ladies of the....er, day; mexican celebrity; and reminders of the war in lebanon
It was yesterday and I had just left the internet cafe after realizing that I didn't want to JUST write about my hospitable experience, when about 50 feet down the street this happened:
“Everybody in this fucking country is liars!” spat the dye-job blonde girl, in a sweet, yet rough European accent, accompanied by her less talkative, sad-eyed friend, brown roots showing about a month’s worth of growth on the pair’s pony tailed scalps. “I ask the people where the grocery store is and they say, ‘that way’ or ‘this way,’ just pointing, but we don’t find it.”
They stopped on the sidewalk, waiting for me to catch up. “The co-op is just on my way home, I’ll walk you past,” I said. And at that, the more talkative of the two linked her arm with mine, like two halves of friendship pendants manufactured in separate factories by different companies that somehow fit, inviting no more stares than when I dress in baggy camouflage shorts and a print t-shirt revealing a half sleeve tattoo . . . okay, maybe a bit more. The eastern european prostitutes and I walking arm-in-arm to the grocery store, now there’s a postcard for mom.
As we scuttled across the street the one with the gusto asked, “Are you Lebanese?” I told her that I wasn’t, in fact Mexican-American. She looked up at me with eyebrows also dyed blonde, striking an arch, “I like Mexico! …..what the fuck are you doing in this country?” The second time today that I’ve been told how great the nation-state I’ve never known is, by people who’ve never been there. I guess they only hear “Mexican” and not the whole “Mexican-American,” thinking of “America” as a continent, perhaps two, and not as a country like most people from the United States have the tendency to do. Turns out they were from Romania. I would’ve guessed the Ukraine, thinking back to a disagreement Marina and I had about the statistic we had seen about the number of people exported from there and the percentage of them who became sex-workers.
The brown Lebanese boys at the co-op grocery, sitting on scooters, averted their eyes as I pointed in their direction up at the dingy white sign (caught in an obvious drawn out stare directed at the ladies of pleasure and I), red letters spelling out “coop” making me wonder about the conditions that these girls were brought here in. Sold by their mothers on the streets of Romania like the BBC special I saw the week we arrived? Kidnapped and transported in cages or coops, like the jails in the Phillipines? We unhooked and the quiet one looked back at me, probably not having understood a word of what her friend and I had said to each other, and offered, “shukran,” in Arabic meaning “thank you,” her tired face no more than 15 years old.
There are heartbreakers, and there are the heartbreakers from the pop songs and blues music that we all know, kinda’ like the way I felt when I visited the doctor earlier in the day to conduct some health tests. A nice gentleman who spoke very good English was telling me to “breathe deeply” as he inserted his needle into my vein. I relaxed, the plunger filling his vial as a beautiful Lebanese nurse asked me what kind of name “Miguel” is. As soon as she realized that I wasn’t Lebanese, she left the room and returned with two more fairly stunning hospital attendants, as they asked me questions like, “is that tattoo fake?” and, “do most Mexicans have such nice tattoos?” The guy removing my blood for testing finally throwing in, “a professional obviously did this work,” referring to my arm like the others. After weeks, nay of a life, in practical obscurity, it was nice to feel like a celebrity for five minutes. I recommend it to you all.
As the original nurse bandaged up my arm she asked if I’ve been going out at all since I’ve been here, “yes,” I replied, “my girlfriend and I have been having a wonderful time.”
On a sidenote: Just before I got home to write all this, I brushed past a woman in hijab removing her lumped children from a cab at the top of the hill that descends to my apartment, putting them both into a wheelchair. By the time I was seated on our balcony and had begun to write, she had made her way down the street, yelling in a high pitched sing-song voice asking for donations. I wouldn't exactly say that people were beating each other down to give her money, but it was more than the usual case of the invisible beggers I'm used to seeing. Later I realized she had probably come down to our part of town, one of the wealthier, to get some dough for her children injured in the war, the reason why people didn't simply turn a blind eye to her as with what usually happens with the poverty sticken bedouins.
