcony where I sat. My father, I was told, was the tuba player. At that distance I could not recognize him behind the gleaming brass behemoth. Fact is, I could hardly see him; he was dwarfed by the instrument. I was shamefaced, hearing someone seated behind snigger that observation.

Some time after the birth of her third child, my mother succumbed to what was termed a nervous breakdown. She was placed in a rest home, I was sent to live with my mother’s oldest sister, in Hamilton. I adored my gentle aunt. But I was miserably humiliated when my cousin’s friends called after me: ‘Reeta, Reeta, kiss my feeta, down the streeta’, to gales of laughter. Shared by my cousin. After which I refused to play outdoors.

My father worked for Fashion Hat and Cap on Chestnut Street in Toronto. I was taken there once. I watched, fascinated, as my father operated his hissing press, steam-moulding shape into one felt hat after another at dizzying speed. He showed me an orange that he had once left beside the steam press, transformed into an exquisitely desiccated golden orb.

My father once gave me a book entitled Palaces on Monday, published to commemorate the Moscow subway system. As money was scarce, I had few toys. I was, however, sent to an after-hours parochial school where over the years I learned the language, history and culture of my people. I had a head-start on the language, listening to evening kitchen-table discussions with my parents’ landsmen, friends. Immigrants like themselves. They spoke of starkly devastating political events beyond my comprehension. Their energy and passion fascinated me. That they seemed to defer to my father pleased me.

My father instructed me carefully. Remember: you are Canadian, Canadian first, everything else follows from that, he said. He told me also that when I reached his age there would be peace in the world, there would be an end to all wars among nations. People would be accepted as equals among equals. There would be no discrimination, an oft-heard word in my parents’ conversations. By then I knew he had been sent to this country by a benevolent society, when he had been found wandering the streets of Warsaw, an orphan.

Before I began kindergarten at a school on Manning Avenue, where I saw a stained glass window of a little Dutch girl with the word “Kindergarten” inscribed on the door, and I felt a startling recognition of the word’s meaning, I suffered a child’s accident. Intent on fulfilling the task entrusted to me, I rushed down the stairs of the rented second-flour flat we lived in and tumbled. Hotly clutched coins and the milk bottle I grasped shattered about me. My mother’s younger sister took me to the hospital where I shuddered as a doctor wound plastered strips of cloth around my arm, building a cast. Trying to lift the cast-covered arm, I discovered that it had become inert, impossibly leaden. I wept in the certain knowledge that I would never walk again, the burden of the plastered arm too heavy a weight to carry.

I stayed overnight at my aunt’s apartment on Queen Street. That night, as I lay on a makeshift bed, my uncle molested me. This was the uncle who laughed when I wrinkled my nose in disgust at the smell of the beer he drank. This was the uncle who would go up on the roof of the apartment building they lived in to capture pigeons which my aunt would obligingly prepare for the table. This was the uncle who, at a later time, confided that he would give me a gift just like the one he gave his daughter, a little older than me, if I 'behaved nicely' to him. This was a man of Ukrainian peasant stock, a man with an inbred love of growing things, a master gardener.

My mother had a friend who taught her how to curl my hair into sausage ringlets, with strips of rag cloth. I loathed the process and the curls, and the hair-tugging and my mother's snapping commands that I 'sit still!', and once, when my mother was pulling my wet hair around the rags, I blurted my nasty secret of what my uncle had done to me. There was silence. I shook with fear. She tugged my hair more roughly, and forbade me to ever again utter such disgusting tattle.

Horse-drawn wagons were a frequent, celebrated event. They were not seen as often as the small, square cars and trucks that had begun trundling our streets. Children lingered, watching the iceman hack at large ice blocks, awaiting flying chips. Hoisting small blocks with large rounded pincers, he hauled them from wagon to kitchen iceboxes. Once, it was rumoured that a horse had panicked and smashed into a car – blood and guts everywhere; children shuddered in awe. In my bed, seeing myself cold and unutterably alone in a dark casket buried in damp, wormy earth, I wept in a frenzy of grief.

When I was thirteen, there was a fourth child, born before term, whose arrival was hastened when my mother slipped down cellar steps carrying a basket of laundry. She screamed that it was my fault. Later, I accompanied my mother to a clinic for the baby’s post-birth examination. The wizened, swaddled baby was thrust into my arms to be borne home, while my mother shopped. A year later, my tiny brother was transformed into a serviceable pretext, enabling me to meet my secret friend at innocuous places like area parks or libraries. He would even walk me in the early evening to my parochial school classes across from Christie Pits, wait until they were over, and walk me home again. Our clandestine meetings went undetected for some time.

