Mirrors

  Y para Helena, muy.

  Montevideo, the final days of 2007

  Father, paint me the earth on my body.

  —Sioux chant from South Dakota

  Mirrors are filled with people.

  The invisible see us.

  The forgotten recall us.

  When we see ourselves, we see them.

  When we turn away, do they?

  BORN OF DESIRE

  Life was alone, no name, no memory. It had hands, but no one to touch. It had a tongue, but no one to talk to. Life was one, and one was none.

  Then desire drew his bow. The arrow of desire split life down the middle, and life was two.

  When they caught sight of each other, they laughed. When they touched each other, they laughed again.

  A FEAST ON FOOT

  Adam and Eve were black?

  The human adventure in the world began in Africa. From there, our ancestors set out to conquer the planet. Many paths led them to many destinies, and the sun took care of handing out colors from the palette.

  Now the rainbow of the earth is more colorful than the rainbow of the sky. But we are all emigrants from Africa. Even the whitest of whites comes from Africa.

  Maybe we refuse to acknowledge our common origins because racism causes amnesia, or because we find it unbelievable that in those days long past the entire world was our kingdom, an immense map without borders, and our legs were the only passport required.

  THE TROUBLEMAKER

  Separate were heaven and earth, good and bad, birth and death. Day and night never mixed. Woman was woman and man was man.

  But Exû, the errant bandit of Africa, liked to entertain himself by provoking outlawed minglings. And he is still at it.

  His devilish tricks erase borders, join what the gods divided. Thanks to his clever deeds the sun turns black and the night burns bright. From the pores of men sprout women and women sweat men. The dying are born, the born are dying. For everything ever created or yet to be created, backward and forward get so confused you can no longer tell boss from bossed or up from down.

  Later rather than sooner, divine order reestablishes its hierarchies and geographies, and everything and everyone gets put in its place. But sooner rather than later, madness reappears.

  Then the gods lament that the world is such a difficult place.

  CAVES

  Stalactites hang from the ceiling. Stalagmites grow from the floor. All are fragile crystals, born from the sweat of rocks in the depths of caves etched into the mountains by water and time.

  Stalactites and stalagmites spend thousands of years reaching down or reaching up, drop by drop, searching for each other in the darkness.

  It takes some of them a million years to touch.

  They are in no hurry.

  ORIGIN OF FIRE

  In school they taught me that way back in caveman times we discovered fire by rubbing stones or sticks together.

  I’ve been trying ever since. I never got even a tiny spark.

  My personal failure has not kept me from appreciating the favors fire did for us. It defended us from the cold and from threatening beasts. It cooked our food, lit up the night, and invited us to sit, together, at its side.

  ORIGIN OF BEAUTY

  There they are, painted on the walls and ceilings of caves.

  Bison, elk, bears, horses, eagles, women, men, these figures are ageless. They were born thousands upon thousands of years ago, but they are born anew every time someone looks at them.

  How could our ancestor of long ago paint so delicately? How could a brute who fought wild beasts with his bare hands create images so filled with grace? How did he manage to draw those flying lines that break free of the stone and take to the air? How could he? . . .

  Or was it she?

  SAHARA’S GREENERY

  In Tassili and elsewhere in the Sahara, cave paintings offer stylized images from six thousand years ago of cows, bulls, antelope, giraffes, rhinoceroses, elephants. . . .

  Were those animals simply imagined? If not, did the inhabitants of the desert drink sand? And what did they eat? Stones?

  Art tells us the desert was no desert. Its lakes resembled seas and its valleys provided plenty of pasture for the animals that would later have to migrate south in search of the lost verdure.

  HOW COULD WE?

  To be mouth or mouthful, hunter or hunted. That was the question.

  We deserved scorn, or at most pity. In the hostile wilderness no one respected us, no one feared us. We were the most vulnerable beasts in the animal kingdom, terrified of night and the jungle, useless as youngsters, not much better as adults, without claws or fangs or nimble feet or keen sense of smell.

  Our early history is lost in mist. It seems all we ever did was break rocks and beat each other with clubs.

  But one might well ask: Weren’t we able to survive, when survival was all but impossible, because we learned to share our food and band together for defense? Would today’s me-first, do-your-own-thing civilization have lasted more than a moment?

  AGES

  It happens to us before birth. In our bodies as they begin to take form, something like fins appear and also a tail of sorts. These appendages don’t last; they barely show their faces before they fall off.

  Do these ephemeral apparitions tell us we once were fish and once were monkeys? Fish who set out to conquer dry land? Monkeys who abandoned the jungle or who were abandoned by it?

