The year could have been 1791; it could have been 1868; it could have been 1931. The men could have been veterans of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, or World War I. It could be that the events of which this writer writes never took place, that they are all just figments of his imagination. But let’s pretend that they really took place. One year, when times were hard, some veterans of a long forgotten war were in want of some money. So a group of angry war veterans got together and decided to march on Washington, D.C. They had been promised pensions by a grateful nation for their services, but you know how governments are about bestowing pensions upon their veterans. In the years since the last war, the government had forgotten its promise to its veterans.
This March took place during a year when the bottom had fallen out of the economy. Homeowners lost homes, farmers lost farms, and many people were homeless or living in shantytowns. The police would order the dwellers of these shantytowns to move on while they demolished their dwellings, but the shantytowns inevitably sprang up in another part of town: in a park, on the village green, or anywhere where there was enough space to build a shantytown. These shantytowns got to be an eyesore after a while, but there was nothing that towns could do about them; there were too many homeless people.
One day, a farmer named Joe who had lost his land got the idea of marching on Washington and demanding money from the government. He had served in the last war and been promised money twenty or thirty years later, but he need his money now. He had already lost his farm, and he had tried to make a go of it by running an illegal still a few times, but each time he tried to operate his still, the revenuers came and broke it up. With him, his wife and his five children homeless and living in a shantytown, he figured that he had nothing to lose.
Joe and his family lived far away from Washington, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, near Marquette. Joe and a few of his buddies started their crusade in Marquette, then crossed into Wisconsin, where they drew more former veterans to their cause. Each state where they went, former veterans who had lost their homes and their land joined their march: Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia. Soon thousands of angry war veterans marched on Washington, D.C., demanding the pensions that the government had promised them.
One fine day, when the Japanese cherry trees began to blossom, the intrepid band of veterans appeared on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, where they built a shantytown. The authorities in Virginia didn’t know what to do. The veterans sent Joe to present their peitition to Congress. At first, like the authorities in Virginia, the Congressmen didn’t know what to do, either. Then the House quickly voted on a bill to give them their pensions immediately. The Senate, however, let the bill die in committee. That’s because the Senate is a more deliberative body than the House.
Most of the 25,000 veterans decided to go home, but about 2,000 of them, led by Joe, gathered in front of the Washington Monument, demanding their pensions. Finally, the President sent the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with a battalion and orders to disperse this mob. With a corn cob pipe in his mouth, the general said to the veterans: “This is an illegal gathering. You are ordered to disperse and go home.”
However, Joe and his fellow veterans had marched hundreds of miles to Washington; they didn’t come all this way just to disperse and go home. When it was clear that the veterans were not going to disperse, the general ordered his men to charge. Since some of the general’s men were on horseback, the veterans were at a great disadvantage. As well, Joe and his buddies were armed with nothing but sticks and stones, while the general had armed infantry at his disposal. It was not an equal fight. In their haste to flee, some of Joe’s men were trampled, either by each other or the men on horseback. A few were shot by soldiers.
Since it was now a rout, Joe and his buddies tried to retreat across the Potomac River back into Virginia, but the bridge to Virginia was blocked by Virginia State Police. When Joe and his buddies realized that they couldn’t cross the Potomac into Virginia, they decided to try the bridge to Maryland; but that bridge was blocked by Maryland State Police. There was a scuffle between the veterans and the Maryland State Police, but the veterans were unable to cross the bridge into Maryland.
Stragglers were arrested by the Washington D.C. municipal police and the Maryland State Police, but some of them managed to sneak across the Potomac River and make their way home. Joe arrived home in the Upper Peninsula and found his lot no better than before. His family was still living in a shantytown, and he could not find work in the copper mines of the Keewanau Peninsula because he was branded as a Communist sympathizer.
That was how Joe became a labor activist.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
The Butcher of Châteauguay
For more than thirty years, from the end of the Great War until after the Occupation, Gaston Meyssonnier was the town executioner of Châteauguay in Provence. Governments came and went, especially in the dying days of the Third Republic, but Meyssonnier always operated the guillotine as the town bourreau. He carried out his duties with a detached air. When someone was lead up to guillotine to meet his destiny, Meyssonnier merely released the blade without emotion. During his years as le bourreau de Châteauguay, he probably executed twenty-five or thirty people, roughly one per year.
Meyssonnier was without friends. Though people were polite when greeting him, they rarely talked with him for very long when he entered Le Coq d'Or, the café where he took his lunch every day. Rather, they kept their distance. They rarely talked about him, perhaps because they thought that it was bad luck to talk about the le bourreau. If they spoke of him at all, they spoke almost in reverent whispers, even when he wasn’t present. When strangers, usually tourists, asked of him, the response was invariably, “That’s Gaston Meyssonnier. He’s the executioner...”
At first glance, Meyssonnier was no more repulsive than other people, but ordinary in appearance, but tall and muscular, with chiselled features and a black beret on his balding head. He wore a grey serge sweater during what passed for winter in Provence, and black pants and black patent leather shoes. Though he was in his late fifties or early sixties when the Occupation started, he still stood tall and straight, time having failed to render him bent and crooked as an old man. It was only when you asked him what he did in life that his bearing changed, at least in the mind of the beholder. Without emotion, he would say, “I operate the guillotine, monsieur. I am the executioner of Châteauguay.”
At the beginning of the War of 1939, Meyssonnier was still executioner of Châteauguay. After the fall of France, when Châteauguay came under the jurisdiction of the the Vichy Regime, Meyssonnier continued as executioner of Châteauguay. His job changed little, if at all, during the Occupation. That’s to say, the number of executions remained about the same. Those executed in Châteauguay were executed for the crimes for which they were normally executed: rape and murder. Because rapes and murders continued to be rare even under Marshall Pétain and Pierre Laval,
Meyssonnier executed three people during the Occupation. All were convicted murderers whose victims were people who lived near Châteauguay.
Without doubt, Meyssonnier was aware of the Nazi occupation of northern France. He was also aware that Jews in the South were being deported to Auschwitz. He knew the collabos in the Vichy Regime that aided the Nazis in their deportations, and that people denounced their Jewish friends and neighbours right and left. Châteauguay lost almost its entire Jewish population, about thirty or forty families, during the summer of 1943. Somebody denounced them, and the Nazis sent them to Auschwitz. None of them returned after France was liberated and Germany was defeated.
One Jew in Châteauguay survived the terrible years of the Occupaton: Gaston Meyssonnier. Possibly, nobody knew that he was born a Jew because he and his family were practicing Catholics, not observant Jews.
How Meyssonnier felt about all this, he didn’t say. He never revealed his feelings even to his wife, Yvonne. He didn’t “talk politics,” as he would say during and after the Occupation. He merely minded his business and discharged his duties as the executioner of Châteauguay.
On days when there wasn’t any executions, he took extended lunches at Le Coq d’Or. Since there were rarely any executions in Châteauguay, he took extended lunches most of the time, about two hours being the norm.
During the summer of 1943, on Bastille Day, a woman named Mathilde Sévigny was arrested for the murder of her husband. The people of Châteauguay couldn’t believe it. She was a skinny little thing, seemingly incapable of hurting a fly. Who would have thought that she would do such a thing? However, Mme. Sévigny confessed to having poisoned her husband when the police questioned her. By her own account, she gave her husband infintessimal amounts of arsenic over time until the arsenic did its work. Because her husband was the owner of the apothecary in town, acquiring the arsenic was easy.
“Why did you murder him,” Inspector Claude Massu of the police asked, stunned.
“He was cruel to me,” the woman replied, without tears. “He always said that I was stupid and lazy. When I served him his dinner, he was always critical and often sarcastic. Finally, it was my idea to poison him when he said, ‘What are you trying to do, poison me?’”
After a brief trial, Mme. Sévigny was convicted of murder with premeditation and sentenced to death by the guillotine. Even though this was during the height of the deportation of Provence’s Jews, people only talked about the murder of the druggist in Châteauguay. The town was polarized not over the deaths and deportations of the Jews, whose number was in the thousands all over France, but over the ultimate fate of Mme. Sévigny. There were people who believed passionately that Mme. Sévigny should receive mercy, that’s to say, spending the rest of her life in prison. But there were people who believe with an equal and a singular passion that she should receive the death penalty. The magistrate agreed with those who wanted the death penalty; he sentenced her to death.
According to his custom, Meyssonnier never talked about it even to his wife. However, the execution of Mme. Sévigny had an affect on him, it seems. As the condemned woman mounted the guillotine in the prison, he was struck by how ordinary she was in appearance. She was in her sixties, tall and thin with a crooked posture and a long neck. She was dressed in her prison clothes, wearing her black hair, habitually dyed black but now showing traces of grey, in a chignon.
“How like a bird she is!” Meyssonnier thought to himself as the guard laid the woman’s head under the blade, which was suspended about four or five metres above the block. “How like a bird…”
Meyssonnier would have never thought that Mme. Sévigny was capable of murder. If she was suddenly to receive a pardon, he doubted that she would ever commit another crime again.
When the prison governor gave the signal, Meyssonnier released the blade of the guillotine from its height of four or five metres. The blade severed Mme. Sévigny’s head cleanly from her body, the head, falling into the basket placed underneath to catch it. As it happens sometimes, when someone has been executed by guillotine, Mme. Sévigny’s lips moved for a few moments, her eyes, flickering wide open in bewilderment and terror. Then her lips stopped moving, and the expression that she wore in death was that of somebody in a panic, her mouth wide open in terror, like someone about to be murdered in the night by an intruder.
The Liberation of France came less than a year after Mme. Sévigny’s execution. In the days that immediately followed the Liberation, the country went on a frenzy of violence that hadn’t been seen since the Commune of Paris. People used this period of disorder to settle old scores, denouncing as collabos people who may or may not have really been collabos but were people that they held grudges against. Women known to have slept with German soldiers had their heads shaved as they were paraded in the squares of the cities or villages in which they lived. Pierre Laval, the prime minister of the Vichy Regime, was sentenced to death and guillotined, while old Marshall Pétain was sentenced to death but granted a commutation by President de Gaulle. Police and government functionaries were sometimes lynched by mobs who suddenly felt brave and patriotic after four years of grovelling before the Nazis.
When somebody started a rumour that there was still some Maquis in the prison awaiting execution for resisting against the Nazis and their collaborators, some of the people of Châteauguay stormed the prison. "Please go home," the governor of the prison, Maurice Duclos urged the crowd, some of whom he recognized as his neighbours. "We have no Maquis here in this prison. We have never had any Maquis in this prison!"
Of course, the crowd didn't believe him. All the prisoners were frankly criminals, but the mob freed them anyway. Then somebody garroted Maurice Duclos.
One of the people that they missed was Gaston Meyssonnier, the executioner of Châteauguay. Technically, Meyssonnier was a collabo, having worked for the Vichy Regime as an executioner throughout the war, but the people of Châteauguay left him alone like they always had, though they loved him no less nor no more.
Until his retirement a few years later, Meyssonier continued in the same manner as he always had, having an extended lunch at Le Coq d’Or when there were no executions at the prison.
Meyssonnier was without friends. Though people were polite when greeting him, they rarely talked with him for very long when he entered Le Coq d'Or, the café where he took his lunch every day. Rather, they kept their distance. They rarely talked about him, perhaps because they thought that it was bad luck to talk about the le bourreau. If they spoke of him at all, they spoke almost in reverent whispers, even when he wasn’t present. When strangers, usually tourists, asked of him, the response was invariably, “That’s Gaston Meyssonnier. He’s the executioner...”
