Sahara – Clara Hsu

Khubs, Tea, And The Sahara Omelet

Bari came to dinner on his motorbike. Helmet, jacket, and his signature black turban that he wrapped around his neck. From an already breaking paper bag he pulled out one item after another: tea pot, jars of spices, a tin can of sugar, mint, coriander, tomatoes, eggs and Moroccan bread (khubs).

“I’m making mint tea and omelet.” He announced.

“My father thinks he is diabetic,” I told Bari. “I don’t think he’ll go for the tea. As for the bread, it’s too hard on his teeth. I think the only thing he can eat is the omelet, but don’t make it too spicy.”

Celebrating Thanksgiving with a ninety-year-old man, everything had to be soft.

But when Father saw the bright green mint stuffed in a cup he became curious. And the bread, which I toasted in the oven, came out hot and crispy on the outside. He smacked his lips as he tasted the mint tea. “Sugar!” He smiled, and drank heartily.

The omelet reminded me of the Sahara (where Bari came from) with sand (cumin and ras el-hanout) and stones (green peas and tomatoes) and the large sun (the eggs, scrambled and cooked with lots of liquid).

Toward the end of the meal, Father figured out how to eat the khubs too, dipping the bread into the mint tea to soften it. Now he was satisfied.

“Bari, you are a good cook.”

Bari smiled. He loved my father.

Sanmao & The Crying Camels

Stories are seeds that get planted in my mind when I read them. Stories fade in time, but certain images take root.

I dream of a white, round adobe hut surrounded by night. I dream of camels crying with their lips pulled back and their huge ocher-colored teeth showing. I dream of a long train platform with the sound of a whistle trailing behind a departed train. I dream of a young woman with long black hair in a multi-color dress painting the letters on her husband’s grave. These and others have become part of my narrative and indeed I have set out to seek them.

The author Sanmao (1943-1991) left Taiwan and lived in the Western Sahara with her Spanish husband. She wrote short stories, all of them fictionalized autobiographies. Their ending was tragic: he drowned in a diving accident. She went back to Taiwan and later committed suicide by hanging herself.

I thought of Sanmao and her story, The Crying Camels, when tears rolled down the eyes of the camel who took me into the Sahara. But unlike her account of brutality, rape and murder, mine was just the sand and wind.

The Story of the Snakes

After our Two Tongues of Gaia debut last night a man came up to me and asked, “What’s the story on the snakes?” He was referring to one of the poems I read, titled The Chase.

When I was in the Moroccan Sahara Desert in 2007 I had a vision of a massive exodus. In order to travel long distance humans and animals changed shapes and forms and piggybacked on each other. Tolls had to be paid before services were rendered. So the further they went, the less they possessed and thus memories of their origin were lost along the way.

About two weeks after I came back to San Francisco I had a vivid dream. I was wakened by something that was moving in my bed, slithering between my sheets. I forced my eyes opened. In the dim morning light I heard a crackling sound and saw two snakes with arched bellies racing across the room.

Did I carry the snakes home? What did they pay to get out of the desert? I sometimes wonder what have become of them: lost souls huddling in a corner down Mission Street, or lounging in an Arabic grocery store? Three years later one of the Berbers I met in the desert won the Green Card lottery and arrived in San Francisco. He is now going to school and working in a Moroccan restaurant.