  And does the fear we feel in childhood, scared of anything, of everything, tell us we once were afraid of being eaten? Does our fear of the dark and of the anguish of solitude echo that primeval vulnerability?

  Now that we’ve grown up a little, we who were fearful strike fear. The hunted is the hunter, the mouthful is now the mouth. Monsters that yesterday harried us are today our prisoners. They inhabit our zoos, adorn our flags, and embellish our anthems.

  COUSINS

  Ham, the conquistador of outer space, was captured in Africa.

  He became the first chimpanzee to travel far beyond the world, the first chimponaut. They put him in the space capsule Mercury, hooked him up with more wires than a telephone switchboard, and blasted him off.

  He came back safe and sound, and the record of his bodily functions demonstrated that humans too could survive a voyage into space.

  Ham was on the cover of Life. And he spent the rest of his own caged in a zoo.

  GRANDPARENTS

  For many peoples of black Africa, ancestors are the spirits that live in the tree beside your house or in the cow grazing in the field. The great-grandfather of your great-great-grandfather is now that stream snaking down the mountainside. Your ancestor could also be any spirit that decides to accompany you on your voyage through the world, even if he or she was never a relative or an acquaintance.

  The family has no borders, explains Soboufu Somé of the Dagara people: “Our children have many mothers and many fathers. As many as they wish.”

  And the ancestral spirits, the ones that help you make your way, are the many grandparents that each of you has. As many as you wish.

  BRIEF HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION

  And we tired of wandering through the forest and along the banks of rivers.

  And we began settling. We invented villages and community life, turned bone into needle and thorn into spike. Tools elongated our hands, and the handle multiplied the strength of the ax, the hoe, and the knife.

  We grew rice, barley, wheat, and corn, we put sheep and goats into corrals, we learned to store grain to keep from starving in bad times.

  And in the fields of our labor we worshipped goddesses of fertility, women of vast hips and generous breasts. But with the passage of time they were displaced by the harsh gods of war. And we sang hymns of praise to the glory of kings, warrior chiefs, and high priests.

  We discovered the words “yours” and “mine,” land became owned, and women became the property of men and fathers the owners of children.

  Left
far behind were the times when we drifted without home or destination.

  The results of civilization were surprising: our lives became more secure but less free, and we worked a lot harder.

  ORIGIN OF POLLUTION

  The Pygmies, who have short bodies and long memories, recall the time before time, when the earth was above the sky.

  From earth to sky fell a ceaseless rain of dust and garbage that fouled the home of the gods and poisoned their food.

  The gods tolerated that filthy discharge for an eternity, then their patience ran out.

  They sent a bolt of lightning, which split the earth in two. Through the crack they hurled the sun, the moon, and the stars on high, and by that route they too climbed up. Way up there, far from us, safe from us, the gods founded their new kingdom.

  Ever since, we are the ones underneath.

  ORIGIN OF SOCIAL CLASSES

  In the earliest of times, times of hunger, the first woman was scratching at the earth when the sun’s rays penetrated her from behind. In an instant, a baby was born.

  The god Pachacamac was not at all pleased with the sun’s good deed, and he tore the newborn to pieces. From the dead infant sprouted the first plants. The teeth became grains of corn, the bones became yucca, the flesh became potato, yam, squash. . . .

  The sun’s fury was swift. His rays blasted the coast of Peru and left it forever dry. As the ultimate revenge he cracked three eggs on the soil.

  From the golden egg emerged the lords.

  From the silver egg, the ladies of the lords.

  And from the copper egg, those who work.

  SERFS AND LORDS

  Cacao needs no sun, for it has its own.

  From its inner glow come the pleasure and euphoria of chocolate. The gods on high had a monopoly on the thick elixir, and we humans were condemned to live in ignorance.

  Quetzalcóatl stole it for the Toltecs. While the rest of the gods slept, he took a few seeds and hid them in his beard. Then he rappelled down to earth on the long thread of a spider’s web and presented them to the city of Tula.

  Quetzalcóatl’s offering was usurped by the princes, the priests, and the warrior chiefs.

  Their palates alone were deemed worthy.

  As the owners of heaven forbade chocolate to mortals, so the owners of the earth forbade it to commoners.

  RULERS AND RULED

  The Bible of Jerusalem says that the people of Israel were God’s chosen, the children of God.

  According to the second psalm, the chosen people were given the world to rule:

  Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

  But the people of Israel gave Him much displeasure, ungrateful were they and sinful. And after many threats, curses, and punishments, God lost patience.

  Ever since, other peoples have claimed the gift for themselves.

  In the year 1900, Senator Albert Beveridge of the United States revealed: “Almighty God has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.”