At first glance, Meyssonnier was no more repulsive than other people, but ordinary in appearance, but tall and muscular, with chiselled features and a black beret on his balding head. He wore a grey serge sweater during what passed for winter in Provence, and black pants and black patent leather shoes. Though he was in his late fifties or early sixties when the Occupation started, he still stood tall and straight, time having failed to render him bent and crooked as an old man. It was only when you asked him what he did in life that his bearing changed, at least in the mind of the beholder. Without emotion, he would say, “I operate the guillotine, monsieur. I am the executioner of Châteauguay.”
At the beginning of the War of 1939, Meyssonnier was still executioner of Châteauguay. After the fall of France, when Châteauguay came under the jurisdiction of the the Vichy Regime, Meyssonnier continued as executioner of Châteauguay. His job changed little, if at all, during the Occupation. That’s to say, the number of executions remained about the same. Those executed in Châteauguay were executed for the crimes for which they were normally executed: rape and murder. Because rapes and murders continued to be rare even under Marshall Pétain and Pierre Laval,
Meyssonnier executed three people during the Occupation. All were convicted murderers whose victims were people who lived near Châteauguay.
Without doubt, Meyssonnier was aware of the Nazi occupation of northern France. He was also aware that Jews in the South were being deported to Auschwitz. He knew the collabos in the Vichy Regime that aided the Nazis in their deportations, and that people denounced their Jewish friends and neighbours right and left. Châteauguay lost almost its entire Jewish population, about thirty or forty families, during the summer of 1943. Somebody denounced them, and the Nazis sent them to Auschwitz. None of them returned after France was liberated and Germany was defeated.
One Jew in Châteauguay survived the terrible years of the Occupaton: Gaston Meyssonnier. Possibly, nobody knew that he was born a Jew because he and his family were practicing Catholics, not observant Jews.
How Meyssonnier felt about all this, he didn’t say. He never revealed his feelings even to his wife, Yvonne. He didn’t “talk politics,” as he would say during and after the Occupation. He merely minded his business and discharged his duties as the executioner of Châteauguay.
On days when there wasn’t any executions, he took extended lunches at Le Coq d’Or. Since there were rarely any executions in Châteauguay, he took extended lunches most of the time, about two hours being the norm.
During the summer of 1943, on Bastille Day, a woman named Mathilde Sévigny was arrested for the murder of her husband. The people of Châteauguay couldn’t believe it. She was a skinny little thing, seemingly incapable of hurting a fly. Who would have thought that she would do such a thing? However, Mme. Sévigny confessed to having poisoned her husband when the police questioned her. By her own account, she gave her husband infintessimal amounts of arsenic over time until the arsenic did its work. Because her husband was the owner of the apothecary in town, acquiring the arsenic was easy.
“Why did you murder him,” Inspector Claude Massu of the police asked, stunned.
“He was cruel to me,” the woman replied, without tears. “He always said that I was stupid and lazy. When I served him his dinner, he was always critical and often sarcastic. Finally, it was my idea to poison him when he said, ‘What are you trying to do, poison me?’”
After a brief trial, Mme. Sévigny was convicted of murder with premeditation and sentenced to death by the guillotine. Even though this was during the height of the deportation of Provence’s Jews, people only talked about the murder of the druggist in Châteauguay. The town was polarized not over the deaths and deportations of the Jews, whose number was in the thousands all over France, but over the ultimate fate of Mme. Sévigny. There were people who believed passionately that Mme. Sévigny should receive mercy, that’s to say, spending the rest of her life in prison. But there were people who believe with an equal and a singular passion that she should receive the death penalty. The magistrate agreed with those who wanted the death penalty; he sentenced her to death.
According to his custom, Meyssonnier never talked about it even to his wife. However, the execution of Mme. Sévigny had an affect on him, it seems. As the condemned woman mounted the guillotine in the prison, he was struck by how ordinary she was in appearance. She was in her sixties, tall and thin with a crooked posture and a long neck. She was dressed in her prison clothes, wearing her black hair, habitually dyed black but now showing traces of grey, in a chignon.
“How like a bird she is!” Meyssonnier thought to himself as the guard laid the woman’s head under the blade, which was suspended about four or five metres above the block. “How like a bird…”
Meyssonnier would have never thought that Mme. Sévigny was capable of murder. If she was suddenly to receive a pardon, he doubted that she would ever commit another crime again.
When the prison governor gave the signal, Meyssonnier released the blade of the guillotine from its height of four or five metres. The blade severed Mme. Sévigny’s head cleanly from her body, the head, falling into the basket placed underneath to catch it. As it happens sometimes, when someone has been executed by guillotine, Mme. Sévigny’s lips moved for a few moments, her eyes, flickering wide open in bewilderment and terror. Then her lips stopped moving, and the expression that she wore in death was that of somebody in a panic, her mouth wide open in terror, like someone about to be murdered in the night by an intruder.
The Liberation of France came less than a year after Mme. Sévigny’s execution. In the days that immediately followed the Liberation, the country went on a frenzy of violence that hadn’t been seen since the Commune of Paris. People used this period of disorder to settle old scores, denouncing as collabos people who may or may not have really been collabos but were people that they held grudges against. Women known to have slept with German soldiers had their heads shaved as they were paraded in the squares of the cities or villages in which they lived. Pierre Laval, the prime minister of the Vichy Regime, was sentenced to death and guillotined, while old Marshall Pétain was sentenced to death but granted a commutation by President de Gaulle. Police and government functionaries were sometimes lynched by mobs who suddenly felt brave and patriotic after four years of grovelling before the Nazis.
When somebody started a rumour that there was still some Maquis in the prison awaiting execution for resisting against the Nazis and their collaborators, some of the people of Châteauguay stormed the prison. "Please go home," the governor of the prison, Maurice Duclos urged the crowd, some of whom he recognized as his neighbours. "We have no Maquis here in this prison. We have never had any Maquis in this prison!"
Of course, the crowd didn't believe him. All the prisoners were frankly criminals, but the mob freed them anyway. Then somebody garroted Maurice Duclos.
One of the people that they missed was Gaston Meyssonnier, the executioner of Châteauguay. Technically, Meyssonnier was a collabo, having worked for the Vichy Regime as an executioner throughout the war, but the people of Châteauguay left him alone like they always had, though they loved him no less nor no more.
Until his retirement a few years later, Meyssonier continued in the same manner as he always had, having an extended lunch at Le Coq d’Or when there were no executions at the prison.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Contes du harem : La famille en vacanses
Marcel était un homme silencieux et modeste, un maigre avorton d'un homme, à la lunette noire épaise, aux cheveux noirs volés en chaque direction comme quelqu'un qui se fut réveillé juste alors. Il portait toujours le noir pantalon cérémonial, la chemise en blanc coton et la mince noire cravate. En bref, il était un petit drôle homme. Ainsi, il se crut pour être l'homme le plus heureux dans le monde quand la belle strip-teaseuse, Ghislaine, fut agréable à coucher avec lui. De plus, Ghislaine l'aimait beaucoup également: elle était intelligente aussi, ayant un QI de plus que 140. Ils pouvaient se parler, et ils se marièrent avec l'un l'autre sans cérémonie au Palais de Justice à Montréal lorsqu'elle se trouva d'être enceinte. Ils avaient les mêmes valeurs conservateures: quand un homme fait emprégner une femme, il devrait se marier avec elle. Aussi, Marcel était ingénieur qui faisait des piastres en masse, et la femme est comme l'oiseau femelle qui cherche le nid parfait pour ses jeunes. Après une décennie et demi de mariage, Marcel et Ghislaine avaient deux enfants, une fille, Chantal, et un fils, Yannick.
Un jour, il était évident que Marcel avait une crise de la cinquantaine, même s'il avait moins que cinquante ans. Il dit à sa jument : « Je veux aller à l'Afrique, je veux voyager dans le Tiers-monde. En particulier, je veux aller à l'Algérie. »
― Pourquoi l'Algérie ? demanda Ghislaine.
Marcel haussa les épaules en disant:
― Les montagnes au nord, les villages littoraux, le Sahel au sud du pays...
Ghislaine avait des grosses appréhensions, elle ne voulait pas passer du temps au-dessous d’une tente dans le Sahel. Mais elle était agréable pour un voyage à l'Algérie à la fin. Elle était compréhensive de son vieux vouloir explorer le monde.
Avec leurs deux enfants, Marcel et Ghislaine font un voyage à l'Afrique du nord. la température fait chaude ce temps de la l'année, et le siroco désert fait fort du sud. Dans un vieil hôtel du siècle seizième au milieu du Casbah de l'Alger, ils sont agréables pour une partie de jambes dans l'air. Quelle aventure de faire l'amour dans une vieille pièce d'hôtel sous le ventilateur de plafond qui grince ! Il n'y a pas de climatisation. La pièce est sombre et humide, et ils suent abondamment en faisant se fondre dans l'un l'autre. Et les enfants dans l'autre chambre à coucher, ils comprennent bien ce que leurs parents y font. Leur maman crie fort dans l'air en haute voix, tandis que leur père grogne en voix basse dans les cheveux ou dans l'épaule de leur mère. L'intensité de la jouissance de leur mère effraie le petit Yannick, qui n'a que six ans, et sa soeur Chantal, qui a quinze ans, doit le rassurer : « Sois tranquille. Maman est contente. Qu'est-ce qu'elle fait avec papa, c'est une bonne chose. C'est préférable à la violence qu'on voit sur la télé, dit-elle. Papa ne fait mal à elle pas du tout. »
―Quel bruit ! dit le petit Yannick avec dégout.
Alors, Yannick cesse parler pour écouter un peu. Puis il dit:
― Ecoute donc ! Maman y pleure...
Chantal écoute.
― C'est vrai, elle pleure. Ça signifie qu'elle est contente. Elle est joyeuse. Les femmes sont censée de pleurer, elles sont censées de crier. Ça signifie que la femme l'aime bien. Et les hommes, ils sont censés de grogner comme ils font mal à l'estomac. Ça signifie que l’homme l’aime bien.
― Et si papa grogne pas ? Si maman pleure pas ?
Chantal hausse ses épaules et dit :
― J’sais pas. Ça se peut, ça signifie qu'ils aiment pas faire le sexe.
― J'aime mieux faire le hockey, dit Yannick. Si quelqu'un me frappe sur la tête avec la rondelle, je pleure. Si je marque un but, je suis heureux et je crie de hourra.
Alors, l'hôtel perd de l'électricité et les lampes et les ventilateurs de plafond s'éteignent. Et Chantal grogne de l’exaspération : « Ce lieu c'est comme l'aisselle du diable ! »
Un jour, il était évident que Marcel avait une crise de la cinquantaine, même s'il avait moins que cinquante ans. Il dit à sa jument : « Je veux aller à l'Afrique, je veux voyager dans le Tiers-monde. En particulier, je veux aller à l'Algérie. »
― Pourquoi l'Algérie ? demanda Ghislaine.
Marcel haussa les épaules en disant:
― Les montagnes au nord, les villages littoraux, le Sahel au sud du pays...
