Azza – Thinker Boy: Blog & Art

November 27, 2018

jacky and johnnie

This past Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, my wife and I drove—south to north—up Interstate 35. We started in San Antonio and ended up in the beautiful village of Georgetown, Texas, my hometown and the place my father and stepmother live their idyllic lives as retirees.

Of course, there was food—they don’t refer to Thanksgiving as “turkey day” for nothing—so we ate it. And we drank. And we sat around long after the vittles had been consumed and were snaking through our digestive systems. And while we sat and let the nutrients do what nutrients do, we talked and laughed and reminisced and smiled at one another across the dining room table.

Off and on, between gorging ourselves in ways that distended our already distended bellies, we watched football and took discreet naps while sitting heavily on a couple of large L-shaped sofas.

We woke up Saturday morning and Janie, my stepmother, suggested that we drive up to Burnet, a town located in what Texans call “the Hill Country,” to visit Jacky, my dad’s youngest brother, and Johnnie, his wife and survivor of cancer, a disease that had caused her to lose her hair but none of her spunk. Everyone thought it was a great idea.

Everyone in the family knows and openly talks about how Jacky has become something of an eccentric. He doesn’t like to leave his house very often except to hunt and fish. He gets up at 4 a.m. every morning and is obsessively clean to the nth degree and beyond. In fact, he has a large workshop behind his house and those who’ve seen it jokingly say that a person could eat a meal off its concrete floor.

The result of all this was that I expected our visit to be somewhat awkward. This expectation was exacerbated by the fact that this would only be the second time I’d seen my aunt and uncle in the last twenty years. So I sort of knew what to expect but sort of didn’t too.

After an hour of driving, we found ourselves in a wooded area not far from Lake Buchanan. We parked in the driveway, were met by Jacky and Johnnie in the front yard, and then were escorted through the house and out the back door where we all took seats on a lovely screened back porch. I spotted a rustic rocking chair and made a beeline toward it. We all took our seats and then began to ooh and ah about our surroundings.

The backyard was huge with several large cottonwoods and oaks, all of them shedding leaves in the autumnal breeze. Johnnie said something about how this was their favorite place to sit and be still and quiet. She also mentioned how this was medicine for her psyche. She said they ate out here and even slept out here when the conditions were right. I understood how all this could be true as I felt myself decompressing and unwinding.

There was a large and melodious wind chime hanging next to me and I mentioned how pretty it sounded. Johnnie then told the story of how they’d come to own it. According to her, on the day they were coming home from her mother’s funeral, Jackie, knowing that his wife was feeling profoundly sad, stopped at a roadside market and bought it while she sat in the car. Upon returning to the vehicle, he handed it to his wife and said, “This is a little something from me. I hope you’ll think of your mother when you hear it.”

So, on the afternoon of our visit, we sat and listened to the chime while Johnnie told this story. One or two times, during her telling, she paused and wiped, using the back of her hand, a tear a two that had rolled down her cheeks.

It was a sad story but a beautiful day, made even more so by wonderful fellowship among kin and kindred spirits.

October 23, 2018

zeyneb

Last week was terrible. Six days ago, at approximately 3 a.m. in the morning, my wife’s mother, Zeynep, died. As soon as we heard that tragic news, I began to send texts and make calls to a variety of people so that I could stay home from work to tend to my wife and give vent to my own profound sadness.

Zeynep had been suffering from kidney disease for a couple of years or so. Her treatment had primarily consisted of dialysis treatments that left her exhausted and depressed. Then, about three months or so ago, something changed. Her body—for whatever reason—began to reject treatment. It became harder and harder for the doctors to administer dialysis and her medicine seemed to stop working. As a result, my mother-in-law’s condition deteriorated which led to more depression which led to a worsening of her physical state. It was a vicious circle that she’d become trapped in.