“Everybody in this fucking country is liars!” spat the dye-job blonde girl, in a sweet, yet rough European accent, accompanied by her less talkative, sad-eyed friend, brown roots showing about a month’s worth of growth on the pair’s pony tailed scalps. “I ask the people where the grocery store is and they say, ‘that way’ or ‘this way,’ just pointing, but we don’t find it.”
They stopped on the sidewalk, waiting for me to catch up. “The co-op is just on my way home, I’ll walk you past,” I said. And at that, the more talkative of the two linked her arm with mine, like two halves of friendship pendants manufactured in separate factories by different companies that somehow fit, inviting no more stares than when I dress in baggy camouflage shorts and a print t-shirt revealing a half sleeve tattoo . . . okay, maybe a bit more. The eastern european prostitutes and I walking arm-in-arm to the grocery store, now there’s a postcard for mom.
As we scuttled across the street the one with the gusto asked, “Are you Lebanese?” I told her that I wasn’t, in fact Mexican-American. She looked up at me with eyebrows also dyed blonde, striking an arch, “I like Mexico! …..what the fuck are you doing in this country?” The second time today that I’ve been told how great the nation-state I’ve never known is, by people who’ve never been there. I guess they only hear “Mexican” and not the whole “Mexican-American,” thinking of “America” as a continent, perhaps two, and not as a country like most people from the United States have the tendency to do. Turns out they were from Romania. I would’ve guessed the Ukraine, thinking back to a disagreement Marina and I had about the statistic we had seen about the number of people exported from there and the percentage of them who became sex-workers.
The brown Lebanese boys at the co-op grocery, sitting on scooters, averted their eyes as I pointed in their direction up at the dingy white sign (caught in an obvious drawn out stare directed at the ladies of pleasure and I), red letters spelling out “coop” making me wonder about the conditions that these girls were brought here in. Sold by their mothers on the streets of Romania like the BBC special I saw the week we arrived? Kidnapped and transported in cages or coops, like the jails in the Phillipines? We unhooked and the quiet one looked back at me, probably not having understood a word of what her friend and I had said to each other, and offered, “shukran,” in Arabic meaning “thank you,” her tired face no more than 15 years old.
There are heartbreakers, and there are the heartbreakers from the pop songs and blues music that we all know, kinda’ like the way I felt when I visited the doctor earlier in the day to conduct some health tests. A nice gentleman who spoke very good English was telling me to “breathe deeply” as he inserted his needle into my vein. I relaxed, the plunger filling his vial as a beautiful Lebanese nurse asked me what kind of name “Miguel” is. As soon as she realized that I wasn’t Lebanese, she left the room and returned with two more fairly stunning hospital attendants, as they asked me questions like, “is that tattoo fake?” and, “do most Mexicans have such nice tattoos?” The guy removing my blood for testing finally throwing in, “a professional obviously did this work,” referring to my arm like the others. After weeks, nay of a life, in practical obscurity, it was nice to feel like a celebrity for five minutes. I recommend it to you all.
As the original nurse bandaged up my arm she asked if I’ve been going out at all since I’ve been here, “yes,” I replied, “my girlfriend and I have been having a wonderful time.”
On a sidenote: Just before I got home to write all this, I brushed past a woman in hijab removing her lumped children from a cab at the top of the hill that descends to my apartment, putting them both into a wheelchair. By the time I was seated on our balcony and had begun to write, she had made her way down the street, yelling in a high pitched sing-song voice asking for donations. I wouldn't exactly say that people were beating each other down to give her money, but it was more than the usual case of the invisible beggers I'm used to seeing. Later I realized she had probably come down to our part of town, one of the wealthier, to get some dough for her children injured in the war, the reason why people didn't simply turn a blind eye to her as with what usually happens with the poverty sticken bedouins.
posted by miguella guerilla at 3:59 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home