Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

la tumba de Asturias

the cover photo

these pictures are from february 2006, in palestine. this is part of the wall imprisoning the west bank
this is a guard/observation/shooting tower along the wall.

i took these my first day visiting some friends who lived in Beit Jala for a few months to complete their dissertation research. after the wall we drove towards another town within the west bank. except there was an impromptu roadblock and checkpoint under a bridge, staffed by israeli soldiers. my legs hurt from being on the plane so we walked past the roadblock and up onto the bridge. my friend distracted the soldier on lookout and asked me to take a picture from above of the soldiers and the roadblock. i felt scared, like i was doing something wrong, so i took it quickly. when we started back down i began to feel paranoid, as if the soldiers below would know that i had taken their picture, would know how i felt about the wall and would know that i wasn’t really touring tel aviv, haifa and the dead sea as i’d written on my entry form and told the multiple guards at the airport. so, as a cover, i took this underexposed picture from the top of the bridge; then the next one; then the one of what might be an almond tree

although they’d waved us through when went up on the bridge, they stopped us when we tried to get back to the car. another army jeep had arrived with more scary soldiers. my friend, who’s male, was the first to ask one of them what’s up. then the commander came over and asked why we were taking pictures of his soldiers. my friend said we weren’t, and then asked whether there was some law against taking pictures of roadblocks. apparently there is. the commander demanded that my friend show him his digital pictures, which were of the wall. then he saw my camera and asked if i had taken pictures of his soldiers. i said no, but then i had to show him too. so he saw the mosque, the countryside, the maybe-almond-tree and then he said, “that’s a very nice camera, you should be careful,” and we got to walk past all the palestinians--waiting in taxis, trucks, combis--to our rental car.

this was the next picture, the soldier looking up must have been the one who saw me

but after this i was scared, and at every checkpoint my stomach turned and i hid my camera, even though i knew that my multiple privileges would protect my person, and probably even my property. i still took extra, goofy pictures of my friends, trees, sheep, goats, flowers to cover the other pictures i took of the wall, surveillance cameras, soldiers, etc. i felt like they knew everytime we went through a checkpoint that we weren’t tourists of the holy land, or the dead sea, or tel aviv night life. so we did go to the dead sea, to haifa, just so i would have a cover for airport security, and photos of the ocean and the bah’ai temple to show them.

Setting the Activist Table

H.’s apartment is on the second floor in an old building, up a flight of worn wooden steps. When we walked in I immediately thought of Ruth [H.’s friend since the 1960s and the dot that connects me to H] and her equally small apartment in Mountain View. Walls plastered with political posters, pictures and held up by books. There are files going back decades: anarchisme, Mexique, economie, and periodicals in piles on the floor. H.’s toilet closet wins the design contest, however. The floor to ceiling bookcases lean precipitously over the commode, and the remaining wall space is covered with ETA stickers and a pictorial timeline of England. Had I asked H for any bit of history, for information, for an article, I have no doubt that he would have located it as quickly as Ruth can, and that it would have been placed securely in my hands for as long as I had need of it. He very quickly explained France’s role in the Middle East after the Ottoman exit.

But, lunch first, and that involves the activist table and its essential papers that cannot be removed, only pushed to the side. Ruth has an extra card table for this purpose so that the organization of current events is left undisturbed on the main table. Chez H the stacks are reorganized in the corner, visible only as a slight rise in the topography of the tablecloth. Lunch was laid out here, five courses that took us more than three hours to eat. I am happily bewildered by French, excited about the food and content to talk politics [in its many dimensions] around a table crowded with friends and papers.

Cartas de amor

I was able to get my library card and start research at the Manuscrits occidentaux at Richelieu all by myself, but I had Julie’s help at François-Mitterand. I’ve never been to the Library of Congress, but the Bibliothèque nationale de France is beyond anything I could have imagined. The entrances are on the roof, so one descends into the building. Entering the stacks is, in 80s [?] lingo, super hi-tec. With my book and seat (U8) reserved on computer, I walked toward the metal doors at the end of the lobby. I inserted my library card in the slot to the right of the turnstile, walked through, retrieved my card, and pushed on one of the 4 tall doors. I found myself alone in a chamber with metal walls, facing a row of tall doors identical to those I’d just come through. It felt weird, but maybe just because it was so stark, and not because I was being scanned for magnetic bar codes. I pulled on the door and to my right was an escalator down, with metal fibre drapes on the walls. Two flights down was another turnstile [card in, spit out], and an information desk. The stacks are on this bottom floor, and past the information desk is an identical set-up [turnstile, metal doors, Star Trek holodeck chamber, more metal doors]. I turned left and walked past the lounge, the computer area, the smoking lounge and then turned right down the glass corridor that separates the stacks and reading rooms from a walled-in jungle. Went up half a flight of stairs and got my book from the librarian: Cartas de Amor.

I thought when I read them that Asturias’ love letters are like anyone’s, really, in that they’re not really about the beloved but more about the lover, and the lover’s experience of love. Asturias, from his letters, seems like he would have been a covetous lover, wanting lots and lots of communication and assurance. But his letters also mixed in a great deal of bureaucracy: Blanca, left behind in Buenos Aires, has to take care of all his unfinished business—sending him his trunks, some carpets he wants to sell, proof of the quality of said carpets, etc. His letters from Guatemala are full of instructions on how she should accomplish these tasks.

What does pertain to her, perhaps, is what of life he chooses to share with her (his readjustment to his family, his sons and country; the successful completion of novel one of the Banana Trilogy; and his political concerns), the plans that he makes for them both (traveling in the countryside, their marriage (once his divorce is final)), and the questions he asks her about his work. That is how I began to understand who Blanca is, at least for Asturias.

I read only his love letters, and they made me think about my own—the ones I’ve saved from my boyfriends but mostly about the ones I’ve written. A very selfish lover myself, I’ve often asked for them back when the relationship ends, without really thinking about why except that they’re mine once they’re no longer ours. But were they ever ours at all?

fall is leaving home