  ORIGIN OF THE DIVISION OF LABOR

  They say it was King Manu who bestowed divine prestige on the castes of India.

  From his mouth emerged the priests. From his arms, the kings and warriors. From his thighs, the merchants. From his feet, the serfs and craftsmen.

  And on that foundation arose the social pyramid, which in India has over three thousand stories.

  Everyone is born where he should be born, to do what he should do. In the cradle lies the grave, origin is destiny: our lives are just recompense or fair punishment for our past lives, and heritage dictates our place and our role.

  To correct deviations, King Manu recommended: “If a person from a lower caste hears the verses of the sacred books, he shall have molten lead poured in his ears; and if he recites them, he shall have his tongue cut out.” Such pedagogy is no longer fashionable, but anyone who departs from his place, in love, in labor, in whatever, still risks a public flogging that could leave him dead or more dead than alive.

  The outcasts, one in five Indians, are beneath those on the bottom. They are called “Untouchables” because they contaminate: damned among the damned, they cannot speak to others, walk on their paths, or touch their glasses or plates. The law protects them, reality banishes them. Anyone can humiliate the men, anyone can rape the women, which is the only time the untouchables are touchable.

  At the end of 2004, when the tsunami trampled the coasts of India, they collected the garbage and the dead.

  As always.

  ORIGIN OF WRITING

  When Iraq was not yet Iraq, it was the birthplace of the first written words.

  The words look like bird tracks. Masterful hands drew them in clay with sharpened canes.

  Fire annihilates and rescues, kills and gives life, as do the gods, as do we. Fire hardened the clay and preserved the words. Thanks to fire, the clay tablets still tell what they told thousands of years ago in that land of two rivers.

  In our days, George W. Bush, perhaps believing that writing was invented in Texas, launched with joyful impunity a war to exterminate Iraq. There were thousands upon thousands of victims, and not all of them were flesh and blood. A great deal of memory was murdered too.

  Living history in the form of numerous clay tablets were stolen or destroyed by bombs.

  One of the tablets said:

  We are dust and nothing

  All that we do is no more than wind.

  BORN OF CLAY

  The ancient Sumerians believed the entire world was a land between two rivers and between two heavens.

  In heaven above lived the gods who ruled.

  In heaven below the gods who worked.

  And thus it was, until the gods below wearied of working all the time and staged the first strike in history.

  Panic ensued.

  To keep from dying of hunger, the gods above modeled women and men out of clay and put them to work.

  These women and men were born on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

  From that clay, too, were made the books that tell their story.

  The books say that to die is “to return to the clay.”

  ORIGIN OF THE DAYS

  When Iraq was Sumeria, time had weeks, weeks had days, and days had names.

  The priests drew the first celestial maps and baptized the heavenly bodies, the constellations, and the days.

  We have inherited those names, passed on from tongue to tongue, from Sumerian to Babylonian, from Babylonian to Greek, from Greek to Latin, and so on.

  They named the seven stars that move across the sky for their gods. And thousands of years later we invoke those same gods for the seven days that move across time. With slight variations, the days of the week still answer to their original names: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus. Saturday, Sunday, Monday . . .

  ORIGIN OF THE TAVERN

  When Iraq was Babylonia, female hands ran the table:

  May beer never be lacking,

  the house be rich in soups,

  and bread abound.

  In the palaces and the temples, the chef was male. Not so at home. Women made the many beers, sweet, fine, white, golden, dark, aged, as well as the soups and the breads. Any leftovers were offered to the neighbors.

  With the passing of time, some houses put in counters and guests became clients. The tavern was born. This tiny kingdom ruled by women, this extension of the home, became a meeting place and a haven of freedom.

  Taverns hatched conspiracies and kindled forbidden loves.

  More than 3,700 years ago, in the days of King Hammurabi, the gods gave the world two hundred and eighty laws.

  One of those laws ordered priestesses to be burned alive if they took part in barroom plots.

  RITES OF THE TABLE

  When Iraq was Assyria, the king offered a palace banquet in the city of Nimrod, with twenty main dishes accompanied by
forty side dishes lubricated by rivers of beer and wine. According to chronicles from 3,000 years ago, the guests numbered 69,574, all of them men, nary a woman, plus the gods who also ate and drank.

  From other palaces even more ancient came the first recipes written by the masters of the kitchen. Chefs had as much power and prestige as priests, and their holy formulae have survived the shipwrecks of time and war. Their recipes are precise (“the dough shall rise four fingers in the pot”) or imprecise (“eyeball the salt”), but they all end by saying: “ready to eat.”

  Three thousand five hundred years ago, Aluzinnu the jester left us his recipes. Among them, this herald of fine dining: