Of Empty Roads and Sweet Iced Tea – Part II

(continued from June 12)

We called roadside assistance and were relieved to talk to a human being, a nice woman, it sounded like, whose job it was to fix predicaments such as the one we were in. She was matter-of-fact, in control, reassuring. Fear suddenly seemed so out of place I could not remember why we had been afraid in the first place. We would be rescued without delay – or would we? “They’ll be there in three hours.” Three hours? Did she just say three hours?

We looked around again, and again we saw fields and more fields (was it grass?) as far as the eye could see on both sides of the road. With less than two hours of daylight, we got out of the car to stretch our legs and consider even darker versions of our imminent dénouement. It was then we saw someone move towards us, indistinct at first, and then more clear though we could not tell whether man or woman, young or old. Whoever it was moved slowly, taking the time. The whole thing felt too much like the scary movies of women stranded on the open road. Going back into the car was an option but then, why would we do it? The car was not going anywhere; the windows were not bullet-proof.

We continued to stare as if our lives depended on our ability to tell early enough as much as possible about whoever was coming. At some point we could see it was a woman carrying something with both hands. What could it possibly be?

A hostess with a tray of crisps and ice tea, circa 1952 (Photo by Harold M. Lambert/Getty Images)

A tray, we thought, and we were right. On the tray there was something that sparkled in the evening light. A pitcher, it seemed. A little later the cups on the tray became visible and then her voice traveled the remaining distance, “Hi there! I fancied you could do with some home-made sweet iced tea while you wait.”

She put the tray on the car trunk and stirred the golden liquid with a large wooden spoon. We really wanted to ask where she had come from but were wary of the answer. “Where do you come from, then?” she asked, wasting no time. I began to give a thorough explanation but she stopped me on my tracks. “You’re not from around here, right?” It wasn’t a question. “I bet you’re from fancy Rock Hill, hey?” she added. Fancy is not a word we associated with Rock Hill but there was no time to think of an answer, as she went straight to the next question, which was – guess what – “What do you do for a living?”

Now, as easy as it should have been to say what we do for a living,  it suddenly felt awkward to speak of research, art history, “and stuff like that,” as we put it, in an attempt to sound as un-intellectual as possible. Part of me wondered why I was acting this way. It wasn’t long, though, before I felt the punch. “I guess I made iced tea for two liberals, hey? A nest of liberals the place you work at is, I bet.” There was no stopping her now. “Colleges! I bet that’s where you work, right? I bet that’s why your car’s ready for the trash. Liberal and poor go together good, hey? Can’t afford the right kind of car.”

And with that she let out the biggest laugh, and we couldn’t help but laugh along with her. We laughed so hard I needed to visit nature’s rest room right there behind some bushes. When we had finally settled enough to look at each other again, she said, wiping her eyes, “That’s alright. You’re God’s creatures too. I bet you can do with some of this.” She let the iced tea and cubes fall loudly into three large clear cups. She knew we’d be there a long time and meant to keep us company. We raised the cups to our lips and drank. This was the South, then: cool and sweet, strong, refreshing … with a sprinkle of humor.

P.S. And the friend in this story sent me this comment:

Yes! It was sweet tea, don’t forget — a very important distinction. And I remember short light hair – grey? And the southern version of your Maria, capris and a sleeveless tank top, all in soft cotton.

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Of Empty Roads and Sweet Iced Tea – Part I

As promised in my blog of June 6, Ms. Maria’s counterpart in South Carolina now takes her turn:

Perhaps I should start by saying that I do not know her name. I met her only once in a place I cannot find on the map even now.

"I will survive"

It was the early summer of 2005, not too long after my arrival in the US, a time when an unusually heavy load of struggles made me dig my heels and promise myself every day that I would – yes, I would – survive.

I am not sure why the Portuguese Ms. Maria came to my mind so clearly when I met this woman. I guess it was her kindness and her age; her deeply wrinkled face, with eyes hidden under folds of skin. She also shared with Ms. Maria the look of someone who had led a life full of hard work and empty of complaints. Whatever it was, she reminded me of her “twin” across the waters from the moment I saw her come towards me.

It wasn’t a carefree meeting. I, for one, was wary at first and, why not say it, afraid. I had left Rock Hill with a friend. We were headed to a place in the South Carolinian countryside, somewhere in The South, as people put it to me then. This sounded a little strange to my ears. Weren’t we in the south already? Not really. As I would come to understand, Rock Hill is generally seen (mostly by its population, I imagine) as too university-centered, too fond of “Earthfare-y” grocery shops to be The (real) South; it is also too close to Charlotte, a city so far from The South as to actually be situated in North Carolina. I mean, Rock Hill is only 20 minutes away from something with “north” spelled all over it.

Why was I was venturing into The South?  To take my dog to a summer camp where she would (I hoped) have a great time while I went home for a while, to a different South, this one in Europe (come to think of it, same north-south dynamics). My friend was coming with me to check out this place for her own dogs in expectation of her upcoming trip to California.

