ever-fixed mark

An old Peace Corps friend, Dave, died suddenly this weekend. A bunch of returned volunteers were weaving in and out of a Facebook thread commenting on one person’s announcement that he was coming to the States in a few days to interview for a job with the Peace Corps, when someone broke in with the news that Dave had succumbed to a brain aneurysm the previous day.

I hoped it was a joke, some kind of inside joke between the two of them that I just wouldn’t get. Dave couldn’t die at 40. Dave had saved two lives in one Thanksgiving!

Fucking Facebook. This is what it’s come to. The medium that everyone else uses to post what they had for lunch and how much they are T’ing G that it’s F is now how everyone will know that you’re dead. When all of us first met, the internet barely existed, and no one had a telephone. If you wanted to deliver a message you had to send it through the Tunisian post, or get up off your ass and go tell them in person, unannounced.

That’s how I first met Dave. Another volunteer brought him and another trainee to my house during a “kick-out,” a week-long period during training. It was meant to be the trainees’ first real experience out and about in the country. I suppose A., the other volunteer, thought his charges should see the bright lights of Tunis, so they ended up at my place.

Dave was young, cocky, and good-looking. I thought that pretty much summed him up, with no need to give him any further consideration, but that weekend he surprised me. He was smart and well-read and really, really charming. The kind of attention that you or I might lavish on a seduction target or someone who might leave us a million dollars was the kind of focus that Dave turned on everyone: pretty girls, ugly girls, middle-aged women, old men, straight men, gay men. At one point during that first weekend he paid me the best compliment I’ve ever received:

“You know, you have a really good vocabulary,” he said.

And that’s how you make a friend for life. He had me at “vocabulary.”

Here’s a photo from that weekend. Doesn’t this make the Peace Corps look like fun?

Dave was the Brobdingnag among Liliputs.

Dave gave me gifts of music, literature, laughter. He turned me on to Joni Mitchell; I had only known “Big Yellow Taxi” but he loaned me cassettes of Blue and Court and Spark, and I was converted. When I taught Wuthering Heights and complained about how dull it was, he borrowed one of my photocopies (university policy; we couldn’t afford or perhaps get our hands on actual books) and schooled me in its genius. Every few months, he tried to get me to read Love in the Time of Cholera, but I never could get past the first few pages. He told me that life was too short to read trash, a view against which I used to protest, but which I’ve now come to espouse. Life is too damn short.

He was nicknamed Haj because of a red fez he wore at some party or another. Hajji is an honorific given to men who wear the fez, denoting that they’ve made the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca. It’s inconceivable that Dave’s made his last hajj.

Peace, xuyya.

(I’m right in the middle of a post about skiing, but on the spur of the moment I decided to take the boys away for the long weekend, and a new topic presented itself. A detour, if you will.)

I have always considered my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers to be more siblings than friends. You probably love your siblings; you may occasionally hate them; you may talk every day or not see them for years on end. Nonetheless, when one of them shows up at your door, you have to feed them. Right?

On that principle, I decided that I would stop to see a former Peace Corps volunteer who runs a bed and breakfast near the farm/inn where I took the boys this weekend. It’s been over twenty years (OH MY GOD, has it really?!) and, not having been best of friends during our sojourn in Tunisia, we haven’t written, e-mailed, phoned, or communed telepathically in the interim, but I thought, why the hell not?

The episode of “The Office” where Pam and Jim visit Dwight’s beet farm/B&B springs to mind as a potential reason.

Anyway, it was good if a bit awkward. We caught her just as she was returning home, and she was certainly surprised to see me. The two of us exchanged life stories while the boys tore up the house. Before any real damage was done, I hustled them out of there to the more boy-friendly confines of our destination.

The farm was so much fun. Aitch promptly declared himself an expert on the rural arts, and I smiled indulgently at him until he proved his worth, wrangling some rabbits, hunting down eggs in the chicken coop, and milking a cow.

