Commerce (Samhain 2015)

Commerce (Samhain 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)

Just after I turned thirteen, my father moved to Rota to help maintain the US submarines stationed there.

Spain was in transition at the time. Franco had died a few years earlier and the country wasn’t quite sure in where it was heading. King Juan Carlos had begun the march toward democracy but no constitution had been signed. Previously outlawed labor unions conducted practice strikes, not because they were unhappy, because they simply didn’t know how and thought they might need to one day. The Guardia Civil cradled submachine guns at checkpoints and smashed cameras because they feared reprisals if their identities were confirmed. Of course, all this was set against the backdrop of the peak of the then still ongoing Cold War.

When friends and family came to visit, my father had a list of cities he liked to show them. Cadiz, Jerez, Seville, Toledo, Madrid, Barcelona. As a crossroads for invasion in the western Mediterranean, Spanish historical sites have a number of influences on display. Roman, Gothic, Byzantine, Christian, Jewish, and of course, Moorish.

Rota is situated on the Atlantic coast near Gibraltar. From there, it’s a quick ferry ride across the Straights to Africa. Tangier stands as Morocco’s gateway to the southern Mediterranean’s entirely different culture, exotic yet relatively safe.

You have to remember this was the late seventies, long before the current era of Islamic extremism. Morocco was an ally. To some degree, it still is. But Morocco was also in transition. It had been living under a state of emergency with its parliament suspended since 1965. It had just flexed its muscle against Spain to regain control of the Western Sahara, where its troops skirmished with Algeria’s for control. SADR was just another acronym for another fringe group unknown to most Americans then or now. But I didn’t know any of that at the time.

Tangier was another of my father’s favorite places to take visiting Americans. He brought my sister and me there when we stayed with him one summer. I can still picture the narrow, winding streets of the bazaar lined by shops where it seemed, at least to a fourteen-year-old, that everything was for sale. And the price you eventually paid was always negotiable. Like in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, haggling was not only encouraged, it was almost a requirement.

When my father and his wife took my grandparents to Tangier, my grandfather quickly either got overwhelmed or bored. I’m not sure if the culture shock overawed him, or he just saw little point in hunting through the bazaar for bargains on things he didn’t value with his wife and daughter-in-law. He was much more interested in people than things. So as I heard it, at some point he retreated back to a central square with a fountain near the ferry landing to wait the women out, like one of those guys you see camped out on a bench at the center of the mall.

And like almost every male I’ve ever seen in that situation, whether holding a purse at the doorway to a Macy’s dressing room, or a collection of brightly colored bags outside a Victoria’s Secret, he soon attracted a handful of other men to commiserate with. Being my grandfather, he struck up a conversation with the first person he found who spoke even the barest English. Being a proud American grandparent, he pulled out his wallet to show off pictures of his grandchildren. Which the guy he was talking to smiled at and admired. Some things are universal. 

Only he was still in a foreign country, one that, while somewhat cosmopolitan, held some distinctly non-Western values. So when he came to my sister’s high school picture, one of the non-English speakers behind him started rattling off a string of Arabic my grandfather didn’t understand.

The guy who spoke English began to translate, first listening intently then slowly and seriously laying out the words in broken English. Something about a large number of goats and sheep and cattle. Then something about a number horses which sent the translator’s eyes open very wide. Confused, my grandfather asked what he was talking about. The response went something like, “A bride price for the girl.”

My grandfather scoffed, thinking it was all some kind of mistranslation. The man assured him the offer was quite serious and genuine. Well, my grandfather didn’t know anything about that. No one really bought and sold fifteen year-old girls, did they? He thought it was a joke.

By now, a small crowd had gathered around him and his newfound friends. As my stepmother and grandmother returned from their extravaganza with my father in tow clutching their freshly acquired treasures, they all wondered what the commotion was about at the center of the square. Then they spotted my grandfather’s head above the crowd.

My father immediately understood this might be a problem. First he sent his wife and mother toward the ferry with all the packages, then he shouldered his was through the crowd until he was standing beside my grandfather. When my grandfather greeted him and told the man translating that this was his son, the man making the offer got more excited.

The translator’s English was still broken, so my father tried Spanish which he knew just enough of to hold up his end of a conversation in a bar. Relieved, the man switched to the language he was more fluent in. My father quickly caught the gist of what was going on.

The man making the offer was some minor but well-off sheik. The animals were from his herds, which of course, he would convert into whatever currency my father would like, pesetas, pounds, Deutschmarks or dollars (thousands and thousands of dollars). Unless he had use of the livestock. The horses are quite valuable, my friend.

Firmly and loudly, first in English then in Spanish, my father said, no, no, no, the girl is not for sale. Then grasping my grandfather’s arm, my father then hustled him out of the square toward the safety of the ferry back to Spain. Where he told my grandfather in no uncertain terms not to talk to strangers anymore, and to keep his pictures in his wallet and his wallet in his pocket. Tangier isn’t Boston or CocoaBeach. You’re not in Quincy anymore.

My family used to laugh about this incident, I think because despite all our other dysfunction, we knew something like that would never happen. I think it made my sister feel both valuable and valued, at least enough to keep. That feeling was a rare commodity in our family.

After the events of this summer, I’ve been thinking more about this encounter. About the value of a daughter to any individual family. About how their wishes are often subordinated to what someone else sees as what’s best for the family as a whole. About how their health and well-being are exchanged for someone else’s comfort, in our culture most often because someone else don’t have the courage to stand up for their daughter, or the compassion to see her as valuable when compared to a son. And all too often, that someone is a mother, a sister, a daughter herself.

Which draws me back to Samhain and the monsters lurking in plain sight. One kind disguise themselves behind the mask of normalcy that they don each day when they emerge in public even as they prey on others. Another weaves that illusion around the first with their denials, secrecy and silence despite anyone else they put at risk. Instead, they selfishly weigh off what the victim and perpetrator each have to offer like some sort of twisted trick or treat.

Ghouls and zombies engaged in unholy commerce, counting out the bright coin of someone else’s life as they drop them on the scales. In the end, I’m not sure which I find more chilling.


© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III