Public school had never been a felicitous experience. I was convinced teachers thought ill of me and I resented them, envying the achievers, those who had the teacher’s ear and concern. It was only much, much later in life that I realized I had a hearing impediment, though at the time I just felt horribly embarrassed that I could never quite hear and understand all too frequently what people were saying. Though the stigma of charity breakfasts and school showers was never imposed upon me, hand-me-down clothing and broken footwear mortified me. Finally, in high school I recognized my ability to comprehend, to respond to learning opportunities setting aside my impairment by compensatory methods that were more reliant on my own intelligence.

When I was twelve years old, my mother found a summer job for me on Spadina Avenue, in the garment trade. The following summer I worked at a metal-toy factory, while my boyfriend worked at an arborite factory on the same street. A month younger than I was, he was ordered by his supervisor there on occasion to move and repark delivery trucks on their parking lot. Near the conclusion of the following summer my mother warned I would have to look for a permanent job and I understood with regret that I would not be returning to school.

Finally, my parents were introduced to the idea that I was ‘going out’. My mother made no secret of her antipathy toward my boyfriend, accusing him at every opportunity of some wretched mischief. His father’s ill repute a likely goad. Still, once our relationship was acknowledged, he was there, every evening, and his presence grated upon my parents. Even so, they would find things that they depended on him to do, even re-flooring the bathroom.

 

We ambled on long neighbourhood walks. On weekends we chummed with peer groups and went to teen dances where we held one another and dreamily danced to lyrics we knew were dedicated to us personally. I would call him ‘honey’ and ‘dear’; endearments I had never heard anyone else utter, and which earned my father’s derision. 

 

When we were eighteen, we were married. We wanted a simple ceremony but our parents insisted on a traditional wedding where all their friends would be invited. I wore an ill fitting, too-large borrowed wedding dress. We were awkward participants at our parents’ social event.

We rented our own little flat and divided housekeeping. Several years later we bought a small house in Richmond Hill. When we were twenty-two I retched one morning before leaving for work. The pregnancy was confirmed by a doctor on the very day that I joined my mother at a Mother’s Day luncheon, a yearly event organized by her social club, with featured speakers who lectured on third world poverty; urged action on world disarmament; addressed the empowerment of women. I whispered to my mother that she would soon be a grandmother. She turned away from me.

I worked until I was eight months’ pregnant. I ignored all the dreadful stories of childbirth difficulties people eagerly offered up for my edification. After our baby was born my mother volunteered to stay a week to help with the baby. I felt revulsed and refused. Instead, my husband took time off work and we learned, together how to care for our newborn. 

 

At year-and-a-half intervals two more babies followed. With three children in tow, life felt uncomplicated, fulfilling and busy. I was reluctant to release the children, one by one, to school. I volunteered to a school reading program. We joined Cubs and Brownies. When the youngest was six, we all had bicycles. Although the children’s were new, mine was built from parts their father scrounged. He taught me how to ride it.

We moved to Ottawa when the oldest was twelve. We discovered Byward Market, the Experimental Farm, the Gatineau Hills, and Ottawa Neighbourhood Services. Soon we were equipped with cross-country skis and left long tracks in the snow of the greenbelt where our house was located. Then came ice skates; my husband, an enthusiastic hockey player as a child, taught us all to skate on the Rideau Canal. We snowshoed at night under the light of the moon, stars winking overhead.

Gatineau Park became our summer obsession. We hiked a myriad of trails. We picked and hauled home wild strawberries, garlic, raspberries, blackberries, and poison ivy. We climbed Luskville Falls for fun and spectacular views and bore home bucketsful of blueberries for preserving. When our youngest child was fourteen his father, despite my doubts, bought a canoe, and we explored the park’s lakes, our children echoing the loons’ calls.

We attended concerts at the National Arts Centre; the children began music lessons. We visited the National Gallery; their father started painting. The specimens at the Museum of Man inspired a focus on science and a collection of butterflies ensued; dace, sticklebacks and tadpoles filled an aquarium.

My mother visited and stayed several weeks. She enjoyed the Sparks Street Mall, the Experimental Farm and the Parliament Buildings. While she rested in the afternoon, and the children were at school, I would sequester myself in the basement family room and pound out stories on an old second-hand typewriter about wistfully sad children.

When I was young I suffered agonies of boredom and embarrassment shopping with my mother at little stores along College or Dundas Street. My pain was particularly acute when she stopped for interminable chats in languages unknown to me. When I was older I was puzzled when my mother marched in peace rallies.