He also saw two pigs rutting, which is how we found ourselves in the indoor pool (”Let’s go.” “No, I want to stay and watch this.” “Hey! Who wants to go SWIMMING?”)

Minor was very popular with the goats.

I have a roll of artsy black-and-white medium-format film of similar scenes all ready to be processed, but I recently got a new Blackberry and have been seduced by the siren song of the instant snap.

I survived my 14-hour round-trip with the boys and had a really nice reunion with my Peace Corps friends this weekend. We drank a lot of wine and told a lot of our stories about each other and absent friends, but we spent an inordinate time reminiscing about the food. For the first time, I realized that we actually ate pretty well during our forced stint as locavores. Sure, we occasionally missed peanut butter, but we had constant access to fresh, abundant meat and produce.

Some things I hadn’t thought about in awhile:

Fresh baguettes, purchased every morning at your local bakery at the government-subsidized price of 100 millimes (about 10 cents). I used to eat it every morning with canned quince jam. It was considered sinful to discard bread, so people would leave their stale ends outside on their curb for animals to pick up.

Kaftegis - disgusting sandwiches with hot greasy french fries IN the sandwich.

Pizza with tuna and olives.

Lablebi, a hot chickpea stew, served as breakfast at construction sites.

Vile pudding decorated with little silver balls served for the Prophet’s birthday. It tasted like the iron pills the nurse used to give us.

Pastries dripping with sweet honey served during Aid Kbir. (The Tunisians were not that great with desserts.)

Raw, unpasteurized, spoiled milk (liban), the national health drink.

Peppers (filfil) that were either haloo (sweet) or haar (hot), depending on how you asked the question. (If the vegetable seller thought you wanted haloo, then he would tell you they were haloo.)

Brik, egg fried in phyllo dough with parsley and mashed potato, served with a squirt of lemon. Yum!

Harissa, or red pepper paste, served with a dash of olive oil and garnished with olives. Yumyumyum.

Cous-cous (kusksi in Arabic), the Tunisian national dish, with djej (chicken) or aloosh (lamb). YUMyumyumyumyum.

We talked ourselves into a serious craving and decided to make cous-cous on Saturday night. While we were shopping, we looked for harissa, which you can often find in the ethnic section of supermarkets, but a search of two stores turned up nothing. My friend K. found a recipe on the Internet and whipped up the most awesome batch of homemade harissa in ten minutes. Go ahead, click on that link and try it out. You won’t be sorry.

When I got home I was motivated to replace my Cuisinart (the bowl on the old one had warped, rending it useless), and I made it myself, as well as another Tunisian dish I’d been craving, slata mechouia (grilled salad). I’m not sure how to describe it — a sauce? a dip? a condiment? You eat it with bread, but you can also spread it on a sandwich.

Here, adapted from the Peace Corps cookbook, is the recipe:

1/4 kilo peppers (I use green and red sweet peppers)
1/8 kilo tomatoes
1 head of garlic
Small onion
1/2 t coriander
1/2 t cumin
Oil
Salt

Grill vegetables on a kanoun (a grill; you can also use your broiler).

When the skins are blackened, put all the vegetables in a plastic bag and tie the top shut. Leave them for 15 minutes. (This allegedly loosens the skins so they are easier to peel.)

Peel the blackened skins from the vegetables.

Puree the vegetables together with salt and seasonings.

Add oil to desired consistency.

Eat with bread.

Shahya taiba!

While Husband is planning his big Renaissance weekend, I have also been planning a reunion of sorts. A Peace Corps friend of mine who lives in Cairo, P., is on the east coast for the summer, and we are planning to take the boys on a road trip to the Finger Lakes region to see two other Peace Corps friends, K. and V., who recently bought a winery. (My friends: winery. Husbands’ friends: Renaissance Faire. Need I say more?)

I’m pretty sure that K. and V. first learned to make wine in the Peace Corps. P.’s roommate, T., used to make batches in their kitchen. He didn’t have access to any special wine-making equipment, so he’d use big water bedouns to ferment the fruit and condoms that came with our medical kits as airlocks. When the condom got flaccid, that was the signal that some crucial biochemical process was completed.

