| ||||
|
Arts & Entertainment Books Comics Health & Body Media Mothers Who Think News People Politics2000 Technology - Free Software Project  Travel & Food Columnists
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Travel Services - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Also Today For a full list of today's Salon Travel stories, go to the
Travel home page. - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon - - - - - - - - - - - - Recently in Salon Travel Travel Advisor Book Bag Wanderlust - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Love on the line | page 1, 2
One evening the
promising words "phone call" summoned me to the phone. I had been
dating an Irish Catholic man, Kerry Keegan, who attended an Ivy League
men's college in New England. I was in love with Kerry -- and I was going through a
pregnancy scare. A few days earlier I had
called him to tell him that my period was late. My hope was that he was
calling me. Instead a strange male voice identified itself: "This is
Father Fitzpatrick. Kerry has shared your news with me. I am sure a
smart college girl like yourself will know how to take care of this
problem and not upset a fine family like the Keegans." Clearly my
Jewishness had placed me somewhere in the category of an untouchable in
those intense anti-Semitic days. The phone booth was suddenly stifling as I
hung
up and dragged myself back to my room. Other times phone booths yield happy surprises. When
Abdallah Sidi called me in Paris from
Tunis to say "Je t'aime," I had expected neither his call nor the
message but was very pleased. We had met just a few weeks before when
I had spent 10 days at a Tunisian coastal resort. During gray rainy
Parisian winters when sun becomes an atavistic memory, Tunisia is an
inexpensive and sunny getaway for the French. There in Tunisia, at a Club Med-style resort near Hammamet, a creative
maitre d' had seated me at the same table with probably the only single
man in the dining room. Abdallah, an economist with the Tunisian
government, was staying at the hotel while
conducting government business in the nearby villages. He spoke French
well but with a Tunisian accent. His English was another story. He used
wonderful literal translations from Tunisian like "I have the nose"
to explain that he was getting a cold and had congested sinuses. We talked
during meals, met for after-dinner coffee, became friends and finally
something more. Americans take phone booths for granted. In Tunis, the only public
phones are in the crowded post office. Waiting in line to call can
sometimes take an hour. Then, at least in the days when I knew
Abdallah Sidi, you were limited to three minutes per call. So when he
phoned me in Paris, recalling the crowds and the heat in that area of
Tunis, I appreciated what he was going through. I pictured the old souk,
the market place, just behind the post office, the same souk where
French friends and I had gotten trapped during a flash flood and had to
pay a local boy to lead us out, flood water up to my knees, clutching
over my head the maroon and gold woven dress I had just purchased. "I want you to come spend the summer with me in Tunis," he said. "Friends
have made
an apartment available. There won't be any furniture but that's not a
big problem." I thought about sleeping on the floor in a
non-air-conditioned apartment in summertime Tunis. Abdallah was a very
nice man, intelligent, handsome, divorced and intense. He had
introduced me to what seemed a rather kinky aspect of Muslim
lovemaking: silence. "You must make no sound because Allah can hear.
When you are satisfied, you may say, 'OK.' But only that." Back in Paris, I
had been thinking about him a lot and missing him. "I want us to be married. We have to speak quickly because my three
minutes are almost up." My mind whirled. "Click, click, buzz," went
the dial tone as we were cut off. As I hung up, I sighed a small thank
you to the Tunisian phone system and began planning my letter
of adieu. Sometimes phone booths aren't for phone calls. I discovered this while taking a
cruise with my mother. She was a traveler; in her last years and failing
health, she found cruises a means to keep up her wanderings. As
claustrophobic and sedate as I found them, I accompanied her on
several. One was unmercifully long: three weeks from the Caribbean
through the Panama Canal and up to San Francisco. A man who sat at the
next table from us and I eyed each other, spoke, danced and finally
tried to find a private place. He was sharing his cabin with his young
son and I was sharing mine with my mother. After midnight, wandering around the
ship, we discovered an odd room off the gambling casino that, strangely
enough, had a phone booth in it. The room appeared to be deserted so we
started to hug and kiss. Eventually I ended up on the little seat in the
phone booth. Enjoying ourselves immensely, we burst out laughing when a
member of the crew
started to enter the room, saw us and grew wide-eyed. "Is everything
all right here?" he asked. And now I sat by the Gulf of Valinco, thinking about loves that ended and
began in public phone booths. I'm all right now, I thought after reflecting
on my current situation. Laurel blossoms fell on me from the surrounding
trees. My head had cleared; Corsican seas are soothing, blue and full
of wonder. I was on Prospero's island -- and there wasn't a phone booth
around for miles.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer Table Talk Sound off - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon | |||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
