city visits, city views

Today.  Today is Monday.  I had to check the calendar to make sure.  We left off with the rose in the garden.  Here is the garden.  Djelloul said it was just a pile of dirt, and then Jessica and Sophian, Fatmah's son who lives in Cambridge now -- well, years before the two of them asked for a truck-load of dirt, and together they tilled and planted -- a fig tree, a lemon, some olive trees, and the roses.  So here I am looking out on Jessica's garden and smiling.

This is a place of family.  And there's lots of it.  For this family it begins with Heja, their mother. Even when we visited the place where they grew up, it wasn't their old apartment, it is called "Heja's house."  Heja is the loving title of someone who's made the pilgrimage to Mecca.  Before, her name was Aicha.  Fatmah lives by herself in the house, but there's a world of family in the city, and visits and calls are the norm.  Saturday morning Heja's niece visited with her daughters and grandchildren to meet us.  

 The daughter is college educated, and she loved the sciences.  Her husband has an appliance business, refrigerators and such.  We sat in Fatmah's kitchen and I wondered if the fridge came from her store.  It's a perfectly nice one but it doesn't have any lights inside.  She takes care of her kids, now, these two and two boys, 9 and 11 in school this morning.  The little girls were very shy.  We'd sat in the living room at first, and I took out my watercolors to engage them.  I showed them how to dip the brush in water, then in color, then make strokes on the paper.  The younger one lost interest.  The older one thought it was fun.  But it was Amina who was completely engaged.

This is Amina, the cousin's other daughter,  the girl's mom's half-sister who lives with her mom.  Downs syndrome in features, completely engaged, intelligent, focused on everyone and everything.  She worked on a painting of rich colors and thoughtful shapes, but when I asked her to sign her name, everyone in the room shook their head in alarm.  Djelloul says that in this country they don't expect much, and at the school, they only play, they don't expect they can learn anything.  At one point when Amina began, her mother started correcting her and I said no!  It's her picture!  and the mother laughed and sat back, hands up.  And Amina happily painted on.  Of her future? We will see, says Djelloul.  We will see.

 A loving family.  Time to go and the bigger sister put her little sister's coat and hat on her, and made sure she stayed still for the picture. Sweet family.

Now it was time for Djelloul to give us a tour of the city, only, sorry folks.  The camera I brought with me is so advanced it refuses to talk to my computer or give it any pictures until I have the right passcode, which is home.  Which Paul can hopefully send me.  Meanwhile we're running on iphone pics.  And movies.

Tiaret

It's an old storied town.  When the French came in the 1860's, their buildings were patterned on those of their home, and the old parts of town look like Utrillo paintings of Paris side streets. And when they left en masse after independence, the Algerians wanted to make it their own, if they only could figure out what that might be.  Kind of Saudi-ish, modernish, sixty-ish.  With the oil money, big government buildings or apartment buildings were thought important.  Recently they called in the Chinese to build them.  Of course every city's history is written in their streets, every city needs to reinvent itself.

We drove around on the Sabbath Saturday -- not much traffic then, he said, and we toured the fancy homes at the top of the hill, his old home, the old part of town.
  Then he pulled over to the holy site of the city, where people come to pay their respects.  It's a walk up lots of stairs, and an olive garden.  Djelloul kept us in the garden, while pilgims --  a young family or two, went up and in.  But it was a glorious view of the city.  So I took a panorama for you.

Then it was time to visit his older brother, Tiab.  We'd had a jolly visit with him in Brooklyn years before, so we looked forward to it. He'd just had a health-crisis and was home recovering, so it was only right we come. "He doesn't know we are coming," said Djelloul.  So it was a surprise?  We pulled over at a prosperous looking house.

His son met us and unlocked the steel door and led us up three flights of marble steps up to where his father rested, in one of those sitting rooms lined with sofas, a persian carpet on the area of the sofas, and a big screen tv at the other end.

He rises from his bed, one of the couches made up in sheets and blankets, greets us and settles in a chair.  The tv is clearly a religious program of serious men in robes on a blue-lit elegant set, with arabic writing scrolling above. His daughter brings us tea, fruit and pastries, then leaves.  Rock and I listen to the brothers talk in Arabic.  At one point Djelloul asks me questions about the Bible.  Tiab wants to know. (There was the sense that, having just been close to death, questions of religion were very much on his mind.)  I answered as best I could, and we exchanged viewpoints. They shared the story of Hagar, as they knew it, and that his wife is named after the holy path tread by her from the well to her son.   I answered another question with the story of Jacob and Esau and the moving and important ending with their reconciliation.

We heard children, and in came his granddaughters. (Several son's families live in that building)  They were shy, too, but I took a picture, then handed the phone to the older one to take a picture of her sister.  Both of them were completely adept at finding the photo and scrolling through the whole bunch.

 The mom of the girls.

 Sisters in the kitchen.

What we didn't know is that the brothers hadn't seen each other for years, after a misunderstanding. It was interesting that the story of Jacob and Esau came up!

That evening we had a lovely dinner at Moktar's family.  I'll share that when the camera behaves itself.
This is a scene from yesterday, when Djelloul had left the house at 6AM with Moktar and returned at 7pm with all the luggage.
So it was our day with Fatmah.  Here she is outside of our home here. It's a serious garage. It bolts up, down andsideways, and then a big bar rests across it, just for insurance.  We have to let her know that after a day of working on the computer, resting up, we need some exercise.  We pull up the translator on the computer.  We need to take a walk.  Marche.  A bon marche

 This is some cousin of a cousin -- in the bustling city lots of people know Fatmah and greet her.

 This is a long, tall hill with an unrelenting wall on the left, surrounding the governor's house and  government offices.  Even there, in a little grassy area, sheep graze, but they wouldn't let me cross the street to get close and personal with them.  We saw one traffic light in the whole city.  You walk across, as you drive, in complete and total faith in Allah and the kindness and eyesight of the drivers. The cars come fast on this street in both directions.  It was understandable.  But I wish you saw pictures.

 Up and around the bend Fatmah brings us to Heja's house, where the five children grew up.  Djelloul remembers fondly of the fields of grass where they played soccer, where families came to picnic, now all given over to development.  They lived on the first floor, just to the left of the doorway there.
Several doors further down is a pizzeria!

No one is home.  

On our bon marche home, I see this little girl coming home from school

 The graffiti says, "KEEP calm and go to LONDON."  Now why this is english, and not Arabic or French, is a mystery to all of us.  The camera has lots of other pictures that it's hiding.  But you're hungry now, and ready for the next chapter of Algerian cuisine.  A simple supper for the family,  especially the hero returning through the mountains with our bags.

 Zuchini stuffed with spiced hamburger, then boiled in a tomato broth.

 Sheep's liver cooked in oil and garlic, sprinkled with ginger, pepper and cumin, and cooked carrots sauteed with lots of stuff I don't remember now -- Oh! vinegar, garlic, oil,  . . ??
Desert was the dates fresh off the trees and the flavorful oranges that Djelloul brought back.

Today we visit Zorah's work -- a horse farm in town.  And walk the mountain to visit the cousin who lives in the mountain.  Tomorrow Oran.