One weekend T. held a winemaking seminar/party at his and P.’s apartment in Jendouba, on the western border of Tunisia. Here we are:

Don’t we look hippie? And sweaty? And drunk? The pink stuff in the water bottle was the finished “wine”; the big bedoun on the floor contained the elixir-in-progress. It was high summer in Jendouba, a town generously described as “the armpit of Tunisia.” Does your armpit harbor mosquitoes the size of single-engine planes? No? Well, then, I’d rather vacation in it than Jendouba.

I’m the one with my eyes closed, which is usually how I’m photographed. I’m holding the wine-making manual (pre-internet, we had to learn things out of books — how quaint). I distinctly remember how happy I was to be wearing shorts outside of my apartment without having anyone call me a kahba (whore).

It was so hot that night that, after consuming a considerable quantity of our moonshine, we decided to sleep on the roof of the apartment building. Even on the edge of town there weren’t many artificial lights, and I spent an hour watching shooting stars before I fell asleep. At least, I think they were shooting stars. They may have been auras from the ocular migraine caused by the drink. I awoke some time later with mosquito bites on the palms of my hands and soles of my feet. Those were some tough mosquitoes.

1. Hair bows. Remember those big bows we used to use to tie back ponytails in the eighties? Like in Heathers? I can’t believe I saw someone sporting one. She was my age, too. I hope she hasn’t been wearing it for the last twenty years.

2. High leather boots. In California. In June. On multiple people. Why?! No time for a pedicure? Are your feet in purdah? There are many closed-toe options that are perfectly appropriate for summer. Please look into them; my feet are sweaty just contemplating this.

3. Three words: Man in skirt. Not a Scott or a tranny, just a dude in a utility kilt. He was rocking it, too.

I can’t get over how empty this hotel is. All day long, I’ve seen no one but my 20-odd colleagues from work, and twice as many bored hotel employees whose actually seem relieved when we pop our heads out the door to ask for something. I’ve sat alone in the pool, the coffeeshop, the lobby. I haven’t seen anyone in my hall, the gift shop, or the elevators.

After work, I went out for a walk along the three-mile route recommended by the concierge. The resort is nestled among a number of gated communities and condo complexes, hundreds of Italianate buildings all jumbled on top of one another, including a hideous reproduction of the Ponte Vecchio over Lake Las Vegas. During a three-mile walk, I saw almost no one. No one playing golf, sitting on a balcony, going for a walk. No boats on the lake, no swimmers on the beach, no one on the volleyball court. No one at the Ponte Vecchio, the restaurant, or Celine Dionne’s house. In 45 minutes, about 15 cars passed me on the street. I actually started to get a little frightened, because if someone had jumped out of the shrubbery, I’m not sure if anyone would have heard me scream.

The only experience I’ve had that’s every come close to that sense of desolation was in Tunisia during Ramadhan. During that month, Muslims are permitted to break their fast at sunset, so at the close of day everyone is at home, sitting at the table, waiting for the cannon to go off to signal that it’s time to eat. If you happen to be out on the street, it feels like the whole city closed down.

But…it’s not Ramadhan or Christmas morning or Super Bowl Sunday. It’s not wartime or a science fiction film or winter at the Overlook Hotel.

I swear for a moment I was convinced that the Rapture must have transpired, but I doubt that event would make much of an impact on the population density in Las Vegas.

In April, I was in Miami. This month, it’s Vegas. We must be working with the CSI-themed meeting planners.

I am actually only nominally in Vegas. The resort where the meeting is held is outside of the city, in a place called Henderson, on a largish body of water called “Lake Las Vegas.” Celine Dionne, I’m told, has a home here.

The resort is nice enough, but it is its own raison d’etre, rather like Disney World. One comes to this resort to visit the resort; there’s no other there there. It’s eerily empty, a victim of the economy and its distance from the Strip. The weather is gorgeous, though, and I’m currently enjoying my 17th uninterrupted hour of sunlight, so I’m not complaining.