Ghislaine avait des grosses appréhensions, elle ne voulait pas passer du temps au-dessous d’une tente dans le Sahel. Mais elle était agréable pour un voyage à l'Algérie à la fin. Elle était compréhensive de son vieux vouloir explorer le monde.
Avec leurs deux enfants, Marcel et Ghislaine font un voyage à l'Afrique du nord. la température fait chaude ce temps de la l'année, et le siroco désert fait fort du sud. Dans un vieil hôtel du siècle seizième au milieu du Casbah de l'Alger, ils sont agréables pour une partie de jambes dans l'air. Quelle aventure de faire l'amour dans une vieille pièce d'hôtel sous le ventilateur de plafond qui grince ! Il n'y a pas de climatisation. La pièce est sombre et humide, et ils suent abondamment en faisant se fondre dans l'un l'autre. Et les enfants dans l'autre chambre à coucher, ils comprennent bien ce que leurs parents y font. Leur maman crie fort dans l'air en haute voix, tandis que leur père grogne en voix basse dans les cheveux ou dans l'épaule de leur mère. L'intensité de la jouissance de leur mère effraie le petit Yannick, qui n'a que six ans, et sa soeur Chantal, qui a quinze ans, doit le rassurer : « Sois tranquille. Maman est contente. Qu'est-ce qu'elle fait avec papa, c'est une bonne chose. C'est préférable à la violence qu'on voit sur la télé, dit-elle. Papa ne fait mal à elle pas du tout. »
―Quel bruit ! dit le petit Yannick avec dégout.
Alors, Yannick cesse parler pour écouter un peu. Puis il dit:
― Ecoute donc ! Maman y pleure...
Chantal écoute.
― C'est vrai, elle pleure. Ça signifie qu'elle est contente. Elle est joyeuse. Les femmes sont censée de pleurer, elles sont censées de crier. Ça signifie que la femme l'aime bien. Et les hommes, ils sont censés de grogner comme ils font mal à l'estomac. Ça signifie que l’homme l’aime bien.
― Et si papa grogne pas ? Si maman pleure pas ?
Chantal hausse ses épaules et dit :
― J’sais pas. Ça se peut, ça signifie qu'ils aiment pas faire le sexe.
― J'aime mieux faire le hockey, dit Yannick. Si quelqu'un me frappe sur la tête avec la rondelle, je pleure. Si je marque un but, je suis heureux et je crie de hourra.
Alors, l'hôtel perd de l'électricité et les lampes et les ventilateurs de plafond s'éteignent. Et Chantal grogne de l’exaspération : « Ce lieu c'est comme l'aisselle du diable ! »
Friday, December 24, 2010
Jihad Jane
Jane was born and raised the daughter of Lutherans in surburban St. Louis. With blond hair and blue eyes, she was “the perfect Aryan,” of German descent like many people in that part of the country. Therefore, her family was stunned when she announced that she was marrying a student from Iraq, Hassan, and converting to Islam. What did she possibly see in the swarthy Iraqi, who was almost ten years younger than her? Her answer was that he was "good" to her and had been exceedingly polite when they first met; he treated her with respect.
Jane was now in her thirties, twice married and twice divorced, the mother of three children by three different fathers. She had battled drug addiction and seemed to have won. Not only was her drug counseling being financed by the state, as a condition of her probation for a drug offense, but the state was also paying for her college tuitition. Some members of her family groused that it was “a crock,” but at least she was no longer selling herself on the streets for crack cocaine. At least the state was no longer threatening to take her kids away, but that was because her mother had gotten custody of the kids while she was in jail.
Since her family didn’t approve of Hassan, who called himself “Sam,” Jane saw little of her family after the wedding. Jane and Sam moved to the part of town where Muslims from the Middle East lived and joined a mosque. She took to wearing the hijab and the long, flowing robes that observant Muslim women often wear. Except for some verses of the Qur’an, it really wasn’t necessary for Jane to learn Arabic, because there were many second-generation Muslims who spoke English among themselves rather than Arabic, but Jane started learning to read and write in Arabic at the mosque in a class led by the Iman’s wife.
The Iman was from somewhere in the Persian Gulf, like Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, but he spoke fluent English. He preached his sermons in English, since there were some people in the mosque, like Jane, who weren’t fluent in Arabic.
At first, the Imam preached about the need for the people in his congregation to be good Muslims. Women were admonished to “behave modestly” and not “reveal their nudity” towards men other than their husbands. Since all the women covered their hair with hijabs, and some even covered their faces with the niqab, Jane took it to mean that women should cover as much of their bodies as possible, to avoid the “prying eyes” of strange men.
However, the Iman’s sermons began to take on a more political tone. After the bombing of the World Trade Center, he began to condemn the way Muslims were being treated. There were rumors all across America of Muslims being beaten in the streets, and Muslim women having their shawls pulled off their heads and veils removed from their faces. While few, if any, of the women had actually experienced this behavior, all of them believed without question that these things were happening to Muslims all across the country, and even in Canada. Why would the Imam lie? Thus the Imam gave voice to their fears.
Once the United States was at war in Iraq, the Imam started condemning the US military for atrocities against Iraqi civilians. How he knew, once could only guess. Perhaps people from back home had told him. Maybe he heard it from Al-Jizeera. Then the world learned about how Iraqi prisoners had been treated at the prison in Abu Ghraib, and the Imam’s sermons assumed an even more strident tone.
You could say that the Imam went over the edge when he heard about a newspaper in Sweden that had printed a cartoon that was “offensive to Islam.” Not only had the cartoonist implied that the Prophet was a terrorist by concealing a bomb in his turban, but the cartoonist had even made an image of Him. What blasphemy! For it is understood among Muslims that no Muslim should ever made an image of Mohammed, since nobody today can even say what he looked like.
Then the Imam thundered, “This man must die! But who will kill him?”
Let it suffice to say that the Imam wasn’t the only person that day who went over the edge. Jane and Sam decided that they must kill the Swedish newspaper cartoonist. Over the Internet, “Jihad Jane” searched for like-minded Muslims who also wanted to silence this Swedish infidel once and for all.
In time, her web searches seemed to bear fruit. Somebody in Europe offered to purchase airplane tickets for her and her husband if they would fly to Europe and do the job. Together with this unknown person in Europe, Jane and Sam hatched up a plot to assassinate the cartoonist. They decided that Jane would make contact with the cartoonist and lure him through the promise of sex to a hotel, where Sam would stab him to death. Because Jane was blond-haired and blue-eyed, and American, nobody would ever suspect that she was a Muslim. She wouldn't be wearing the hijab.
Jane contacted the cartoonist online and told him in an e-mail how much she admired his work. After they send a few e-mails back and forth, she sent him a picture. Finally, the cartoonist said that he would like to meet her.
As Jane and Sam were about to board a connector flight to Frankfort, Germany, from where they would take another flight to Stockholm, they were arrested at the airport by the FBI. The person who had purchased the tickets for them was really an FBI agent, not a terrorist. What’s more, the cartoonist had been informed of the plot on his life and encouraged to play along with it, to lure Jane and Sam to the airport, where they were arrested.
Jane and Sam have spent months in a federal prison, waiting to be formally charged. The Imam and his wife were deported because they had let their visas lapse without having them renewed.
Jane was now in her thirties, twice married and twice divorced, the mother of three children by three different fathers. She had battled drug addiction and seemed to have won. Not only was her drug counseling being financed by the state, as a condition of her probation for a drug offense, but the state was also paying for her college tuitition. Some members of her family groused that it was “a crock,” but at least she was no longer selling herself on the streets for crack cocaine. At least the state was no longer threatening to take her kids away, but that was because her mother had gotten custody of the kids while she was in jail.
Since her family didn’t approve of Hassan, who called himself “Sam,” Jane saw little of her family after the wedding. Jane and Sam moved to the part of town where Muslims from the Middle East lived and joined a mosque. She took to wearing the hijab and the long, flowing robes that observant Muslim women often wear. Except for some verses of the Qur’an, it really wasn’t necessary for Jane to learn Arabic, because there were many second-generation Muslims who spoke English among themselves rather than Arabic, but Jane started learning to read and write in Arabic at the mosque in a class led by the Iman’s wife.
The Iman was from somewhere in the Persian Gulf, like Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, but he spoke fluent English. He preached his sermons in English, since there were some people in the mosque, like Jane, who weren’t fluent in Arabic.
At first, the Imam preached about the need for the people in his congregation to be good Muslims. Women were admonished to “behave modestly” and not “reveal their nudity” towards men other than their husbands. Since all the women covered their hair with hijabs, and some even covered their faces with the niqab, Jane took it to mean that women should cover as much of their bodies as possible, to avoid the “prying eyes” of strange men.
However, the Iman’s sermons began to take on a more political tone. After the bombing of the World Trade Center, he began to condemn the way Muslims were being treated. There were rumors all across America of Muslims being beaten in the streets, and Muslim women having their shawls pulled off their heads and veils removed from their faces. While few, if any, of the women had actually experienced this behavior, all of them believed without question that these things were happening to Muslims all across the country, and even in Canada. Why would the Imam lie? Thus the Imam gave voice to their fears.
Once the United States was at war in Iraq, the Imam started condemning the US military for atrocities against Iraqi civilians. How he knew, once could only guess. Perhaps people from back home had told him. Maybe he heard it from Al-Jizeera. Then the world learned about how Iraqi prisoners had been treated at the prison in Abu Ghraib, and the Imam’s sermons assumed an even more strident tone.
You could say that the Imam went over the edge when he heard about a newspaper in Sweden that had printed a cartoon that was “offensive to Islam.” Not only had the cartoonist implied that the Prophet was a terrorist by concealing a bomb in his turban, but the cartoonist had even made an image of Him. What blasphemy! For it is understood among Muslims that no Muslim should ever made an image of Mohammed, since nobody today can even say what he looked like.
Then the Imam thundered, “This man must die! But who will kill him?”
Let it suffice to say that the Imam wasn’t the only person that day who went over the edge. Jane and Sam decided that they must kill the Swedish newspaper cartoonist. Over the Internet, “Jihad Jane” searched for like-minded Muslims who also wanted to silence this Swedish infidel once and for all.
In time, her web searches seemed to bear fruit. Somebody in Europe offered to purchase airplane tickets for her and her husband if they would fly to Europe and do the job. Together with this unknown person in Europe, Jane and Sam hatched up a plot to assassinate the cartoonist. They decided that Jane would make contact with the cartoonist and lure him through the promise of sex to a hotel, where Sam would stab him to death. Because Jane was blond-haired and blue-eyed, and American, nobody would ever suspect that she was a Muslim. She wouldn't be wearing the hijab.
Jane contacted the cartoonist online and told him in an e-mail how much she admired his work. After they send a few e-mails back and forth, she sent him a picture. Finally, the cartoonist said that he would like to meet her.
As Jane and Sam were about to board a connector flight to Frankfort, Germany, from where they would take another flight to Stockholm, they were arrested at the airport by the FBI. The person who had purchased the tickets for them was really an FBI agent, not a terrorist. What’s more, the cartoonist had been informed of the plot on his life and encouraged to play along with it, to lure Jane and Sam to the airport, where they were arrested.