My mother was 84 and I was 62 when she died of frontal-lobe dementia. Her memory slowly faded and became absent. Her body gradually ceased its critical functions. Before her memory completely evaporated, conversations were surfeit with repeated declarations. One: ‘I was a good mother’. Pause. Affirmation required. Finally: ‘I love all my children. Equally’.

My sister and the older of my two brothers looked after her, feeding her as one would an infant, wiping her trembling chin, changing her diapers, wheeling her into the sunshine on the hospice grounds. When last I saw her she had no idea who I was. She had become a wraith. Yet one of the nurses laughingly declared that she would recognize my sister and me anywhere as our mother’s daughters. My younger brother flew in from Halifax and although she didn’t recognize him, she slyly informed him that her husband, who had died thirty years earlier, would be dropping by that evening.

Our daughter drops our grandchild off at 7:30 every weekday morning. Before she began walking, I would carry her on a child's backpack and we'd go off to the nearby forested ravine for a pre-breakfast hike with our little poodle mix.  She romped with our little dog, we read stories together, she had her breakfast, and then her grandfather walks her to the stop at the foot of our street to catch her school bus. Occasionally, my husband rushes up the basement steps from his workshop and pulls me into the kitchen to dance to the music of our youth. Our terms of endearment have altered, but not our need of one another.

Several years after my mother’s death I took possession of a photograph. It was a European studio portrait of my mother and her younger sister in 1920s flapper dresses, arms comfortingly wrapped about one another. Heads inclined toward the camera, they appear shy, expectant, trustingly vulnerable. The world awaited their debut. 

 

 

 

The Ancient Tapestry of Light

 

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. ⁴ And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.

He sat on the yellow soil comprised of sand and clay, legs folded under his torso, hands held in an imploring gesture before the deliberately heedless throng. His white dishdashah was no more stained than that of most, and his keffiye neatly arranged on his head; his grey beard as indicative of age, as their own grizzled faces. His eyes, they were different. They were not, in fact quite there. They were rheumy, running hollows, to which bottle flies were attracted, distracting him from attracting the attention of those who might give alms.

They turned away from him, despite the Q'uranic injunction to charity, for his appearance was repulsive and it shamed them also, that there were amongst them some whose need was clearly greater than theirs. And theirs was great enough.

He, caring little for their disgust, entreated them to pity and to do the will of Allah in recognizing his need. He shifted his position on the ground, vainly attempting to find comfort, and his visage took on the savage look of misery incarnate, his shapeless lips no longer forming the grimace he thought represented a smile.

Carrion-seeking birds, vultures with their red-ringed heads and long wrinkled necks thrust forward, crested the sizzling sky. Dust was everywhere, circulating in the lower atmosphere, clogging peoples' throats and nostrils, and those of their livestock. It settled, mud-yellow, on everything; the lintels of their homes, roofs, worn carpeting placed over olive, oil and water jugs. Building interiors were neatly inlaid with dust, particles of the cosmos, infinitesimally minute atoms representing everything and nothing.

Dust stifled the air of the marketplace, the plaintive voices of the women, heads carefully covered in deference to the Q'uran's injunction to female modesty, complaining about the steadily rising prices of mutton, fowl, dates, figs and grain. Risen too steeply for their liking, for their ability to pay. Mothers reached down to slap small hands that crept to the top of stalls hoping to snatch a nutmeat. Infants slung across their mothers' chests, held by stout linens, bawled in a disorder of animal and human sounds.

A hawk streaked the sky over a copse of date palms, shrilling. Wispy grey clouds, barely seen against the particulate matter crowding the canopy of the sky reflected the tattered grey of once-white garments. Glancing toward the west, squinting eyes could make out a sun-dog, portending some atmospheric change, perhaps another khamsin, perhaps a clearing of the sky to something resembling blue, inviting the overhead sun to bake the ground and burn bare feet.

In the near distance rose a curvaceously slender minaret, needling God's overheated sky. Cicadas buzzed the atmosphere. The sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer rang out and resounded in the still, torrid atmosphere. The hum of the crowd became muted, faded, as all turned; the women removing themselves from male proximity, to prostrate themselves facing Mecca.

The lyrical melody of a prayer as familiar as one's beloved's face piously rose to the heavens, toward Allah's patiently demanding hearing and benign approval, as his people surrendered for the third time that day to daily prayers.

In the courtyard of the Khedive's palace, roses, peonies, lilies, Persian cornflowers, delphiniums, safflower and red poppies thrived in vivid array and brilliant colour, sending their fragrance throughout the generously measured space. Where also grew olive trees, willows, pomegranate and bitterweed. Also acacia, wild celery, dill, henna and mint.