On the morning of Zeynep’s death, Azza, my wife, had trouble sleeping. She tossed and turned in the bed next to me. A few minutes before 3 a.m., she woke up and called her family in Cairo, Egypt, to make sure everything was Okay. She started telephoning her brothers and sisters but none of them would answer. Finally, she got someone on the line only to learn that her mother had just passed to the other side. So, about the time my wife had had her premonition, her mother was breathing her last breath.

I cannot tell you how bad I feel for my wife. I understand her loss completely. I actually witnessed my grandfather—I man I was profoundly close to—die in his bed in his home. That was the culmination of a long, debilitating illness. And when he finally left us, it took weeks for many of us to fully recover from that devastating blow.

Death is so final. That’s why it makes us feel devastated and sad and angry. There is no one to complain to when it happens. You can shake your fist and scream, but none of those actions will do any good. Death cannot be reversed upon appeal.

From time to time, my wife turns to me, and with tears in her eyes, asks, “Is she really gone?” To which I quietly answer, “Yes, she’s gone.”

I wish I could tell her that she’ll be back soon. But that would be a lie.

Our Saturdays and Sundays

estate liquidation

When Azza and I moved from Cairo, Egypt, to San Antonio, Texas, USA, we didn’t bring a lot with us. Actually, I take that back. We transported a hellacious load of boxes, via a cargo container that was loaded into ship that had dropped anchor in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, but that lot didn’t include much furniture. So, when we set up house in SA, we lived a Spartan existence for a while.

We did not despair about our lack of furnishings. Instead, for months now, on weekends, beginning early every Saturday morning, we rise and shine to make the rounds at garage sales, yard sales, parking lot sales, estate sales, and any other kind of retail enterprise, large or small, where folks hawk previously owned goods at affordable prices. We learn about these buying opportunities via the World Wide Web, on this site and this one. We also locate them by sheer accident as we drive around and through the sprawling metropolis that is San Antonio.

I have to admit that this sort of shopping beats the hell out of a visit to IKEA or some such place. I am particularly fond of estate sales even though I always feel a little sinful—that might not be exactly the right word, but it’s close—while picking up and handling a family’s once-cherished possessions. Poking my nose into their bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms, dining room, kitchens, and private crawl spaces invariably leaves me feeling a bit like an impertinent ogler. For example, if I walk into a home where the owner had an obsession for footwear—there are plenty of houses that are simply stuffed to the rafters with an obscenely large number of pairs of women’s shoes—I always feel like I’ve discovered a family secret that the inhabitants would have preferred not to have become common knowledge.

shoes

Estate sale shopping is always a little sad, too. I invariably run across wheelchairs, walkers, and packets of unopened adult diapers, the tell-tale signs of deterioration and demise. I often find that my eyes fixate on these items as my mind tries to conjure an image of the person (or persons) who used them. I then turn away and wander into a new room, one where the walls are decorated by dusty black-and-white photos of people I’ll never know and who are probably long gone and forgotten.

Not long ago, while the two of us were walking down the hallway of a particularly large house that was simply bursting at the seams with stuff, Azza stopped me dead in my tracks by grabbing my arm. “Troy, promise me one thing,” she said with a troubled look on her face.

“What’s that?” I asked her.

“When we die, you’ll never let anyone open up our house in this way.”

“OK,” I said.

She then let my arm go and we continued moving from room to room, picking up a few purchases as we went along.

I’m Pretty Sure I’ve Been Here Before

Life takes some incredible twists and turns. About a million years ago, I was born in San Antonio, Texas, a city that’s a little bit America and a little bit Mexico, and then, back when I was still pooping in diapers, mom and dad carried me off to Garland, a suburb of Dallas. Over the decades, I have had one or two opportunities to return to my birthplace, but only as a tourist and only for very brief visits. Mostly, I’ve been estranged from the locale that could rightfully be called my hometown.