Jane and Sam have spent months in a federal prison, waiting to be formally charged. The Imam and his wife were deported because they had let their visas lapse without having them renewed.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Contes du harem : La concubine française
C’était étrange, pensait Ghislaine, étrange de dormir dans une chambre à coucher d’un harem, particulièrent, d’un harem qui n’appartenait pas à son époux, Yannick, mais à quelqu’un autre. Mais elle était dans une énorme maison au milieu du Casbah d'Alger, un manoir magnifique, construit pendant le seizième siècle. Le quartier au-delà de ces murs était sale et misérable, plein de prostituées, mendiants et voleurs, mais la maison dedans ces murs était élégante, ayant vingt-cinq ou trente appartements spacieux. Les femmes de la maison dormaient en haut de l’escalier, en apart des hommes, qui dormaient en bas, mais chaque femme avait son propre appartement. Les filles et les petits enfants avaient leurs propres appartements aussi. Les appartements eux-mêmes étaient petits, ayant moins que 300 mètres carrés en aire, mais Ghislaine ne voulait pas se plaindre de son appartement. Elle était contente des meubles d'époque du Deuxième Empire de la France, avec le lit à cuivre jaune, l’armoire en acajou et le lustre qui se penchait en haut au-dessus du lit. Le haut plafond donnait à l'appartement l'aspect d'être également plus grand qu'il n’était.
Ghislaine se fout à poil. Alors, elle serre doucement ses seins conicaux, afin qu’elle vérifie s’il n’y ait pas de croîssances irregulières. Comme chaque femme de bon sens, Ghislaine a peur normalle de cancer du sein, mais son mari croit qu’il est sexy, comment elle serre ses seins, un par un. Ainsi, elle s’examine les seins devant lui, comme des préliminaires avant de faire l’amour. Elle est contente de leur vie sexuelle, pense-t-elle, eux, ayant fait un bon mariage depuis douze années, mais elle est toute seule dans cette énorme chambre à coucher. Son époux lui manque, pense-t-elle, et elle soupire.
En se serrant les miches, Ghislaine se regarde dans l’énorme miroir sur l’armoire. Elle a presque quarante ans, trente-huit ans, être précise, mais elle aime bien son corps svelte et althétique, ayant des longs bras et des longues jambes. Elle a le corps de quelqu'une qui fait du jogging tous les jours, pense-t-elle. C'est vrai : elle fait du jogging près de sa maison sur l'Île des Soeurs à Montréal, elle a le corps souple d'une coureuse. Mais elle n'a jamais été sexy, pense-t-elle. Son corps est trop maigrichon, ses seins, trop maigres. Elle a des foufounes à peine, quoique ses jambes sont longues et elle sait danser très bien. Elle a le corps de danseuse. Elle dansait dans le club pour hommes dans la Rue-Papineau à Montréal lorsqu'elle fit la reconnaissance de son mari. Les hommes l'aimaient en raison d'elle être grande, statuesque, elle, ayant des cheveux couleur de maïs, des yeux bleu-clair. Elle est aux beaux cheveux blonds et aux yeux bleus qui étincelent, pense-t-elle. Elle a reconnu qu'elle était prête à faire des rapports sexuels pour l'argent, mais son mari tomba amoureux d'elle et voulu se marier avec elle finalement. Elle n'a jamais été amoureuse de son mari, mais elle l'aime. Il y a une différence entre d'aimer quelqu'un et d'être amoureuse de quelqu’un. D'ailleurs, son époux sait lui plaître en lit.
Ghislaine continue à se regarder fixement dans le miroir. « J'ai un joli visage, » dit-elle à elle-même.
Alors, elle ferme ses yeux en embrassant sa réflexion. En ouvrant ses yeux de nouveau, elle se sourit malicieusement. Alors, elle dit à sa réflexion :
―Je t’aime. T'es belle, t'es sexy, et je t'aime...
Elle embrasse sa réflexion de nouveau.
Alors, elle se plie les mains sur son coeur, ses hanches à un côté, vers le gauche, et elle chuchote les mots :
―Je t'aime, toi...
Son mari a toujours cru qu'elle était la nombriliste, mais il a toujours aimé ce « narcissisme extrême », dit-il. La façon d'elle serrer les seins devant le miroir, comment elle embrasse sa réflexion... C'est trop sexy ! pense-t-il. Et quand elle se frotte... Son mari est franchement bizarre, pense-t-elle, original. Elle sait qu'il pense d'elle comme une pétonne, mais elle était toujours l'artiste. C'est la raison pourquoi elle n'est jamais été gênée en scène dans le club pour hommes.
Avec un soupir, Ghislaine éteint la lampe à côté de la table de nuit et se couche en lit. Pendant une demi-heure, peut-être une heure, elle essaie de dormir mais elle n'y peut pas. Elle a le démon. Finalement, elle suce son doigt midi et l'insère dans son sexe. Quand son sexe est mouillé, elle se frotte les mamelons avec le bout du doigt, puis elle le réinsère dans son sexe. Lorsqu'elle retire son doigt de nouveau, elle se frotte le nombril. Finalement, elle caresse sa praline du doigt jusqu'à ce qu'elle prend son pied. La jouissance est très intense et elle est capable finalement de s'endormir.
Mais quelques heures plus tard, elle se réveille en se faisant sursauter quand elle entend quelqu'un dans la chambre à coucher. « Qu'est-ce que c'est? » crie-t-elle de peur.
―Chut ! chuchute un homme devant le lit. C’est moi.
À son grand soulagement, Ghislaine s'aperçoit qu'il est Mohammed Ghamoudi seulement, le propriétaire de cette maison, l'hôte. Aux cheveux roux sur la tête, à la barbe rousse, ses caractéristiques sont très voyants, particulièrement pour un Arabe. Elle se fut impressionnée beaucoup avec son aspect d'abord, mais elle est furieuse à l'intrusion nocturne pendant qu'elle était endormie présentement.
―Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire ? demande Ghislaine en colère. C’est après minuit !J’étais après dormir !
―Sois tranquille, dit Mohammed avec assurance.
Ghislaine croit que Mohammed est sur le point de partir de sa chambre à coucher, mais ce n'est pas son intent, pas du tout. Plutôt, il enlève son djellaba et il est complètement à poil avant elle. De plus, sa pine est déjà tout dressé. Elle s'en revient pas ! Choquée, elle se met à s'écrier, mais il met la main à travers sa bouche, en chuchotant de « chut ». Alors, il l'embrasse fort sur la bouche.
C'est un cas de viol, pur et simple, n'est-ce pas ? Bien oui. Toutefois, Ghislaine se rend à lui peu à peu, jusqu'à ce que tout ce qu'elle veut, c'est de prendre son pied. Quel autre peut-elle faire ? Il sent horriblement, comme il n'a pas pris un bain depuis plusieures semaines, ou plusieures années. Son corps est gras, visqueux, comme il s'enduit le corps de l'huile d'olive ou quelque chose autre tous les jours. Et son haleine ? Son haleine sent horriblement aussi, comme il ne se brosse jamais les dents. Mais d'une façon étrange, elle aime le goût de sa langue, de ses patins, quand il l'embrasse. Et elle le lèche même derrière les dents, une bonne fois.
Alors, il grogne comme un animal, pendant qu'elle lui gratte fort le dos des ongles. Mais avant qu'il s'explose dedans elle, il retire le pénis pour éjaculer sur son ventre. Ghislaine pousse un cris en haut vers le plafond, frottant la semence sur le ventre et sur les seins. Et elle se gratte les seins.
Silencieusement, l'Arabe de la barbe rousse part de sa chambre à coucher, tandis qu'elle assied, toute seule, sur le lit en haletant. Elle peut le sentir toujours, elle peut le goûter. Elle sent toujours la viscosité de la semence sur son corps. Elle veut prendre un bain ou une douche présentement, mais elle n'y peut pas, parce que les bains ne seront pas ouverts jusqu'à la bonne heure du matin, quand les femmes doivent se laver avant de se présenter à Dieu pendant qu'ils disent leurs prières matinales. Par conséquent, elle devra se baigner avec les autres femmes.
Elle sait qu'il reviendra. Il revient. Elle sait qu'il ne l'aime pas, qu'elle ne l'aime pas non plus, mais elle ne veut pas l'aimer. Il est souvent brutal, mais elle s’en fout : elle veut qu'il soit brutal. Il lui fait mal souvent, mais la douleur rend l’acte plus passionnante. Parfois, quand il la saisi en lèvrette, la douleur est si intense qu'elle doit crier dans son oreiller quand elle prend son pied. Mais elle prend son pied toujours. Au moment où il ejacule, il retire son pénis pour ejaculer sur quelque part de son corps. Seulement quand il la sodomise, il se garde dedans elle quand il jouit. Et elle fait le plombier à son membre viril quand il y veut. Quel autre peut-elle faire ? C'est part de son humiliation, mais il la passionne, même s'il pousse fort son pénis en arrière de sa bouche, vers la gorge. Il n'y a pas de tendresse entr'eux.
Mais Ghislaine a peur de grossesse : que dirait-elle à Yannick, son mari ? Par conséquent, elle veut faire rendez-vous avec Yannick frénétiquement, aussi souvent du possible, dans sa chambre à coucher, dans le jardin, n'importe où. Le sexe est toujours passionnant. Mais son mari doit passer furtivement la mère de Mohammed en haut de l'escalier quand il veut faire le rendez-vous avec elle pendant la nuit. Il est plus facile de le faire dans la cour, mais elle doit être respectueuse à la mère de Mohammed. Chaque matin et chaque nuit, elle doit embrasser la main droite de la mère deux fois, sur la paume et sur le revers. La mère exige de l'obéissance complète d'elle.
Elle voit les autres femmes de la maison tous les jours. Elles font partie de sa vie présentement. L'une, Sakinée, est l'épouse de Mohammed Ghamoudi. Une autre, Djamilée, est sa mère. Alors, il y a des tantes et des cousines, des soeurs et des nièces. Mohammed a trois filles, qui sont celibataires. Il y a des tout-petits aussi, tous deux garçons et filles. Aucune femme, sauf Sakinée, n'est mariée. Toutes les autres sont ou veuves ou divorcées. Ce n'est pas grande chose que les femmes arabes soient divorcées. Il arrive toujours.
Les autres femmes aiment la toucher. Elles sont très affectueuses. Même la vieille mère est affectueuse. Elles lui donnent étreintes et baisers en masse. Mais Ghislaine s'aperçoit que les autres femmes sont sexuellement frustrées : c'est la raison pourquoi elles touchent une autre autant. Elles aiment s'étreindre. Elles aiment serrer des bébés à leurs seins. Alors, une entr'eux embrasse le zizi de son petit neveu et dit : « Que Dieu protège l'homme ! » Et les autres se rient.
Ghislaine prend en apart Soraya, la femme qui a embrassé le pénis de son petit neveu. Elle est passée le trentaine, bien en chair, aux cheveux roux, à la peau pâle comme son frère. Aux yeux bruns qui pénètrent à l'âme, aux nez aquilin comme celui de l'Arabe, Ghislaine comprend que Soraya soit à l'âme passionnante. Et elle a certaine allure.
Ghislaine dit à Soraya de faire rendez-vous avec son mari. Soraya reste bête. « Tu vieux que je fasse rendez-vous avec ton mari ? » dit Soraya, choquée.
Ghislaine hausse les épaules et dit :
―Pourqoui non ? Je le ferais moi-même, mais je n’y peux pas. Tu veux embrasser le zizi d'un tout-petit, ou le membre viril d'un homme ? Le choix est à toi...
