Insiding

What more is there to know about Ghardaïa? asked Père T at breakfast one day. Well, maybe others know, but I do not. Indeed, there is material on this place - poetic, photographic, historical, technical, etc. such as this article from 1996.

There is sand on my screen as I type this. Winds blow through all the windows and doors of S's apartment. It is the month of sand, I am told. I sit in the kitchen. Birds chirp behind, which makes me think of 'tree'. I only hear them, as today is a listening day, but here there are only palm trees down in the palmeries. In the morning, meat was set out for the local cats on the steps outside, where I sit to avoid the accumulation of cigarette smoke and anti-smoke spray. Something always tends to make me go outside. A neighbour came by to visit S - she usually does this a few times a day, S says. A mother of 5, which seems to be the respectable number of children to have here in a family. Winds create gusts outside. Small turbulances collect and swirl plastic bottles and bags in the niches of the houses here. I hear a flock of children outside. The winds bring them home as well for lunch.

Unbeknownst to me, I have been gladly participating in an Arabic / Kabyl cooking course these past few days. We have been making torte, a Ramadan soup, and something else with camel meat that has no name. I have made roses from the peels of oranges, scraped the lengths of cucumbers with a fork before slicing them, boiled almonds and removed their peels, and rinsed anything and everything, whether it came in a package or not.

S and I await the arrival of a Frigidaire. This is the general name for a fridge. Z tells me this morning that S will probably cry tears of happiness. Her old fridge, which works fine now, doesn't close during the 50-plus degree summer days. The consequence, somehow, of excessive thermal expansion. Modern appliances devised under temperature-controlled laboratories and factories, unleashed like innocent bunnies into the desert.

Ghardaïa, Ben Izguen - through the restrictions on being, moving and seeing, as a foreigner, as a non-believing and non-Mozabite outsider, as a person in a place under security, as an anglophone woman in a francosphere, I was permitted a brief glimpse into a world that has sought its own self-determination. Unlike a café, through which by habit, general determination, and a small amount of money I was able to convince the coffee guy and the all-male coffee drinking clientele that yes, women can drink coffee too, the old towns have stricter barriers though which trade seemingly is discouraged. Well, weren't we lucky that I just happened to get the keys to this house? says the tour guide. You can see it for an extra 200 dinar, on top of the 300 dinar tour fee; and he opens the door to a house laid out with labels and information sheets.

It may not want much to do with our world, or, it just might. They will put water tanks and satellite dishes on the roofs, run cables and fluorescent lights along the outside walls (nothing's sacred), and plug into the gas system and install crappy metal security doors. They will not care how we think of it all. It will remain their own inside thing.