Happy Birthday, Dad

Happy Birthday, Dad
November 7
10:00am
Dad’s birthday. Happy 60th birthday, Dad I can’t call you, but I can show you my journal in December and let you know that I was thinking of you. I love you
The village is a place of absurdity and vivid dreams. I never dream, and when I do dream, all I can say is that I did. I can never remember details.
The village has been a catalyst for thought, though, a haven of dreams. My first night in the village, I dreamed of escaping and returning home. I either made it to America or Rabat — I’m not sure which — but I know that I made it to Clay in some capacity. I felt safe but was filled with a sense of dread at having to face punishment for leaving the village.
I awoke disoriented, feeling as though I had lived a week, and it took me a few moments to realize that I was lying on a zarbia in a mud dwelling in central Morocco. I didn’t know how I was going to survive the rest of the week, and familiarity was all I craved.
Between 6:00 and 7:00am this morning, I was met by another insane dream. I was in Morocco, looking out of the windows of some large building onto a colorful Saharan caravan. Men were dressed in the characteristic Saharan blue, the camels were loaded. I go outside with a friend and a baby, whom I pick up and coo at as we walk along the line of camels and men toward the rear of the caravan. I decide I want to capture this quintessential Moroccan scene in a photograph, so I run back into the building to get my camera. When I make it back outside, the last of the caravan is walking into the distance, and all of a sudden, Morocco behind me disappears as the caravan walks off, dissipating into an intersection in historic downtown Lexington. I run after the caravan and the last camel floats away, mystified, as my feet touch down in Kentucky. As familiar and comfortable as this scene is, I bend over with my hands on my knees, sobbing because I have lost Morocco.
The next thing I remember from the dream, I’m walking through a fancy office in some American city. The tile floors and cherry wood fixtures are polished and shining, and the interior glows with yellow light. The building is decorated for St. Patrick’s Day, shiny green metallic shamrocks and leprechauns hanging in the arch of the ceiling. I walk out of the building and I’m standing on an outside balcony/hallway, my arm on a white railing, and I see out of my left peripheral vision Clay walk past me in dark blue jeans, white t-shirt, black belt, and white t-shirt sleeve in his hair. It looks like a hallway in the Hilton Head villa building we lived in, but I have no idea where it is. I’m about to call after him when Sfia, my mom, says, “Sbah al-khir, A’lia.” And I’m in the village again, coughing and blowing my nose.

This afternoon, smashed between one suffocating thing to the next, I will devise a plan. Like Jackie Chan.
I will not have a moment to myself the next two days. I, as myself, if that does exist, will no longer exist. At least my voice, and with it — my will — will have no memory of myself, and my body will have no ownership of privacy and space and pleasure to its own resources. A slave. — Julia Kirchhoff, my Montana SIT friend