Après minuit, Soraya descend furtivement l’escalier pour faire rendez-vous en nocturne dans le jardin avec Yannick, habillée dans le djeballa de Ghislaine. Lorsque Yannick voir asseoir sur le banc dans le jardin Soraya, il croit d’abord que Soraya est sa femme, mais il a tort. Il est choqué en décrouvrant que c’est la sœur de Mohammed, mais c’est trop tard: la rousse se jette les seins énormes vers lui en mettant la main au-dessous de son djeballa. « C’est ta journée, mon amour... » chuchote-elle séduisante.
Elle lui serre la quéquette jusqu’à il est tout dressé, puis elle tombe aux genoux pour lui faire le meilleur pompier de sa vie. Alors, elle tombe sur le dos, les jambes grandes ouvertes, et elle tire la figure de Yannick vers la source de sa feminitité. Yannick lui mange la chatte, il suce aux lèvres et au bouton d’amour jusqu’à ce qu’elle frémit sans contrainte. Puis Soraya demande à Yannick de l’enculer. Yannick ne sent rien que l’air dedans son cul, mais Soraya gémit de plaisir une bonne fois, deux bonnes fois, son doigt caressé sa praline le temps entier. C’est d’éviter la grossesse, dira-t-elle après. Elle prend son pied, elle, à quatre pattes, sa figure dans la terre pour étoufler ses cris d’amour. Puis elle retourne furtivement à sa chambre à coucher sans éveiller personne.
Pour Yannick, c'est comme il rêve en couleur...
Alors, Ghislaine approche l'épouse de Mohammed, Sakinée, pour demander pardons. Ghislaine se confesse de tout sans que Sakinée dise rien. Alors, Sakinée répond, en haussant les épaules : « Je le savais... »
Mais Ghislaine doit faire obéissance à Sakinée. Sakinée s'étend la main gauche, celle qu'elle utilise pour essuyer son cul. Ghislaine embrasse la main, tous deux la paume et le revers. Chaque jour, Ghislaine doit embrasser la main gauche de Sakinée, mais elle comprend : Sakinée est l'épouse de Mohammed Ghamoudi, tandis qu'elle n'est rien qu'une concubine.
La prochaine fois que Mohammed approche Ghislaine pour faire le sexe, Ghislaine demande à Mohammed de se marier avec elle. « On permet aux Musulmans d'avoir quatre épouses, n'est-ce pas ?»
Mohammed se caresse la barbe rousse avant de dire finalement :
―C'est bien dispendieux. Les femmes ne sont pas à bon marché, tu sais…
En colère, Ghislaine lance un oreiller vers lui. Mais Mohammed comprend que sa grosse légume n'est pas suffisante présentement : il doit la charmer. Peut-être il devra apporter des cadeaux à l'avenir. Peut-être, il devra lui montrer même du respect. « Je t'aime, ma chienne, murmure-t-il, en faisant amour à elle. Je t'aime. C'est toi qui j'aime ... »
Peu à peu, Ghislaine se rend à lui, mais à l'avenir, il devra négocier avec elle. Ce soir, pourtant, elle est sa chienne...
Copyright © 2010
Ghislaine se fout à poil. Alors, elle serre doucement ses seins conicaux, afin qu’elle vérifie s’il n’y ait pas de croîssances irregulières. Comme chaque femme de bon sens, Ghislaine a peur normalle de cancer du sein, mais son mari croit qu’il est sexy, comment elle serre ses seins, un par un. Ainsi, elle s’examine les seins devant lui, comme des préliminaires avant de faire l’amour. Elle est contente de leur vie sexuelle, pense-t-elle, eux, ayant fait un bon mariage depuis douze années, mais elle est toute seule dans cette énorme chambre à coucher. Son époux lui manque, pense-t-elle, et elle soupire.
En se serrant les miches, Ghislaine se regarde dans l’énorme miroir sur l’armoire. Elle a presque quarante ans, trente-huit ans, être précise, mais elle aime bien son corps svelte et althétique, ayant des longs bras et des longues jambes. Elle a le corps de quelqu'une qui fait du jogging tous les jours, pense-t-elle. C'est vrai : elle fait du jogging près de sa maison sur l'Île des Soeurs à Montréal, elle a le corps souple d'une coureuse. Mais elle n'a jamais été sexy, pense-t-elle. Son corps est trop maigrichon, ses seins, trop maigres. Elle a des foufounes à peine, quoique ses jambes sont longues et elle sait danser très bien. Elle a le corps de danseuse. Elle dansait dans le club pour hommes dans la Rue-Papineau à Montréal lorsqu'elle fit la reconnaissance de son mari. Les hommes l'aimaient en raison d'elle être grande, statuesque, elle, ayant des cheveux couleur de maïs, des yeux bleu-clair. Elle est aux beaux cheveux blonds et aux yeux bleus qui étincelent, pense-t-elle. Elle a reconnu qu'elle était prête à faire des rapports sexuels pour l'argent, mais son mari tomba amoureux d'elle et voulu se marier avec elle finalement. Elle n'a jamais été amoureuse de son mari, mais elle l'aime. Il y a une différence entre d'aimer quelqu'un et d'être amoureuse de quelqu’un. D'ailleurs, son époux sait lui plaître en lit.
Ghislaine continue à se regarder fixement dans le miroir. « J'ai un joli visage, » dit-elle à elle-même.
Alors, elle ferme ses yeux en embrassant sa réflexion. En ouvrant ses yeux de nouveau, elle se sourit malicieusement. Alors, elle dit à sa réflexion :
―Je t’aime. T'es belle, t'es sexy, et je t'aime...
Elle embrasse sa réflexion de nouveau.
Alors, elle se plie les mains sur son coeur, ses hanches à un côté, vers le gauche, et elle chuchote les mots :
―Je t'aime, toi...
Son mari a toujours cru qu'elle était la nombriliste, mais il a toujours aimé ce « narcissisme extrême », dit-il. La façon d'elle serrer les seins devant le miroir, comment elle embrasse sa réflexion... C'est trop sexy ! pense-t-il. Et quand elle se frotte... Son mari est franchement bizarre, pense-t-elle, original. Elle sait qu'il pense d'elle comme une pétonne, mais elle était toujours l'artiste. C'est la raison pourquoi elle n'est jamais été gênée en scène dans le club pour hommes.
Avec un soupir, Ghislaine éteint la lampe à côté de la table de nuit et se couche en lit. Pendant une demi-heure, peut-être une heure, elle essaie de dormir mais elle n'y peut pas. Elle a le démon. Finalement, elle suce son doigt midi et l'insère dans son sexe. Quand son sexe est mouillé, elle se frotte les mamelons avec le bout du doigt, puis elle le réinsère dans son sexe. Lorsqu'elle retire son doigt de nouveau, elle se frotte le nombril. Finalement, elle caresse sa praline du doigt jusqu'à ce qu'elle prend son pied. La jouissance est très intense et elle est capable finalement de s'endormir.
Mais quelques heures plus tard, elle se réveille en se faisant sursauter quand elle entend quelqu'un dans la chambre à coucher. « Qu'est-ce que c'est? » crie-t-elle de peur.
―Chut ! chuchute un homme devant le lit. C’est moi.
À son grand soulagement, Ghislaine s'aperçoit qu'il est Mohammed Ghamoudi seulement, le propriétaire de cette maison, l'hôte. Aux cheveux roux sur la tête, à la barbe rousse, ses caractéristiques sont très voyants, particulièrement pour un Arabe. Elle se fut impressionnée beaucoup avec son aspect d'abord, mais elle est furieuse à l'intrusion nocturne pendant qu'elle était endormie présentement.
―Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire ? demande Ghislaine en colère. C’est après minuit !J’étais après dormir !
―Sois tranquille, dit Mohammed avec assurance.
Ghislaine croit que Mohammed est sur le point de partir de sa chambre à coucher, mais ce n'est pas son intent, pas du tout. Plutôt, il enlève son djellaba et il est complètement à poil avant elle. De plus, sa pine est déjà tout dressé. Elle s'en revient pas ! Choquée, elle se met à s'écrier, mais il met la main à travers sa bouche, en chuchotant de « chut ». Alors, il l'embrasse fort sur la bouche.
C'est un cas de viol, pur et simple, n'est-ce pas ? Bien oui. Toutefois, Ghislaine se rend à lui peu à peu, jusqu'à ce que tout ce qu'elle veut, c'est de prendre son pied. Quel autre peut-elle faire ? Il sent horriblement, comme il n'a pas pris un bain depuis plusieures semaines, ou plusieures années. Son corps est gras, visqueux, comme il s'enduit le corps de l'huile d'olive ou quelque chose autre tous les jours. Et son haleine ? Son haleine sent horriblement aussi, comme il ne se brosse jamais les dents. Mais d'une façon étrange, elle aime le goût de sa langue, de ses patins, quand il l'embrasse. Et elle le lèche même derrière les dents, une bonne fois.
Alors, il grogne comme un animal, pendant qu'elle lui gratte fort le dos des ongles. Mais avant qu'il s'explose dedans elle, il retire le pénis pour éjaculer sur son ventre. Ghislaine pousse un cris en haut vers le plafond, frottant la semence sur le ventre et sur les seins. Et elle se gratte les seins.
Silencieusement, l'Arabe de la barbe rousse part de sa chambre à coucher, tandis qu'elle assied, toute seule, sur le lit en haletant. Elle peut le sentir toujours, elle peut le goûter. Elle sent toujours la viscosité de la semence sur son corps. Elle veut prendre un bain ou une douche présentement, mais elle n'y peut pas, parce que les bains ne seront pas ouverts jusqu'à la bonne heure du matin, quand les femmes doivent se laver avant de se présenter à Dieu pendant qu'ils disent leurs prières matinales. Par conséquent, elle devra se baigner avec les autres femmes.
Elle sait qu'il reviendra. Il revient. Elle sait qu'il ne l'aime pas, qu'elle ne l'aime pas non plus, mais elle ne veut pas l'aimer. Il est souvent brutal, mais elle s’en fout : elle veut qu'il soit brutal. Il lui fait mal souvent, mais la douleur rend l’acte plus passionnante. Parfois, quand il la saisi en lèvrette, la douleur est si intense qu'elle doit crier dans son oreiller quand elle prend son pied. Mais elle prend son pied toujours. Au moment où il ejacule, il retire son pénis pour ejaculer sur quelque part de son corps. Seulement quand il la sodomise, il se garde dedans elle quand il jouit. Et elle fait le plombier à son membre viril quand il y veut. Quel autre peut-elle faire ? C'est part de son humiliation, mais il la passionne, même s'il pousse fort son pénis en arrière de sa bouche, vers la gorge. Il n'y a pas de tendresse entr'eux.
Mais Ghislaine a peur de grossesse : que dirait-elle à Yannick, son mari ? Par conséquent, elle veut faire rendez-vous avec Yannick frénétiquement, aussi souvent du possible, dans sa chambre à coucher, dans le jardin, n'importe où. Le sexe est toujours passionnant. Mais son mari doit passer furtivement la mère de Mohammed en haut de l'escalier quand il veut faire le rendez-vous avec elle pendant la nuit. Il est plus facile de le faire dans la cour, mais elle doit être respectueuse à la mère de Mohammed. Chaque matin et chaque nuit, elle doit embrasser la main droite de la mère deux fois, sur la paume et sur le revers. La mère exige de l'obéissance complète d'elle.