Then, in the latter days of September of 2015, a few months after I’d left my post at The American University in Cairo, a very sudden job offer in San Antonio came my way while Azza—my Egyptian wife of five years and new America émigré—and I were camped out with family, in their guest bedroom, in another part of the Lone Star State. Of course, I signed on the dotted line, right where my new employer told me to. We then loaded up, headed to south Texas, down where the beautiful language of Spanish is ubiquitously spoken, and set up house.

All these years later, I am back in San Antonio, the place where I (literally) got my start. From time to time, when I’m tooling around the city, I get this weird déjà vu feeling. As a matter of fact, this past weekend, Azza and I went to the San Antonio zoo, and while standing in front of the flamingo cage, I had this odd sensation that I had stood in this exact spot before. The bird scene before me seemed bizarrely familiar. I lifted my camera, took a few photos of the pink, hook-nosed birds, while goosebumps rose on my arms.

flamingo

We spent three hours among the animals and enjoyed our time more than I can accurately articulate here. I’ve always been a nut for creatures—this nuttiness was especially acute when I was a tyke—and I felt that old delight resurface as we moved from cage to cage. For some reason, on this particular outing, I especially liked the fish in their various watery enclosures. They swam past us, flashing a zillion neon colors as they went. In fact, I was so captivated by them it took me a while to actually notice that in one particularly large aquarium there were two hippos, their grotesquely large bodies magnified by the water, floating among those finned and gilled darters.

I’ve included a few photos here and am upset with myself that I didn’t get a good shot of the gibbons as they swung through the treetops, picked insects off on another, and otherwise reminded me of how humanlike they are. While watching them do their monkey business, I got so enthralled—my mouth was probably agape—that I simply forgot to lift my camera and click the shutter.

I’m the Boss (and So Is Bernie)

I want to start by saying something that should be obvious to everyone: I’m the boss of this blog.

Oddly enough, even though I’m the owner and CEO of Thinker Boy, Inc., it wasn’t entirely obvious to me, though. My most recent posts, all of them personal reflections on my profession—I’m a teacher—had started to feel stale and I was growing bored while writing them. Still, I hadn’t turned away from the topic because I had promised to complete the project. Guess what? I’m going back on my word. I’m discontinuing the series of blogs I’d been calling “The Accidental Teacher.”

I blog a lot like I travel. When I go somewhere as a tourist, I never make a plan before arriving at my destination, nor do I carry a guidebook. I like to arrive in a state of naiveté, which assures that I’m going to be surprised as I roam around. When traveling like this, I wander upon an interesting spot, one I’d never expected to find in the first place, and stop to look for a while. When the time feels right, I turn my back and walk away.

I’m using this analogy to tell you that I’ve been looking at the topics of “education” and “my life as an educator” long enough. I’m now ready to stroll away from them and make new discoveries. I guess I could be a more focused writer if I were a more focused person. Part of the reason I’m unfocused is that I have so many interests. I’m all over the place and so is my blog.

One of my interests is American politics. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the competition between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. (FYI: The Republicans only interest me to the extent that their current crop of candidates are capable of disturbing my sleep by giving me nightmares. One of them in particular—I think you know which one I’m talking about—seems hellbent on causing the whole sane world to have really bad dreams.)

I’m a Sanders guy and I FEEL THE BERN every day of my life. If you want to follow my thoughts on the contest, go to my Twitter page and have a look.

My Egyptian wife and I live in San Antonio, Texas, and we are very active people. While moving around and through Texas’ second largest city, we see many streets with houses that have Bernie Sanders signs in their front yards. To date, I have not seen a single Hillary Clinton sign even though she won the Texas primary a while back. Who are these Clinton supporters and where are they? They sure seem like a shy bunch, at least in these parts.

In an attempt to get to the bottom of what motivates HRC supporters, Camille Paglia has written an interesting piece with a very provocative title—“Enough with the Hillary Cult: Her admirers Ignore Reality, Dream of Worshiping a Queen.” I wholeheartedly recommend that you read it.