Business trips can be disorienting, even a little depressing, so I always try to get out and explore a little bit, just so that every destination doesn’t feel like room-service-and-network-TV. I noticed that the hotel rents out kayaks and paddle boats so guests can “explore Lake Las Vegas,” so I thought it would be fun to do a little kayaking.

Do you know how weird it is to kayak in a man-made lake? In the desert? Past Celine Dionne’s house? The water was so clear and clean; the bare hills in the distance, so incongruous; the sudden appearance of golfers, so intrusive; the wildlife, so scarce. It was like kayaking in the world’s biggest water hazard.

At long last we proceed with Act 2 of the three-part saga, “I Was (Almost) a Teenaged (Well, Practically) Spook.” (The radio station playing “Valerie Plame” was WERS, a really great college station, by the way.)
———————-
The preceding took place during winter break of my senior year in college. By graduation, I had still not heard from the CIA, so I got a job as a Yellow Pages salesperson in Amish country. (Ah, foreshadowing! Bet you didn’t see that coming!) My job was to travel around to small businesses in Lititz and Intercourse and Virginville in my ancient foul-smelling Volkswagen Scirocco and convince them to increase their ad space in one of the three local phone directories. I was taught to quote the price as the monthly bill (”A two-inch ad is only $7.98!”) instead of the yearly total, which concerned me ethically. I sometimes got to mock up the artwork and write copy, so it was practically like working in advertising.

I had been working about six weeks when the United States Office of Personnel Management contacted me to come to Langley for an interview. They would pay for me to fly down and put me up in a hotel overnight. Pre-internet, these arrangements involved reams of paper forms and hours of toll phone calls. Even so, it was so terribly exciting I could barely sleep. My first business trip! Paid by someone else! Visiting The Company!

The only problem was my job. I certainly had no vacation coming to me after six weeks, and I didn’t think I could muster up an illness good enough for two days off work. In a fit of honesty (see: those pesky ethics) I asked my boss for the time off, and he turned me down flat. So I took a chance and told him why I needed it: job interview, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, blah blah blah. He was sympathetic, but unhelpful. I could not have the time off. If I didn’t show up for work, I’d be fired.

Meanwhile, I happened to run into an old acquaintance from college at a party. He was a former fraternity brother of my freshman-year boyfriend, several years older than I. Like a lot of the guys in that fraternity, all of whom seemed to be named Eric, he seemed always to be propping up a wall near the dance floor, clad in a rugby shirt, beer in hand, stoned look on face. He was fairly cute and had improved considerably; now, he was able to hold up his end of the conversation in addition to the wall. He lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and he offered to take me out for dinner when I came down for my interview.

Naturally, I quit my job. Looking back, it seems like a very foolhardy move in such bad economic times, but given the sheltered life I had led, and my craving for adventure, I don’t see how I could have foregone jetting off to DC and a date with a handsome older man for a lifetime of writing ad copy for Shear Magic Hair Salon and Stoltzfus Plumbing. Obviously, the whole thing was meant to be, and in a few weeks I’d be searching for an apartment in Georgetown and shopping for furniture with my new boyfriend.

I’m pretty sure it was a prop plane that got me from Harrisburg to Dulles. I think I took a taxi to Langley, or maybe they sent a car for me. I remember getting checked in at the front desk and being assigned a badge — routine in office buildings now, but fairly awe-inspiring then. I remember an interview with a gentleman who explained the job to me (Reports Officer, under cover of the Foreign Service, posted to an embassy, gathering intelligence, and writing it up, although I have no idea how the intelligence was supposed to be gathered). I was interviewed in German by two elderly women to gauge my language skills. Then I went to the polygraph room.

When you apply to a government agency, you fill out a bunch of paperwork detailing every place you’ve lived or worked. This was a relatively easy task at this stage of my life. It would become somewhat more tedious years later when I applied to the Peace Corps, and by the time I started consulting for USAMRIID, it took hours. (I had nothing to do with the anthrax, but I did get a tour of the lab where it was probably grown.) But the CIA application has a special section where you detail all your past drug use.