The cooling, tinkling sound of a water fountain fetched the senses to swooning, as the water fell gracefully back into the shaped pond wherein swam golden- and silver-hued fish among the blue water lilies and papyrus plants. A small, wrinkled man busied himself snipping spent flowers, stopping now and again to inhale, when a broad smile would overtake his toothless mouth.

Not a hint of cooling breeze to be felt anywhere. Not in the souk, nor along the dusty alleys, or in the palace courtyard. Within the seraglio, sensuous, full-bodied women with kohl-described, smouldering eyes spread their languid limbs on colourful divans. Within this area could be heard the melodic whispering of the fountain as it circulated in the dry air.

A grossly overweight Eunuch, his taut skin glistening with sweat, fanned himself desultorily, in a vain effort to find relief from the sweltering, gasping heat. He sat in the doorway, eyes vacant, dreaming of another place, where his ancestors had dwelt and of which he had heard whispered longings from his parents before he had been whisked mysteriously away in the night as a child, to this place.

The white, diaphanous fabric of the women's garments served to accentuate their voluptuous flesh, lovingly scented with aloe. Their pale skins glistened too, in those places which remained uncovered, but they were not dreadfully overheated, for large feathered fans moved the air about them, handled with ease by cherubic-looking little black boys, unclad but for a loincloth.

The women's soft voices resounded in gentle probing questions; one of the other, in solicitous regard, humming through the sumptuously appointed chamber within which they spent their days. One inhaled a water pipe. Another plucked the strings of an oud, a second held a tambourine.

The wing holding their many children was not far away and they might visit at will, but their duties lay here, looking beautiful, rested, inviting. Entertaining themselves. Engaging in the kind of gossip women thrive upon; their own inimitable, useful and socially binding transference of news. Besides which, they were all to one another, sisters, mothers, companions in bondage.

Their latest intrigue was the introduction of another, younger woman. A girl, really, but more than adequately nubile. Her introduction awaited verification of her intact hymen. They knew little of her, but that she came from afar, and was not of their tribes , nor a familiar of the clans. She would need to be comforted, they knew. Abbad Pasha did not tolerate discord in his harem.

A slave, young and graceful, carried a tray of refreshments. Dates, and grapes, and watered wine and pomegranate juice. Nectarines, kumquats, nuts and sesame paste. The fruit was welcome, and the young man was as well, for young as he yet was, he was beautiful, too. The women rose to surround him and tease him, and he blushed as their hands ran softly over his arms and his legs.

At the souk, a camel herder cursed as his lead camel ventured too close to the food-bearing stalls, and he hit the beast repeatedly on its back, its snout, kicked it viciously to encourage it to back away and begin anew. Its outraged groans elicited no sympathy. Stalls laden with nuts, grains, dried fish and olives stood out in the main traffic area where most people shopped. Linens and rancid hides were to be had there.

Closer to the protective walls of the palace stood small semi-enclosed shops with copper objects, silver jewellery, linen garments and woven rugs. Slippers, leatherwork redolent of curing camel urine, along with tablahs, and dumbeks, and mizmars could be had there, as well. Not for most, but there for those whose wherewithal was equal to the prices of these esteemed objects. The occasional palanquin moved through the crowd in the torpid heat.

The beggar half-heartedly swatted the flies that plagued his existence, before finally realizing dusk was falling and he had no further hope of charity this accursed day. He awaited the appearance of his eldest son, upon whom he would lean as they hobbled back to their hovel. He steeled himself to accept the burden of bringing nothing of value back with him.

He longed, in his fevered mind, for the impossible; a return to the time when his wife's adolescent face beamed whenever she saw his approach, her esteemed uncle. His eyes had been capable of feasting hungrily on her youth, grace and beauty. Now what greeted him was her silent reproach, and the plaintive mewling of their malnourished children.

His tormented spirit shrieked in haunted agony that would give him no peace. First, light left his eyes, leaving him in a dark universe of bitter disaffection and abandonment. Then, the light of belief had abandoned him. He had submerged himself in the poison of despondency, apostasy, denied the comfort of eternal Paradise.

Woe betide him.

God is the Light of the heavens and the earth;
the likeness of His light is as a niche
wherein is a lamp
(the lamp is a glass,
the glass as it were a glittering star)
kindled from a Blessed Tree,
an olive that is neither of the East nor of the West
whose oil wellnigh would shine, even if no fire touched it:
Light upon Light
(God guides to His light whom He will)

 

 

Canadian Adventure, B.C.

While I was rolling the sleeping bags, I saw two people cresting the mountain. The breathless young woman mentioned last night’s storm. I said the storm was exciting, but at 58, I’d found the climb exhausting. She laughed, said she was 37 and hadn’t thought she would make it, said she couldn’t imagine her mother even attempting the climb.