Sanders is constantly calling for a revolution in America. By this, he means we need to revolutionize our thinking. Sanders, of course, would never ask others to do something that he hasn’t already done himself. If you want to see what he means by this sort of thinking, watch the video below—it’s the speech he gave at the Vatican—and you will certainly see a politician who has embraced the sort of progressive ideas that many would find revolutionary.

When was the last time you heard a candidate for president talk about the weak and downtrodden and argue that America’s profits-before-people economic system is “immoral” and even “unsustainable?” If you can’t hear the voice of saint—or a jewel of a politician—when Sanders speaks, you need to get your ears checked. You might want to check your ticker too—to make sure you haven’t become heartless.

We in the 99% are those who Sanders is looking out for and talked about in Rome. By running for president, he’s throwing us a lifeline and we need to be smart enough to grab it. If we don’t, we may find ourselves sinking to the bottom of the deep, blue sea.

Waking Up

on the riverwalk

It’s been really hard to shake the feeling that I’ve just woken up from a really long sleep. That’s because these recent weeks seem so dreamlike, so unreal, or perhaps, even surreal.

Just about eleven weeks ago to the day, I got word that a company that hires civilian contractors for the US military was interested in employing me to do educational work of an intercultural sort. This news came suddenly, while I was visiting my sick grandmother in West Texas. The job offer came with one stipulation—that my wife and I relocate to San Antonio, Texas, within a matter of days.

So we packed up, quickly. We were only able to take with us the few things we could fit into our Subaru. I managed to get online and was able to reserve a room in a place called Studio 6 Extended Stay—an old Motel 6 facility that had decked out a number of its rooms with kitchens and cooking utensils.

We moved into the place, bought groceries to fill up our fridge. The following day, I started one of the most intense orientation and training programs—along with seven other trainees—ever devised by human beings. I arrived at my new workplace a few minutes after 6 a.m. each morning. Our days were filled with “briefings” and then we did all sorts of practice teaching that was observed by a large number of people who wrote up reports on what they’d seen us do. We were like lab rats sent running through mazes in search of chunks of cheese. Not all of us passed these early tests. It was boot camp for teachers and some of us were let go before the real work even got started.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that it’s been a touch less than three months since we arrived in San Antonio. In some ways, it seems like a year or more has gone by. In other ways, it seems like mere days.

I’ve been mostly exhausted since all this got started. Finally, though, I’m beginning to catch my breath. I’ve even started to wake up from this dream-state I’ve been in. I’ve mostly been in survival mode, just doing those basic things that each day required of me, but now I’m beginning to think about writing. The old creative juices are beginning to flow again. This means more blogging—of a regular sort—is in the offing.

The photo I’ve included, at the outset of this piece, is a nice one and full of symbolism. It was one of the earliest ones I took in San Antonio—on one of our visits to the city’s famed Riverwalk, downtown. In it, Azza and I have just stepped across a threshold and a dome-shaped ceiling can be seen overhead. Behind us is a wall, a waterfall, and the past. We are wearing shades as we are looking forward, toward the camera, into a bright future. We are smiling and wearing expressions of expectation. Something about us in the photo suggests that we are travelers or explorers, embarking on a sojourn that will provide plenty of wonderful surprises.

Several Thousand Tasty Words

I’m adjusting very well to living in America again. I say this because I keep having these moments where I look around and think, “I feel so wonderfully contented!” Such an experience occurred yesterday as Azza and I were sitting on the front porch and watching a cold summertime rain fall. After a particularly bright flash of lightning and then the delayed rumble of faraway thunder, I shuddered and felt completely overwhelmed by the beauty of my surroundings. I didn’t ruin it by trying to verbally express what I was feeling. I just sighed and quietly enjoyed the moment.

I’d like to share a bit more good news but of a different sort. It looks like I’ve landed a job, but I can’t write about it here because Azza would be very mad if I did because the contract is being prepared (as I write this) and thus I haven’t signed it yet. She believes it’s really bad luck to share good news prematurely. So, in a bow to her and her superstitions, I’ll just say that things are about to look up on the money front.

