Connections

We finally got the internet installed yesterday.

I remember when we did this a few years ago in Scotland. A man with a black bag came and did a couple of clever things with tools and that was it -- we were connected.

Here it was a lot more complicated. My husband and I went down to an office and waited until someone who spoke English was available. We chose a packet and arranged for a suitable day. What we forgot about was the fact that we have not been given our address here. In fact, nobody seems to know it.

"You're in a brand-new unit," the estate agent told us. "We don't know what it is yet."

So on the day we were due to have the internet installed, I had to leave work early. I had to take a dolmush from my university instead of driving home with my husband in the evening as I usually do. I stood on the busy road until a dolmush came along and once it arrived, I wrenched open the door and squeezed myself inside. There was only one seat available, next to the oldest woman I believe I have ever seen in all my life outside a hospital. She was tiny and bent over and in one gnarled brown hand she was clutching a walking stick. Her head-kerchief was tied under her chin and and her full, multi-layered skirts swept the floor under her little black boots. I had to stop myself from staring at her so great was her resemblance to the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

The dolmush driver took off with a great burst of speed, scattering chickens along the side of the road. I've never yet ridden in a dolmush that didn't have loud Middle-eastern music playing, the kind you associate with belly-dancing and plaintive, passionately-sung lyrics, and this one was no exception. Because I was sitting in the front, I had the job of passing fares and change back and forth from departing passengers to the driver. At one point, I held a five-yetele note in my hand for a good minute while the driver negotiated with a noisy woman who appeared to be lost; finally he took her money and passed over the change and I was able to lean back in my seat and watch my little old lady neighbor out of the corner of my eye. She sucked the few of her teeth she had left and ignored me.

I would love to know her life story.

When I got to my stop, I managed to get off without incident. God knows how the little old lady coped; getting off a dolmush takes a heck of a lot more than un poco de gracia and if there is a way to do it that does not require one to bend over and display one's rear end to one's fellow passengers, I sure haven't found it.

When the internet man called, I was ready for him. Although we live almost next door to a mosque, it is obviously not a very successful or prosperous one: no one happens to have heard of it. So I arranged to meet him at the better-known one that is five blocks away from us -- we are spoiled for choice when it comes to mosques around here -- and he even managed to understand my awful attempt at the name in Turkish.

I stood by the side of the road for fifteen minutes, waiting for the internet man to show up. The mosque is beautiful. It is surrounded by orange, palm, pepper, persimmon and pomegranate trees. There is a tall, gruff old bushy-eyebrowed man who lives next door to it, but I know his secret: he talks what sounds very much like baby-talk to his goats and cats.

As I watched the old man and his cats, I was suddenly seized with such a yearning for my cat in Scotland that I could hardly stand it. I remembered how she would settle, purring, in my lap on cold winter days when I sat writing, a cup of coffee at hand. When I got stuck on something, I would always go outside to pull weeds or rake leaves and my cat would follow me, always a good five-minute face-saving distance behind. As I weeded, she would hunt nearby or show off prettily until I reached down and scratched her belly -- just like the gruff old man was doing with his cat. And I remembered more: how easy and convenient it was to use my computer, how plentiful our supply of hot water, and how vividly red our maple trees always were at this time of year. I pictured the Christmas lights going up in our town, a scattering of snow frosting the tips of the trees, the smell of coal smoke in the chilled winter air.

The computer man figured out who I was right away. I hopped in the front seat and we drove down the bumpy, pot-holed road, me navigating as best I could.

Along the way we passed the little old lady from the dolmush, slowly making her way home, walking stick in hand as she hobbled along the dusty road. Obviously she lives in this neighborhood.

I wonder if I will ever know her life story.