The intertidal zone

Jajajajajaja!

That’s how they laugh in Argentina. That’s the first line of any email from Elena on receipt of another three laboured lines from me in Spanish.

Elena and P, Bo Gardens, Chicago

My young tutor Pia from Chile has been excellent. She hasn’t laughed at the knots I’ve tied in her language. She makes me feel I’m communicating. I can probably poner los vegetales en la cosina (put the veges in the kitchen) when I visit Elena in two weeks, and possibly mention las pinguinas de ojos amarillas (yes, the yellow-eyed ones), but knowing what she says in reply is another matter all together. In real life people speak fast and run their words together — and I’ll have to resort to counting on fingers, smiling, pen and paper, and if all else fails, tears.

It’s only fair that I try, though, to speak in Spanish. Until now our friendship (we met in Iowa) has been conducted in English, which is hard work for E. We’ve written our novel each in our own language, and had it translated back and forth. Now we have to practise subtlety together, as we examine its themes and polish the translations. The more skilled I am with my little Spanish-English dictionary the better.

Hay peligro de aludes? (Is there a danger of avalanches?)

Tantalised by Claire’s delicious story about a Moroccan chef called Mohammed making a tagine, I realised I had my very own …

May 2oo5, I was at Can Serrat Artists’ and Writers’ Residency at the base of Montserrat near Barcelona. From my memoir Digging for Spain:

When the original twelve Norwegian art students bought the crumbling casa … they needed a bricklayer immediately, to start shoring it up. (Moroccan) Mohammed, their man for the job … finished at Can Serrat, and was heading off for a new job in Tangiers. Someone at the residency cemented a lock of his hair into a brick wall to ensure his return. The hair did its work, the new job fell through, and Mohammed has been drawn back again and again

As a young boy he took the family’s produce to market in the donkey cart. Noted for his intelligence and aptitude, he was trained from youth as a muezzin. A couple of times we cajole him into singing the call to prayer. The resonant wailing, the glottal stops where silence pours in, and the sense of ancient authority reverberating from such a slight body, make the hair stir on our scalps.

… Mohammed now lives in the local village, fixing from scratch an old shop into a cafe restaurant where he’ll serve the wholesome vegetarian food for which he’s famed.

He turns up most days at Can Serrat, often with a basket of his handmade organic bread, dense, moist bricks with a hint of aniseed flavour that he sells for two euros apiece. He sits and talks with anyone who’s around, and makes himself available as taxi driver for which he won’t often accept payment.

… one afternoon, he flits home and brings back a chicken that he cooks up in an earthenware dish on the gas ring with garlic, chickpeas, raisins and cinnamon. This late lunch on a sun-drenched balcony is preceded by chilled melon, and served with unshucked basmati rice and strips of roasted peppers and aubergine. Mellowed by sun, wine and his own superb food, Mohammed tells how much he enjoys his weekly stints with the mentally handicapped at a psychiatric hospital in the city. We take another serving of chicken. This guy is unbelievable.

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