MOMMIES

There is a new pregnant cat living behind the cinema. I thought I heard her wailing so I went out there with a piece of cheese and it turned out to be some other non-pregnant cat being a brat. I secretly let the mommy-to-be in the cinema last night, I hope she is warm and birthing in some corner where the carpet is already red.
The streets were full of protesting children today, mostly boys. I left the house in my uniform for the week, knit pajama-leggings, dirty boots and a coat, and decided I was not in the mood for creating a spectacle of the magnitude that was unavoidably in store, given the pajamas etc (they were green. best wall color ever. not best pajama color ever. they seem to constantly be asking something like “where are her pants?”)
It’s hard to read the news but it has to be done. Everything is getting worse. Why don’t I hear America? I am suddenly perplexed by the Obama pin that Safia so carefully affixed to the ribbon of a soccer trophy belonging to one of her sons and displayed above the television. I even learned how to say “hope, change, and progress” in Arabic. I know he’s not president yet, and I also know it’s naïve to imagine things will change when he is, but seriously, Is this progress? Or were are we only ever talking about ourselves instead of acknowledging how many people die because of the weapons we supply? And continue to supply.

Kashmir has a government- I wonder what will happen. It’s hard to not imagine that my children will never see the parts of the world that existed when I was growing up because they are being destroyed. The maps I force them to embroider into pillows will all be different. Maybe I will embroider them before the borders change and we can feel the changes under our faces when we are sleeping. It will be like a contest.
Omar was telling me how strange it was for him to see his country’s lower third un-shaded in a map on Spanish television, trying to make sense of where that desert went and when it would be back. I’ve been watching BBC but this is different and I know even when I change the channel it’s the same thing maybe less pictures, more correspondents, and interstices of Sarah Palin’s daughter’s baby and how much money is being put up for her picture.