We were driving through areas never before explored by either of us. I was filled mostly with a sense of excitement but also of apprehension, and the latter increased rapidly as we drove farther and farther through a landscape bare of human presence. No houses, barns, dogs, or cows – no cars, even – for miles and miles.

I found myself wondering, Did I have my AAA card with me? Were our cell phones working? Had we perhaps lost consciousness and been transported, Alice-like, to another world (the moon came to mind)? The radio was not much help as familiar NPR sounds became less and less clear and voices with inflections hard for me to understand took over. My friend didn’t seem too sure either about what they were saying. And then everything began to slow down as if life had gone into slow motion – only it wasn’t life, really, it was my car, slowing and rolling gently to a halt, so gently that I was able to guide it almost off the road. This was a very good thing, seeing as there were only two narrow lanes with neat white lines down the middle.

And not a soul in sight, which could be very bad; on the other hand, the sighting of a soul under these circumstances could be even worse. We both looked at my dog sleeping in the back seat. She’d never met a mean person, at least not outwardly mean; would she be any help in a “meany” situation? I tried to think of American films I’d seen. What happened when two women were stranded on a long, empty road? I couldn’t think of a single good thing.

(to be continued…)

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On passports and cultural pursuits

When I wrote last week’s blog there were four days left to the dislocation that led me to where I am now: the city of Porto, Portugal. Yet I feel that I am only partly here. Though I am far from being “a global village on two legs,” as Pico Iyer describes himself,  I am never completely in, or of, any one place, for I carry many places within me like treasures.

"Passports" made by middle school students in art lessons

I do not find that taking planes is “as natural as picking up the phone or going to school” but I like to hear Iyer say that more and more people have hundreds of different cultures “singing and clashing and conspiring within them” and that the global village “is increasingly internalized within us.” Good to know I am not alone. “Home,” he continues, “is essentially a set of values you carry around with you and, like a turtle or a snail or whatever, home has to be something that is part of you and can be equally a part of you wherever you are.”

Such internalization and values do not translate easily to the outside world, however. When I handed my new, shiny US passport to the airport officers in Charlotte and Newark two days ago, I had a clear impression that they checked it more quickly than they had ever checked the well-worn British passport I had used before. On a practical level, this was fine by me. I had gone through many naturalization and passport application stages, willingly and even enthusiastically, for a number of reasons, one of which was, I confess, purely practical: Having a US passport would put an end to the long sessions of pointed questions I was asked every time I entered the country. Altogether, these could be grouped into three main lines of inquiry: 1) “Why do you travel so often?”; 2) “Why do you have more than one nationality?”; and 3) “Where is your other passport?”, the assumption being that if I had been born in Portugal – a fact declared in my British passport – I must perforce have a Portuguese one. I grew weary of these conversations at the end of long flights. I also grew more and more restless as I considered the implications of the questioning. Though perhaps understandable in light of the terrible events of the last few years, the exchanges became increasingly troubling to me.

Like all powerful symbols, a passport signifies many things, some of them seemingly contradictory: It stands for some form of identification with a country, while its very existence acknowledges a willingness to visit others, which is already a kind of opening. No wonder tyrannical regimes are not fond of passports.

A crisp “I can see you have applied for a passport” signaled trouble in Portugal recently enough for me to remember. I also have a sharp memory of the morning I arrived with my parents and younger brother at one of the border posts between Spain and Portugal. We had been to Switzerland and then to Paris, where my parents had spent all the time – or so it felt to me – dragging us from bookshop to bookshop. By the time we got to the border, we were tired; we had been driving all night.

“Geneva!” exclaimed the Portuguese customs officer as he leafed through our passports. I had a sideways view of him from the back seat of the car. He was dressed in a dark uniform with metal buttons dangling from his cuffs and he spoke to my father, who stood before him. “You travel often, I see.” I wondered whether this was a question or an accusation and ended up deciding it was both. I had a pretty good idea what he was aiming at.

My mother got out of the car with a  fake nonchalance, grabbing on to her bag as if it was her life saver. The officer continued leafing through the passports, looking at stamps. “Coming and going, coming and going…Well, well… You visit Paris often, I see. Cultural pursuits, I imagine? Films, books?”

Roy Lichtenstein, Girl in Mirror (1964)

My mother opened her bag, took out a small mirror, and became totally engrossed with her hair, pulling curls here and there, staring at her reflection. “So tiring, these trips,” she said, yawning. My father muttered something about the Eiffel Tower.

A long pause followed. The officer could let us go, or he could tell us to open the trunk, filled to the brim with books. In both Spain and Portugal books were then a most dangerous commodity; carriers of  ideas, inviting reflection, they exposed the reader to “other ways of seeing.”  One could control a border but… a mind?

He sneered as he handed the passports back, slowly. “Dangerous stuff, culture is, if you ask me.” He  moved the lever that raised the barrier and as we drove through he shouted, “If one has to dabble in culture, one should keep to one’s own.”

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