Elle voit les autres femmes de la maison tous les jours. Elles font partie de sa vie présentement. L'une, Sakinée, est l'épouse de Mohammed Ghamoudi. Une autre, Djamilée, est sa mère. Alors, il y a des tantes et des cousines, des soeurs et des nièces. Mohammed a trois filles, qui sont celibataires. Il y a des tout-petits aussi, tous deux garçons et filles. Aucune femme, sauf Sakinée, n'est mariée. Toutes les autres sont ou veuves ou divorcées. Ce n'est pas grande chose que les femmes arabes soient divorcées. Il arrive toujours.
Les autres femmes aiment la toucher. Elles sont très affectueuses. Même la vieille mère est affectueuse. Elles lui donnent étreintes et baisers en masse. Mais Ghislaine s'aperçoit que les autres femmes sont sexuellement frustrées : c'est la raison pourquoi elles touchent une autre autant. Elles aiment s'étreindre. Elles aiment serrer des bébés à leurs seins. Alors, une entr'eux embrasse le zizi de son petit neveu et dit : « Que Dieu protège l'homme ! » Et les autres se rient.
Ghislaine prend en apart Soraya, la femme qui a embrassé le pénis de son petit neveu. Elle est passée le trentaine, bien en chair, aux cheveux roux, à la peau pâle comme son frère. Aux yeux bruns qui pénètrent à l'âme, aux nez aquilin comme celui de l'Arabe, Ghislaine comprend que Soraya soit à l'âme passionnante. Et elle a certaine allure.
Ghislaine dit à Soraya de faire rendez-vous avec son mari. Soraya reste bête. « Tu vieux que je fasse rendez-vous avec ton mari ? » dit Soraya, choquée.
Ghislaine hausse les épaules et dit :
―Pourqoui non ? Je le ferais moi-même, mais je n’y peux pas. Tu veux embrasser le zizi d'un tout-petit, ou le membre viril d'un homme ? Le choix est à toi...
Après minuit, Soraya descend furtivement l’escalier pour faire rendez-vous en nocturne dans le jardin avec Yannick, habillée dans le djeballa de Ghislaine. Lorsque Yannick voir asseoir sur le banc dans le jardin Soraya, il croit d’abord que Soraya est sa femme, mais il a tort. Il est choqué en décrouvrant que c’est la sœur de Mohammed, mais c’est trop tard: la rousse se jette les seins énormes vers lui en mettant la main au-dessous de son djeballa. « C’est ta journée, mon amour... » chuchote-elle séduisante.
Elle lui serre la quéquette jusqu’à il est tout dressé, puis elle tombe aux genoux pour lui faire le meilleur pompier de sa vie. Alors, elle tombe sur le dos, les jambes grandes ouvertes, et elle tire la figure de Yannick vers la source de sa feminitité. Yannick lui mange la chatte, il suce aux lèvres et au bouton d’amour jusqu’à ce qu’elle frémit sans contrainte. Puis Soraya demande à Yannick de l’enculer. Yannick ne sent rien que l’air dedans son cul, mais Soraya gémit de plaisir une bonne fois, deux bonnes fois, son doigt caressé sa praline le temps entier. C’est d’éviter la grossesse, dira-t-elle après. Elle prend son pied, elle, à quatre pattes, sa figure dans la terre pour étoufler ses cris d’amour. Puis elle retourne furtivement à sa chambre à coucher sans éveiller personne.
Pour Yannick, c'est comme il rêve en couleur...
Alors, Ghislaine approche l'épouse de Mohammed, Sakinée, pour demander pardons. Ghislaine se confesse de tout sans que Sakinée dise rien. Alors, Sakinée répond, en haussant les épaules : « Je le savais... »
Mais Ghislaine doit faire obéissance à Sakinée. Sakinée s'étend la main gauche, celle qu'elle utilise pour essuyer son cul. Ghislaine embrasse la main, tous deux la paume et le revers. Chaque jour, Ghislaine doit embrasser la main gauche de Sakinée, mais elle comprend : Sakinée est l'épouse de Mohammed Ghamoudi, tandis qu'elle n'est rien qu'une concubine.
La prochaine fois que Mohammed approche Ghislaine pour faire le sexe, Ghislaine demande à Mohammed de se marier avec elle. « On permet aux Musulmans d'avoir quatre épouses, n'est-ce pas ?»
Mohammed se caresse la barbe rousse avant de dire finalement :
―C'est bien dispendieux. Les femmes ne sont pas à bon marché, tu sais…
En colère, Ghislaine lance un oreiller vers lui. Mais Mohammed comprend que sa grosse légume n'est pas suffisante présentement : il doit la charmer. Peut-être il devra apporter des cadeaux à l'avenir. Peut-être, il devra lui montrer même du respect. « Je t'aime, ma chienne, murmure-t-il, en faisant amour à elle. Je t'aime. C'est toi qui j'aime ... »
Peu à peu, Ghislaine se rend à lui, mais à l'avenir, il devra négocier avec elle. Ce soir, pourtant, elle est sa chienne...
Copyright © 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
La Garçonette
Julienne était une adolescente qui aimait s’habiller comme un garçon. Les vêtiments de garçon étaient plus confortables, croyait-elle, s’ils n’étaient pas trop serrées. Elle n’amait pas les bodices de femmes, en croyant qu’elles étaient trop gênées dans ses mouvements. Ainsi, elle s’habillait en vêtiments de garçon. Tout le monde dans son village croyait qu’elle était originale, mais elle ressemblait à un garçon, aux cheveux blonds coupés courts, à la ligne très mince, presque comme celle de garçon. Les garçons ne l’aimaient pas très bien, mais il lui était égal. Son père parlait sur elle avec disapprobition de son comportement, de sa mode de vêtiment, mais sa mère comprenait qu’elle était une garçonette. « Peut-être, disait sa mère d’un soupire, elle changera en tombant amoureuse de quelqu’un d’autre. »
Julienne aimait errer dans les bois près des montaignes Jura pas loin de la Suisse. C’était tard pendant le mars, presque le début du printemps. Il y avait de la neige sur la terre, mais on pouvait déjà voir la petite fleur blanche que les Allemands appellent le « edelweiss » où il n’y avait pas de neige sur le sol. À ce qui était presque son unique admission de sa femininité, elle en cueillait une. Elle aimait les fleurs, en particulier, le petite blanc edelweiss.
Le soleil en haut dans le ciel toujours, Julienne errait peu de kilomètres en bas de la montaigne à un petit village de près. À la périphérie du village, il y a une petite ferme, entourée par un mur fait en pierre. La porte du mur est faite en fer peint en noir. Au loin dans les montagnes, cette ferme est splendide, magicale. En voyant cette ferme, Julienne décide de l’approcher. En arrivant à la ferme, elle voit une femme dans le cour. Elle est belle, pense Julienne, grande et mince mais feminine en apparence. Julienne peut voir distinctivement la ligne de son corps: les seins et les fesses, la taille et les cuisses et les hanches.
La femme voit Julienne le moment où Julienne est près de la maison, qui est conduite aussi en pierre. Timide, Julienne dit de bonjour. Alors, elle dit à la femme qu’elle a faim.
En croyant que Julienne n’est rien qu’un adolescent garçon gêné, la femme sourit de Julienne en l’invitant en dedans pour manger quelque chose. « On n’a rien, dit la femme, sauf de la soupe sur la poêle. » Mais Julienne est reconnaissante également pour un bol de soupe. C’est l’occasion de faire reconnaissance de la femme.
En parlant à la femme, Julienne découvre qu’elle est épousée, la mère de trois fils. Son époux opère la scierie sur la rivière, dit-elle. Mais la femme ne manque pas d’allure, même si elle soit épousée, même si elle ait envers trente ans.
Ensuite, après de manger de la soupe, Julienne se lève pour dire au revoir. La soupe est délicieuse, dit-elle, mais elle doit s’en aller. La femme est visiblement déçue, mais Julienne lui donne la petite fleur, l’edelweiss, qu’elle a dans le revers de son manteau. La femme prend la fleur, puis elle embrasse tendrement sur la bouche, sans connaissance de Julienne être une femme aussi, il paraît.
Confuse, Julienne ne sait pas ce qu’elle devrait faire, mais elle désire la femme beaucoup. La femme la prende de la main et la mène dans la chambre à coucher. C’est la première fois de sa vie que Julienne n’a jamais fait amour avec une autre femme. La femme se fout à poil en révélant ses amples seins, les contours de son corps. En extase, Julienne l’embrasse la femme sur la bouche. Elle laisse en chemin de baisers, un chemin de patins en haut et en bas de son corps. Alors, elle mange la chatte d’une autre femme la première fois de sa vie. Le goût de cette femme est forte, amère, l’odeur, âcre. Mais Julienne s’en fout.
Le moment où Julienne se fout à poil aussi, en révélant ses petites miches, son corps mince comme celui de garçon, la femme est choquée. « Qu’est-ce que c’est? crie la femme. T’es une fille? »
Mais Julienne dit, souriant avec ruse:
―On pourrait être amantes, et ton épouse est à la scierie…
Les deux femmes se font amour avant de Julienne quitter la femme. Pendant le printemps et pendant l’été, elles se font amours presque tous les jours pendant que l’épouse de la femme est à la scierie. Mais hélas, il sera impossible qu’elle se revoient après la première chute de neige.
Julienne aimait errer dans les bois près des montaignes Jura pas loin de la Suisse. C’était tard pendant le mars, presque le début du printemps. Il y avait de la neige sur la terre, mais on pouvait déjà voir la petite fleur blanche que les Allemands appellent le « edelweiss » où il n’y avait pas de neige sur le sol. À ce qui était presque son unique admission de sa femininité, elle en cueillait une. Elle aimait les fleurs, en particulier, le petite blanc edelweiss.
Le soleil en haut dans le ciel toujours, Julienne errait peu de kilomètres en bas de la montaigne à un petit village de près. À la périphérie du village, il y a une petite ferme, entourée par un mur fait en pierre. La porte du mur est faite en fer peint en noir. Au loin dans les montagnes, cette ferme est splendide, magicale. En voyant cette ferme, Julienne décide de l’approcher. En arrivant à la ferme, elle voit une femme dans le cour. Elle est belle, pense Julienne, grande et mince mais feminine en apparence. Julienne peut voir distinctivement la ligne de son corps: les seins et les fesses, la taille et les cuisses et les hanches.
La femme voit Julienne le moment où Julienne est près de la maison, qui est conduite aussi en pierre. Timide, Julienne dit de bonjour. Alors, elle dit à la femme qu’elle a faim.
En croyant que Julienne n’est rien qu’un adolescent garçon gêné, la femme sourit de Julienne en l’invitant en dedans pour manger quelque chose. « On n’a rien, dit la femme, sauf de la soupe sur la poêle. » Mais Julienne est reconnaissante également pour un bol de soupe. C’est l’occasion de faire reconnaissance de la femme.
En parlant à la femme, Julienne découvre qu’elle est épousée, la mère de trois fils. Son époux opère la scierie sur la rivière, dit-elle. Mais la femme ne manque pas d’allure, même si elle soit épousée, même si elle ait envers trente ans.