This past weekend, Janie, my stepmother, suggested that we drive over to a place called the Oscar Store, in what’s left of Oscar, Texas, to eat lunch. So we loaded up in the KIA and drove north and a bit east on Highway 95, with Georgetown as our starting point. This route took us through beautiful farmland—of a rolling-hills sort—and a handful of little Central Texas hamlets with names like Weir, Granger, Bartlett, Holland, Sparks, Little River-Academy, and Heidenheimer.

After about forty-five minutes or so, we pulled onto a little off-the-beaten-path road and into a grove of huge oak and pecan trees. Nestled amongst those mammoths was a sprawling structure made of repurposed barn lumber and tin. (There’s no telling how many rickety structures gave their lives so that the “store” could be born.) Actually, this page gives a bit of history on how and when the place came to be.

To make a long story short, we entered the eatery, took seats, looked at menus, ordered food, scarfed it down, paid our bill, bemoaned our bloated conditions, and then took off. We also wandered around, took a few photos, including some of a helicopter that was parked nearby; well-to-do patrons had used it to fly in to the restaurant. Because a picture really is worth a thousand words, I’ve included a few photos here.

A Little Kuntry Kitsch at Oscar

The Oscar Store Interior

In the Parking Lot

Wipe Your Mouth!

The National Beer of Texas

On Our Way to the Oscar Store

The Oscar Store Interior

A Group Selfie at Oscar

The Sign Outside

One of the Weirdest Experiences of My Life

My life has undergone a radical transformation since the last time I posted here. I left Egypt, my home for the past seven years, flew back to Georgetown, Texas, and then moved in with my family. All this in an attempt to restart my life in the United States.

For a bit more than a month, I had to live apart from Azza, my Egyptian wife, while she awaited her green card interview with a bureaucrat in the American embassy in downtown Cairo. Federal law requires the authorities to do a face-to-face chat with potential new immigrants to see if they harbor any criminal aspirations or political ill will toward the land about to accept them into its fold. Azza did her interview with her usual aplomb and charmed the person she spoke with, proving, in the process, that America had nothing to fear if she packed her bags and moved there. (Her gift of gab is only surpassed by her skills in the kitchen.) As a result, the American government made her the proud owner of a permanent resident visa.

Azza and I now share a guest bedroom in Georgetown, and I’m busily looking for work. When I’m not sending out résumés and pounding the proverbial pavement, my wife and I spend our days going to thrift shops and rummaging around at garage and estate sales. The buys we’ve been making are meant to supplement the shipment we having coming in from overseas. Said container of personal items consists of forty-two boxes, some of them nearly the size of an old-fashioned Volkswagen Bug.

This brings me to the subject of this blog. This past weekend we drove to an estate sale located in a part of Georgetown I was totally unfamiliar with. We parked, walked up to the front door, and entered, only to find a domicile full of people pawing over the contents of the place. Azza and I separated and I headed toward one of the back bedrooms which was mostly filled with all sorts of Christmas stuff—Santa Clauses, tree ornaments, and the like, all piled up on card tables. I moved deeper into the room and found myself standing in front of a closet with its door open. I looked into it, and my eyes were immediately drawn toward a stuffed animal—a “plush” as collectors and pickers like to say—in the shape of Snoopy of Charlie Brown fame.

The Snoopy was completely covered with writing. As I looked closer, I could see that the toy had been autographed by dozens of people. I was shocked to see names I remembered from my elementary school days—I grew up in Georgetown before moving off to college and then farther afield. I then noticed, to my shocked amazement, my own name amongst the others and nearly had an out-of-body experience as soon as I made the discovery.

I took the plush in hand and carried it to the woman sitting at the cash register located near the front door. “Who lived in this house?” I asked her.

“The Simmons family, long-time residents of Georgetown,” she told me.

“Wow!” I said, and then I showed her Snoopy and my own signature on the dog’s head.