We’d left Vancouver for the three-hour drive to Long Peak. Travelling the narrow coastal highway I felt nervous seeing signs warning of falling rocks from the steel-netted cliff face.

On the winding, narrow logging road I worried about squeezing past hell-bent logging trucks. When we finally parked the car dusk was falling in the shadow of the mountain. We camped on the shale beach beside the lake, cooked dinner, admired the clear night sky, and went to bed.

Early next morning we began the drive to the trailhead. The car struggled up the steep rock-strewn road and we soon realized we weren’t about to get much closer. We shouldered our backpacks and began the hike to the forest. Either side of the road grew pearl everlasting and other floral offerings in abundance, and we continually heard the sharp squeaks of pica darting for cover.

At the trailhead the pitch was considerably intensified as we climbed the steep path. At times the scree was so loose, the path so narrow I experienced vertigo observing the valley below. Our son, a biologist, was in his element; my husband was in no distress. Their backpacks were far weightier than mine, but my legs were turning to stone, and my lungs felt like bursting.

Our son had been there before and said we’d soon be reaching the Gates of Shangri-La, a widespread rockfall over which we clambered. The rocks were huge, the area wide, and it took quite a bit of effort to find our way through it. The views, too, were spectacular, looking across from where we slowly wound our way through rocks each as large as a car, a small shed.

Another milestone; a mountain hut and around it, a vertical green meadow dissected by a narrow trail. We peered into the hut and stepped inside. A big old stove, a long table, some chairs, and upstairs a sleeping loft. There was a visitor's book, signed by people who obviously slept over, intent on a longer hike than ours, presumably. A number of the messages noted the appearance of packrats, swifting away with anything not nailed down. Not far from the hut stood a reliable and stout out-house, of which several of our party made use.

“Not long now, Mom!” shouted our son encouragingly. As I struggled up and upward following a well-worn, but quite narrow pathway up the green meadow. Finally, it appeared that he was right; we were approaching what appeared to be another landscape entirely.

A marmot greeted us as we forded a stream shooting over the mountain from a blue-green glacial lake. Above the lake, after our 8-hour climb, we pitched our tent. On a bit of a shelf in the rock. A 'bit of a shelf' is the operative word here. The floor of the tent slanted downward slightly, toward to the lake. It made for a slightly uneasy night's sleep. At the far end of the lake was the dominating presence of the glacier that fed it, roaring as it melted, for this was late August.

On day-trips ascending from our camp we discovered other, smaller glacial lakes and glaciers, some blooming with red algae. We crossed other rockfalls and accessed crests where we ate lunch and gazed over unending peaks across the Stein Valley.

On one of these excursions clear skies turned suddenly dark; a thunderhead began its journey toward us. We scrambled to descend. And we made it to the tent just as the storm hit with full force. Thunder, lightening, great gusts of wind, sleet and rain pummelled our little tent, with us huddling inside, as the temperature plummeted, but it stood fast.

When the storm finally subsided, we began to think about something approximating an evening meal. Everything around us was completely drenched. And it was, by then, quite dark. Suddenly, we saw what looked like a flare across the valley, on another mountain top, opposite to where we sat. And as the flare grew, and we understood it to be someone's camp fire, we set up a loud cheer. Obviously heard on the other side, since we heard a faint response of a cheer right back, from them.

(Made me wonder if in their distant proximity, I was as private as I thought myself to be, squatting over a fissure in the rockface, half-hidden behind a knobbly shrub.)

We slept soundly that night, though waking occasionally. I kept thinking we were going to roll off the side of the mountain. In fact, I shifted myself sometimes, with the feeling that the slant was compelling me in a direction I had no wish to go to. And when we awoke, it was to the rushing sound of the melting glacier, at the end of that fabulous blue-green lake below us.

The clear skies of the day before, that had made yesterday such an adventure, had given way, when we awoke, to a completely overcast, bruised sky, threatening to dump once again. We made another morning excursion after a good hefty breakfast of pancakes, tea and mandarin oranges, scrambling over the rockface to find yet another rosy-crusted glacier. Returning to our camp site, with the threat of rain undiminished, we decided to break camp and descend.

As we descended the valley I felt good and brave and happy post-adventure, yet anxious anticipating the car-sized rocks at Shangri-La, the steep, narrow defile through the forest. The extent of my surprise (and deflation) cannot possibly be imagined as, halfway through Shangri-la we passed a young man with a paniered Labrador, then a family with two young children making their way up the mountain, happy in their enterprise.

How Canadian can you get?