Ensuite, après de manger de la soupe, Julienne se lève pour dire au revoir. La soupe est délicieuse, dit-elle, mais elle doit s’en aller. La femme est visiblement déçue, mais Julienne lui donne la petite fleur, l’edelweiss, qu’elle a dans le revers de son manteau. La femme prend la fleur, puis elle embrasse tendrement sur la bouche, sans connaissance de Julienne être une femme aussi, il paraît.
Confuse, Julienne ne sait pas ce qu’elle devrait faire, mais elle désire la femme beaucoup. La femme la prende de la main et la mène dans la chambre à coucher. C’est la première fois de sa vie que Julienne n’a jamais fait amour avec une autre femme. La femme se fout à poil en révélant ses amples seins, les contours de son corps. En extase, Julienne l’embrasse la femme sur la bouche. Elle laisse en chemin de baisers, un chemin de patins en haut et en bas de son corps. Alors, elle mange la chatte d’une autre femme la première fois de sa vie. Le goût de cette femme est forte, amère, l’odeur, âcre. Mais Julienne s’en fout.
Le moment où Julienne se fout à poil aussi, en révélant ses petites miches, son corps mince comme celui de garçon, la femme est choquée. « Qu’est-ce que c’est? crie la femme. T’es une fille? »
Mais Julienne dit, souriant avec ruse:
―On pourrait être amantes, et ton épouse est à la scierie…
Les deux femmes se font amour avant de Julienne quitter la femme. Pendant le printemps et pendant l’été, elles se font amours presque tous les jours pendant que l’épouse de la femme est à la scierie. Mais hélas, il sera impossible qu’elle se revoient après la première chute de neige.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom
You could say that Chang Xiqai and Sung Mayli met over a test tube, since they were biochemists working in a research lab in China. The chemistry was such that they fell in love and got married. It used to be that, if you gave a young couple one year to eighteen months of privacy, they usually ended up with a little bundle of joy. However, Chang Xiqai and Sung Mayli wanted to wait until the time was right. Ten years passed before Sung Mayli finally got pregnant. Then, when Mayli went in for her first ultrasound, the doctor told them that the unborn child was a girl. “You can still have the abortion,” the doctor told them gravely, understanding that they probably wanted a son, “but it's more complicated the longer you wait.”
Mayli realized that her husband, Chang, wanted a son, but she didn’t want to have an abortion. Any woman who has had an abortion, or who has friends who have had abortions, knows that an abortion is painful. One of Mayli’s friends said that it was like having someone pull your lip over your head. “You might as well have the baby,” the friend said.
First, they give you a drug that induces labour. Then they have to go in there and clean up. A DNC, done in the first trimester, isn’t very complicated: just a little bit of suction, and the vacuum cleaner cleans it all up. An ETC, which they do in the second trimester, is more complicated; they could miss a little hand or a little foot, if they don’t do it right. An XTC―what certain people in the United States call a “partial birth abortion”― is really complicated. Most of these are done when the unborn child is already dead. Most women who have had partial birth abortions aren’t worried about what childbirth would do to their figures, unless they are topless dancers.
You might say that China is a great place to go if you want to have an abortion. Even if you’re nine months pregnant, you can find someone who will inject a saline solution into the unborn child’s head. They say that the state has been known to force women who have violated China’s one-child law to have abortions even when they were about to deliver. However, Mayli didn’t want to have an abortion. It wasn’t all her fault that the unborn child was a girl, and why should she have to go through the pain of childbirth just to abort it? Besides, there are loopholes even in China’s one-child law. If you marry somebody who isn’t Chinese, like a Tibetan or a Uighur, you can have as many children as you want. As well, those born in Hong Kong before that fair island changed from a British Crown Colony to a Chinese territory, could be British Subjects, if they can provide the proof to somebody at a British consulate. And if you just happen to have a baby while you’re on vacation in some exotic place, like Bali or Thailand… The reason why people hire lawyers is to explore all their options, right?
What options did Chang Xiqai and Sung Mayli have? One is that they were both working in a research lab when they met: that bomb that we call “love” exploded in both of their faces at the same time. That’s to say, they were both educated, and they had the option of world travel that a peasant in the province of Szechuan probably wouldn’t have had. What’s more, the lab that hired them was one of those multinational firms that set up an office in China to take advantage of the cheap labour. Why pay somebody in San Francisco hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to find a cure for AIDS when you can pay somebody cents to the dollar in China to do the same thing?
For Chang Xiqai and Sung Mayli, it all came down to two countries: the U.S and Canada. In both countries, most people speak English, and if you can get the right visas, you can work in one country and live in the other. Thousands of Canadians cross the border to work in the U.S every day. Americans would also work in Canada, if Immigration Canada wasn’t paranoid about U.S citizens taking jobs away from Canadians, but that’s another pair of sleeves. Immigration Canada expected Chang and Mayli to be able to work and live in Canada at the same time: Immigration Canada didn’t want them commuting across the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor or the Bluewater Bridge in Sarnia and tying up customs.
Let’s be fair about this. Originally, Chang and Mayli wanted their daughter to be born in the U.S, because that would have been simpler. Their firm had an opening in Seattle, so Mayli took it while she was in the second trimester of her pregnancy. The problem was, the company did some downsizing almost as soon as she arrived in Seattle. They closed their laboratory in Seattle in a manner not very different from the way Boeing suddenly grounded all its staff in Washington State and moved to Chicago. Some people at the lab in Seattle lost their jobs, but Mayli was offered a position in Omaha, Nebraska. However, Mayli was committed to a thirty-year mortgage for a house on Bainbridge Island that she had just bought; she didn’t want to give up the house, even though people were walking away from mortgages all over the U.S to find work in other cities.
Another biochemical research company from the U.S opened up a laboratory in Victoria, British Columbia, just across Puget Sound from Seattle. Nobody knew for sure why, but maybe it was to take advantage of a perceived bias in favour of Asian immigrants in Canada. That is, people thought that Asians were "smarter" than Caucasians in the U.S and Canada. Canada was receiving lots of Indian immigrants with degrees, in part, because both Canada and India have a common history of being part of the British Empire. Canada was also accepting people from China, like Mayli. However, there was one problem: Mayli was living in the U.S. Immigration Canada was unwilling to give her a work visa because she didn’t have a resident visa. As well, she was clearly showing.
Maybe it all depends on who you talk to, but the person that handled Mayli’s case voiced some concerns about Mayli wanting to work in Canada only so she could have her baby there and become a Canadian citizen that way. She also had to have a sponsor, and Mayli didn’t know anybody in Canada. What’s more, there was some problem of her husband, Chang, coming over from China to live in Canada when he could belong to some opium triad, for all they knew. But if Mayli could get a sponsor, all her paperwork would be in order and her husband could join her in Canada.
Language was never a problem, except for those who spoke English and had to talk to Mayli. While Mayli was a student at the University of Beijing, she and her classmates often spent the entire afternoon at a cafe in Tiananman Square conversing in English. Mayli could answer most questions put to her in English, once she understood the question. The problem was that immigration officials who spoke with her often didn't understand what she was saying. That’s because the retroflexive liquid, or the “r-sound,” doesn’t exist in Han Chinese; the Chinese only have the lateral liquid, or the “l-sound.” Therefore, not many people in the U.S or Canada have heard of Balak Obama, even if Obama was the "plesident" of the United States.
The United States and Canada have the longest undefended border of any two countries in the world. Even in the world after the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, most people can pass the border between the two countries with just three pieces of identification. Every now and then, customs officials will take you aside and question you. They might even strip search you. However, few people are pulled aside, and even fewer people get strip searched. Most people pass through customs without any problems.
Most people. Mayli was pulled aside the first time she tried to cross the border at Vancouver. This was because she was showing and her citizenship was Chinese. All her papers were in order, and the customs officials understood that she was a probably biochemical researcher, not a textile worker who was paid under the table while working illegally. However, the experience was very disconcerting. Mayli wondered if she wasn’t entering a totalitarian police state like China.
Mayli was about to be turned back when she heard a voice from behind her say, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of her.”
When Mayli turned around, she saw a young man in his early twenties who looked Chinese. He was bamboo shoot thin, about five-foot-seven, with black hair creeping down his neck, wearing a long sleeved white cotton shirt and black corduroys. She wondered if he wasn’t a hoodlum. However, the customs official seemed to know him. “What if she goes into labour?” the official asked.
“I know they don’t pay you to think,” the man replied, “but if she went into labour now, she would probably have a miscarriage, eh? She obviously isn’t far enough along yet.”
When the customs official was still hesitant, the young man said, “It’s all right. I’ll show her the sights and send her home. She only wants to visit, right?”
The man looked hard at Mayli, who quickly nodded her head and said to the customs official, “Yes, I only want to visit…”
When they were alone, the man introduced himself. His name was Robert Lee and his family was from China, but the Chinese language was as incomprehensible to him as it was to other Canadians his age; he couldn’t speak a word of it. “It’s amusing that people think I’m a genius because I’m Chinese,” he said. “I helped a white woman change a flat tyre once. When I was finished, she shook my hand, thanked me and said, ‘You people are so brilliant!’ All I did was change a flat tyre.”
Mayli told Robert about herself and her husband’s visa problems. “Chinese government not want him come to United States because I not have U.S citizenship,” she said.
“But you would rather live in Canada, right?”
“No,” Mayli replied. “I want work in Canada. I want live in United States because of my house.”
Mayli explained about her house on Bainbridge Island and the impending transfer to Omaha. The housing market was very bad and didn’t want to let the house go into foreclosure if she couldn’t sell it. “A pharmaceutical company in Victoria wants to hire me,” she said, “but I can’t get work visa because I am pregnant. I don’t know what to do.”
“Maybe you should let the house go into foreclosure,” Robert suggested.
“No!” Mayli replied with unexpected vehemence. “That is intolerable. It is crazy!”
Robert and Mayli spent all day seeing the sights. Vancouver lived up to its reputation as one of the most liveable cities in North America. Because it was early spring, Robert was able to show Mayli the Japanese cherry trees in bloom. “The Japanese sent annual gifts of these trees to the city all through the 1930s,” he said, “and then they started World War II. I don’t get it.”
By the end of the day, they were in love. Robert took Mayli back to his place, where they had sex for the first time. Even though Mayli was pregnant, sexual intercourse was not out of the question; Robert just couldn’t penetrate her as deeply as he normally would have. The next morning, Robert made her breakfast, and then he showed her Victoria, just across the Vancouver Sound from Vancouver on Vancouver Island. He showed her some of the sights, such as the stone lion that guards the gate to Chinatown, and the totem pole at Inner Harbour. While eating lunch at the fishermen’s wharf, she asked, “What do you for a living?”
“I’m a landscaper,” he replied vaguely. “I cut grass, trim shrubs, and put in gravel for people’s gardens. There may not be a lot of money in it, but I like the work. I’ve been to college, but I didn’t like it.”
Robert sensed that his choice of career might be a problem for her, because she had a doctorate. But Mayli said, “The problem is my husband. He may never be allowed to leave China, but if he leaves China, there could be a problem.”
“Do you love him?” Robert asked.
With eyes cast down, she muttered, “I don’t know. I not see him in long time.”
As Mayli’s pregnancy went through its natural progression, Robert continued to see her. Robert liked Maili because he thought she was shy and demure while Mayli considered Robert brash and outspoken. The truth, however, was that Robert considered himself socially awkward while Mayli considered herself to be too blunt. Most of the time, particularly after it got late in her pregnancy, they met at her place on Bainbridge Island. After Robert spent a longer time than usual passing through U.S customs, Robert cursed when he arrived at Mayli’s: “Borders suck!"