Now, I am not now nor never was I a hard drug user. I was scared to death by Go Ask Alice as a child. But I was fresh out of college; I had certainly smoked pot a few times. Furthermore, I had an older cousin who was, shall we say, an avid consumer, and thanks to her I had been attending parties with people nicknamed “Darvon” who had mirrors on their coffee tables and scales in their bathrooms since I was eleven.

I had been warned that, whatever my past, I should TELL THE TRUTH about past drug use. “We’re not looking to eliminate anyone who’s ever smoked pot,” I was told, “but if you lie about it, it will come out in the polygraph.” I understood this, but I was twenty-one years old and I was NOT about to record for posterity in a permanent government record the 3.5 occasions on which I had smoked pot. So I lied.

The polygraph room was small with a table, two chairs, the machine, and a big mirror. I congratulated myself for not being fooled by this, for recognizing it as a two-way mirror hiding an observation room. The examiner hooked up the electrodes to me and explained the procedure. She started off with simple questions: Was my name X? Yes. Did I live at address Y? Yes. Was I 21 years old? Yes. Then she gave me a playing card, a seven of hearts, and instructed me to answer “No” to all the questions. Was my card the ace of spades? No. The three of clubs? No. The seven of hearts? No. She showed me how the output remained relatively serene when I was telling the truth, and spiked when I was lying.

Then we started in with the real questions.

She went through my paperwork, verifying all the items on my resume. Had I lived at X? Yes. Did I graduate from University Y? Yes. Had I worked at Z? Yes. Then we got to the drug questions, and it became a bloodbath. As soon as I started responding to the drug questions, the polygraph jumped. She tried to play good cop, telling me that any past drug use wouldn’t disqualify for the job; I just needed to admit it. Stupidly, I stuck with my story. She then tried bad cop, berating me for not telling the truth. She left the room, presumably to consult with the person behind the two-way mirror.

At that point, I reflected that I was currently unemployed, and prospects for this job were slipping away rapidly. So I admitted yes, ha-ha, of course I had smoked a LITTLE pot. The examiner modified her questions to try to pin down the exact extent of my drug use, but by this time I was so freaked that every single answer I gave made the polygraph jump, even the neutral baseline ones. The examiner accused me of hiding something big, and I countered that the results were obviously unreliable.

“What do you mean? I showed you how it worked in the beginning when I asked the questions about the card.”

“Yes, but now it says I’m lying even about my name,” I told her, pointing to the evidence.

She went to consult again with the people behind the mirror and then came back and said we had run out of time, and I would have to return some weeks later to repeat the polygraph. I was obviously not going home with a job offer.

I did have a date, though. Eric #8 picked me up at the office and took me to a Chinese restaurant. I was stupid enough to think this was exotic; “cheap” didn’t occur to me. It was a nice enough date, and when Eric #8 dropped me off at the airport I still had fantasies of moving into a cute Georgetown apartment with him, but now I realize that it hadn’t gone as well as I thought it had. Back then, I wasn’t critical about jobs or men. I never sat in an interview or a date and thought, “How is this for me? How would I like to be a yellow pages salesperson/CIA agent/life partner of a taciturn guy who wears a rugby shirt?” All I could think was, “Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!”

Neither the CIA nor Eric #8 picked me.

Husband and I are in London for a long weekend, thanks to the confluence of a work trip and a visit from my parents, who are the babysitters. Almost straight off the plane, we caught a West End matinee of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, with Michael Gambon and David Bradley (Dumbledore II and Filch to you Harry Potter fans).

I don’t think it will spoil the plot of the play for you if I reveal that Mr. Gambon’s character, uncharacteristically, survives until the final curtain. Actually, I don’t think it would spoil the plot if I reproduced the entire text on screen. It’s that kind of play. My listening comprehension wasn’t helped by the jet lag. I’m still not sure what was a plot element and what was a dream.