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, a classmate named Barry Simmons was burned in a house fire. His injuries were horrific, and he missed months of school while he was recovering. During his absence, our class bought a stuffed animal—the Snoopy I found and purchased at the estate sale—signed it, and gave it to him as a way of showing that he was in our thoughts. So, for the price of two dollars, I now own a little piece of my boyhood history.

This blog is my latest telling of this story. Everyone who hears it finds it as unlikely as I do.

I’m not a superstitious sort, but I’m hoping that the finding of Snoopy is some kind of sign, one suggesting that Azza and I are about to begin a period of many wonderful occurrences and good fortune.

And Now a Break from Our Regularly Scheduled Programing

So I was dining in this Indian restaurant a few days ago. We’d pushed a couple of small tables together as we were a party of seven. Six of us were Americans and the seventh, my wife, was Egyptian. We weren’t drinking alcohol or anything, but the conversation was still silly and random as hell. Many of us giggled and guffawed as the talking occurred. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe there were even a few instances of people chortling. That tells you what kind of evening it was.

At one point, just before the food was brought to the table, Ruthann, a fellow Texan from Dallas, turned to me and said, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “Let’s talk about obscure celebrities from yesteryear.” That prompted me to respond, “Hey, does anyone know whatever happened to Tiny Tim?”

Of course, Azza, my better half, had no idea who this miniscule person was. One other individual, a child of twelve, was equally in the dark. Everyone else immediately fell silent. You could literally hear cogs turning in heads as people thought about my question.

I was the first person to break the silence. I said, “Tiny Tim is actually an interesting study. He’s a study in how far an untalented person can go in show business.”

“It wasn’t necessarily that he lacked talent,” Lori retorted, “It was just that he had the right sort of talent for the 1960s.”

“Right,” said Ruthann. “Weirdness was really in in the 60s, so he had what people wanted.”

I’ve embedded a video so you see an example of what Mr. Tim provided to the public during his heyday.

Now, days later, I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about Tiny Tim. In addition to the clip I included, I’ve looked at a zillion videos of him performing and being interviewed. I even called several teaching colleagues into my office, showed them a few of the things I watched, and asked them to respond, taking careful notes as they spoke. Like I said, I’ve been a bit obsessed recently.

Perhaps that was his ultimate goal (and genius?) as a performer? To create a persona and a sound we couldn’t turn away from and couldn’t get enough of?

The Third Reason

Two blogs ago I said we had two reasons for traveling to Dahklah Oasis and Ain El Oda in southwestern Egypt. I failed to mention that we also wanted to check out and purchase some of the wonderful handicrafts the region is so well known for.

I should back up some and tell you that Azza, my Egyptian wife of three years, is in the home stretch of receiving her green card. About fifteen months or so ago, we hired a fancy immigration lawyer, with an office in Austin, Texas, to help us start the process. I’ve been living in Egypt for seven years now, but recently, let’s say in the last year and a half, the security situation has gotten so that it’s now time for us to get out of this part of the world while the gettin’s good. This point was recently driven home when we had a bomb blow up on our street, not more than a hundred yards away from our apartment building, which is located in Maadi, a suburb of Cairo and a part of the city once thought to be immune from the sort of political violence that is wracking this country and the entire Middle East-North Africa region.

So what does this have to do with us wanting to look at handicrafts in rural Egypt? Well, we’ve been thinking that we might start an import-export business and bring a bunch of super cool decorative items into the US to sell. The Egyptians are not as well-known as the Turks or Iranians for their rugs, but they make some mighty fine ones. And they produce hand-tooled metal light fixtures that are simply to die for. Applique, pottery, furniture, and hand-blown glass can be added to the list of things produced by Egyptian artists and craftspeople.

In this piece I want to focus on baskets and basketry. During our visit to the oasis, we picked up a few of these vessels to add to our collection. They are exquisite examples of the craft and the sort of decorative item many Americans would simply go bonkers over. Don’t you agree?