Cooking Fire

A little more than a month after I arrived in Mexico, I wrote this in my journal:

Night at Home

During my first weeks in Mexico, I was fascinated by the construction workers below the window of our top-level apartment. They were short, dark young men, and unlike their U.S. counterparts, they didn’t wear hard hats, or have much in the way of power tools. They lived as our neighbors on the site.

The hall window was my ant farm. I had quit my job, come to Mexico. Looking out the window, checking the progress below that these scurrying workers had made was a distraction. It grew to a kind of compulsion like checking a watch, waiting for the mail.

After they finished their work, the construction workers sat and shared fat bottles of beer among them. This night they lit a fire and sit on the dirt floor — like at camp. Here in the city of contamination, burned an open and unremorseful fire, fueled on the scrap wood from the site.

Over it, they placed a metal sheet to roast tortillas. Cement dust, fire, toasting corn — none of these scents reached the forth floor. I only hear the muffled sounds of jokes and laughter and the crack of wood on the fire. I wonder what they see in the face looking from the window: another poured drink in hand, eyes on the fire.

I felt isolated in the middle of this huge city, and here were people right below my window laughing, working, living. The idea I was trying to capture in that journal was at the heart of one of the beliefs about travel I hold — or held — closest. As a foreigner, living away from home, I don’t belong. Another way to put it: I am undefinable, not part of a group or class.

As recently as a Fourth of July barbecue, I thought to myself I should invite the albaniles to our cookout. I know I would have when I lived in China. I had spent months watching, and I saw them as silent members of the household.

At the beginning, I spoke just about no Spanish. Five months later, the reason I didn’t was that I had settled into life here. In Mexico, Americans are a known quantity — we have a place in the hierarchy of class, and it corresponds roughly to where I placed in the U.S. I would look out and feel guilty for never going down to meet them, to make friends.

This morning, five police cars were pulled up in front of our house. There were different forces: the Judicial Police, the Police of Colonia Del Valle, and Citizen Protection. They said there was a “muertito.” Last night, the workers building the house next door were drinking. Two of them killed one of the others. The place is now closed off with yellow bands police tape. The workers have scattered, and they will never be back.

I guess I’m upset from having a murder so close, but I’m as shaken in the conviction that I am safe getting to know all types of people. And I am confused about that feeling that had dogged me up until today, that I should go down to make friends.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2005 at 12:16 am and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.