But Mayli only replied, “It’s time. The baby is coming…”
Robert had to drive her to the hospital, where she gave birth to a daughter. “She looks just like you,” the white nurse said to Robert after the baby was born.
After six months, Robert and Mayli decided to get married. By now, Robert was sponsoring Mayli as a landed alien of Canada while Mayli was working in Victoria. She still kept her house on Bainbridge Island, though it had lost value even after the collapse of the real estate market. Mayli wrote a letter to her husband, Chang, telling him that she was divorcing him. She didn’t have to tell him why; he already knew. Chang wrote back, telling her that he had also met somebody. While waiting for his application for a passport and visa to be accepted, he had fallen for another female research assistant and wanted to marry her. Mayli didn't doubt that her husband was telling the truth rather than saying it to be spiteful.
Robert and Mayli were married in a little United Church of Canada chapel in Vancouver. Robert was only twenty five years old while Mayli was nearly forty.
Mayli realized that her husband, Chang, wanted a son, but she didn’t want to have an abortion. Any woman who has had an abortion, or who has friends who have had abortions, knows that an abortion is painful. One of Mayli’s friends said that it was like having someone pull your lip over your head. “You might as well have the baby,” the friend said.
First, they give you a drug that induces labour. Then they have to go in there and clean up. A DNC, done in the first trimester, isn’t very complicated: just a little bit of suction, and the vacuum cleaner cleans it all up. An ETC, which they do in the second trimester, is more complicated; they could miss a little hand or a little foot, if they don’t do it right. An XTC―what certain people in the United States call a “partial birth abortion”― is really complicated. Most of these are done when the unborn child is already dead. Most women who have had partial birth abortions aren’t worried about what childbirth would do to their figures, unless they are topless dancers.
You might say that China is a great place to go if you want to have an abortion. Even if you’re nine months pregnant, you can find someone who will inject a saline solution into the unborn child’s head. They say that the state has been known to force women who have violated China’s one-child law to have abortions even when they were about to deliver. However, Mayli didn’t want to have an abortion. It wasn’t all her fault that the unborn child was a girl, and why should she have to go through the pain of childbirth just to abort it? Besides, there are loopholes even in China’s one-child law. If you marry somebody who isn’t Chinese, like a Tibetan or a Uighur, you can have as many children as you want. As well, those born in Hong Kong before that fair island changed from a British Crown Colony to a Chinese territory, could be British Subjects, if they can provide the proof to somebody at a British consulate. And if you just happen to have a baby while you’re on vacation in some exotic place, like Bali or Thailand… The reason why people hire lawyers is to explore all their options, right?
What options did Chang Xiqai and Sung Mayli have? One is that they were both working in a research lab when they met: that bomb that we call “love” exploded in both of their faces at the same time. That’s to say, they were both educated, and they had the option of world travel that a peasant in the province of Szechuan probably wouldn’t have had. What’s more, the lab that hired them was one of those multinational firms that set up an office in China to take advantage of the cheap labour. Why pay somebody in San Francisco hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to find a cure for AIDS when you can pay somebody cents to the dollar in China to do the same thing?
For Chang Xiqai and Sung Mayli, it all came down to two countries: the U.S and Canada. In both countries, most people speak English, and if you can get the right visas, you can work in one country and live in the other. Thousands of Canadians cross the border to work in the U.S every day. Americans would also work in Canada, if Immigration Canada wasn’t paranoid about U.S citizens taking jobs away from Canadians, but that’s another pair of sleeves. Immigration Canada expected Chang and Mayli to be able to work and live in Canada at the same time: Immigration Canada didn’t want them commuting across the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor or the Bluewater Bridge in Sarnia and tying up customs.
Let’s be fair about this. Originally, Chang and Mayli wanted their daughter to be born in the U.S, because that would have been simpler. Their firm had an opening in Seattle, so Mayli took it while she was in the second trimester of her pregnancy. The problem was, the company did some downsizing almost as soon as she arrived in Seattle. They closed their laboratory in Seattle in a manner not very different from the way Boeing suddenly grounded all its staff in Washington State and moved to Chicago. Some people at the lab in Seattle lost their jobs, but Mayli was offered a position in Omaha, Nebraska. However, Mayli was committed to a thirty-year mortgage for a house on Bainbridge Island that she had just bought; she didn’t want to give up the house, even though people were walking away from mortgages all over the U.S to find work in other cities.
Another biochemical research company from the U.S opened up a laboratory in Victoria, British Columbia, just across Puget Sound from Seattle. Nobody knew for sure why, but maybe it was to take advantage of a perceived bias in favour of Asian immigrants in Canada. That is, people thought that Asians were "smarter" than Caucasians in the U.S and Canada. Canada was receiving lots of Indian immigrants with degrees, in part, because both Canada and India have a common history of being part of the British Empire. Canada was also accepting people from China, like Mayli. However, there was one problem: Mayli was living in the U.S. Immigration Canada was unwilling to give her a work visa because she didn’t have a resident visa. As well, she was clearly showing.
Maybe it all depends on who you talk to, but the person that handled Mayli’s case voiced some concerns about Mayli wanting to work in Canada only so she could have her baby there and become a Canadian citizen that way. She also had to have a sponsor, and Mayli didn’t know anybody in Canada. What’s more, there was some problem of her husband, Chang, coming over from China to live in Canada when he could belong to some opium triad, for all they knew. But if Mayli could get a sponsor, all her paperwork would be in order and her husband could join her in Canada.
Language was never a problem, except for those who spoke English and had to talk to Mayli. While Mayli was a student at the University of Beijing, she and her classmates often spent the entire afternoon at a cafe in Tiananman Square conversing in English. Mayli could answer most questions put to her in English, once she understood the question. The problem was that immigration officials who spoke with her often didn't understand what she was saying. That’s because the retroflexive liquid, or the “r-sound,” doesn’t exist in Han Chinese; the Chinese only have the lateral liquid, or the “l-sound.” Therefore, not many people in the U.S or Canada have heard of Balak Obama, even if Obama was the "plesident" of the United States.
The United States and Canada have the longest undefended border of any two countries in the world. Even in the world after the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, most people can pass the border between the two countries with just three pieces of identification. Every now and then, customs officials will take you aside and question you. They might even strip search you. However, few people are pulled aside, and even fewer people get strip searched. Most people pass through customs without any problems.
Most people. Mayli was pulled aside the first time she tried to cross the border at Vancouver. This was because she was showing and her citizenship was Chinese. All her papers were in order, and the customs officials understood that she was a probably biochemical researcher, not a textile worker who was paid under the table while working illegally. However, the experience was very disconcerting. Mayli wondered if she wasn’t entering a totalitarian police state like China.
Mayli was about to be turned back when she heard a voice from behind her say, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of her.”
When Mayli turned around, she saw a young man in his early twenties who looked Chinese. He was bamboo shoot thin, about five-foot-seven, with black hair creeping down his neck, wearing a long sleeved white cotton shirt and black corduroys. She wondered if he wasn’t a hoodlum. However, the customs official seemed to know him. “What if she goes into labour?” the official asked.
“I know they don’t pay you to think,” the man replied, “but if she went into labour now, she would probably have a miscarriage, eh? She obviously isn’t far enough along yet.”
When the customs official was still hesitant, the young man said, “It’s all right. I’ll show her the sights and send her home. She only wants to visit, right?”
The man looked hard at Mayli, who quickly nodded her head and said to the customs official, “Yes, I only want to visit…”
When they were alone, the man introduced himself. His name was Robert Lee and his family was from China, but the Chinese language was as incomprehensible to him as it was to other Canadians his age; he couldn’t speak a word of it. “It’s amusing that people think I’m a genius because I’m Chinese,” he said. “I helped a white woman change a flat tyre once. When I was finished, she shook my hand, thanked me and said, ‘You people are so brilliant!’ All I did was change a flat tyre.”
Mayli told Robert about herself and her husband’s visa problems. “Chinese government not want him come to United States because I not have U.S citizenship,” she said.
“But you would rather live in Canada, right?”
“No,” Mayli replied. “I want work in Canada. I want live in United States because of my house.”
Mayli explained about her house on Bainbridge Island and the impending transfer to Omaha. The housing market was very bad and didn’t want to let the house go into foreclosure if she couldn’t sell it. “A pharmaceutical company in Victoria wants to hire me,” she said, “but I can’t get work visa because I am pregnant. I don’t know what to do.”
“Maybe you should let the house go into foreclosure,” Robert suggested.
“No!” Mayli replied with unexpected vehemence. “That is intolerable. It is crazy!”
Robert and Mayli spent all day seeing the sights. Vancouver lived up to its reputation as one of the most liveable cities in North America. Because it was early spring, Robert was able to show Mayli the Japanese cherry trees in bloom. “The Japanese sent annual gifts of these trees to the city all through the 1930s,” he said, “and then they started World War II. I don’t get it.”
By the end of the day, they were in love. Robert took Mayli back to his place, where they had sex for the first time. Even though Mayli was pregnant, sexual intercourse was not out of the question; Robert just couldn’t penetrate her as deeply as he normally would have. The next morning, Robert made her breakfast, and then he showed her Victoria, just across the Vancouver Sound from Vancouver on Vancouver Island. He showed her some of the sights, such as the stone lion that guards the gate to Chinatown, and the totem pole at Inner Harbour. While eating lunch at the fishermen’s wharf, she asked, “What do you for a living?”
“I’m a landscaper,” he replied vaguely. “I cut grass, trim shrubs, and put in gravel for people’s gardens. There may not be a lot of money in it, but I like the work. I’ve been to college, but I didn’t like it.”
Robert sensed that his choice of career might be a problem for her, because she had a doctorate. But Mayli said, “The problem is my husband. He may never be allowed to leave China, but if he leaves China, there could be a problem.”
“Do you love him?” Robert asked.
With eyes cast down, she muttered, “I don’t know. I not see him in long time.”
As Mayli’s pregnancy went through its natural progression, Robert continued to see her. Robert liked Maili because he thought she was shy and demure while Mayli considered Robert brash and outspoken. The truth, however, was that Robert considered himself socially awkward while Mayli considered herself to be too blunt. Most of the time, particularly after it got late in her pregnancy, they met at her place on Bainbridge Island. After Robert spent a longer time than usual passing through U.S customs, Robert cursed when he arrived at Mayli’s: “Borders suck!"
But Mayli only replied, “It’s time. The baby is coming…”
Robert had to drive her to the hospital, where she gave birth to a daughter. “She looks just like you,” the white nurse said to Robert after the baby was born.
After six months, Robert and Mayli decided to get married. By now, Robert was sponsoring Mayli as a landed alien of Canada while Mayli was working in Victoria. She still kept her house on Bainbridge Island, though it had lost value even after the collapse of the real estate market. Mayli wrote a letter to her husband, Chang, telling him that she was divorcing him. She didn’t have to tell him why; he already knew. Chang wrote back, telling her that he had also met somebody. While waiting for his application for a passport and visa to be accepted, he had fallen for another female research assistant and wanted to marry her. Mayli didn't doubt that her husband was telling the truth rather than saying it to be spiteful.
Robert and Mayli were married in a little United Church of Canada chapel in Vancouver. Robert was only twenty five years old while Mayli was nearly forty.
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