A Widow's World

          We had just begun our apple pie in SS Universe Explorer’s dining room as she sailed a flat sea from Nassau to Havana. On the first evening of our 106-day Semester at Sea, the seven students at my table had exchanged data about homes and majors and such.
          “And where do you live?”
          All seven looked at the old woman in their midst.
          “I use my daughter’s Virginia address. I never sleep there. I’m allergic to their cats.”
          "So where do you live?”
          “I’m homeless. I travel outside the US at least ten months a year. Usually in developing countries.”
          “Alone?”
          “Why?”
          “How?”
          “Where?”

          TALKING TO A deer, actually, seems no less normal than telling a dog his dinner will soon be ready.
          Talking to an insect? Night after night? Never have I confessed that to anyone. Perhaps I should preface my confession with some rationalization.
          My two weeks in Tozeur I spent the days absorbing Tunisian culture, sampling restaurants and reading La Presse by the pool. Each evening, though, lingered endlessly. No television and no unread novels. My laptop in the DOS days had no games; I rationed my remaining crossword puzzles.
          My third evening, I was sitting in bed practicing my French translation with the want-ads when on my window sill at shoulder level I noticed something long and narrow and green. A praying mantis about the length of my foot, a rather long foot for a woman.
          “With your name, you probably just heard the Moslem call to prayer, right?”
          The slim walking stick swiveled his tiny triangular head toward me. His bulging eyes never blinked.
          “Are you a friend of that ass who roams among the date trees below this window? You know, the one who brays day and night?”
          Embarrassed, I returned to my French list of rooms for rent. I hoped anyone who might have heard my questioning the insect had assumed there was someone else in the room.
          The next night I was eating a tangerine in bed when he returned to the sill and remained motionless, his face pivoted toward me.
          “This morning when I bought these tangerines, my vendor added an extra fruit to the bag after he’d weighed it. My baker always selects an extra long baguette. The one-legged man at my newsstand now saves me a copy of La Presse.”
          Since he didn’t object to my rambling, I expressed my gratitude for his listening.
          “You see, my French hasn’t reached conversational level. Most English-speaking visitors come here in groups for one night and leave early the next morning.”
          When my pale green friend appeared the following evening, I said that most of the day I had ridden in a Land Rover with a windshield patterned with cracks.
          “Considering the rocky roads, it’s a wonder the vehicle had any glass at all.”
          I told him about the rows of dried palm fronds along the roads that banked blowing sand like Midwest snow-fences. I described the slowly melting mud walls of abandoned villages and the hamlets where more people rode donkeys than cars.
          Another night I subjected my mantis friend to the arthritic Parisian with whom I’d shared the back seat during a tour of the region. Up front, his middle-aged daughter raved, “Daddy! See the dates? Do you see the dates, Daddy?”
          To clarify things for the walking stick, I added that all three of us were staying in this hotel in the midst of this date grove. I didn’t mention that, at the end of the trip, the old man leaned on his cane and invited me for sherry. His daughter had saved me the decision with, “Daddy! You know you have to rest before dinner. Come, Daddy.”
          While I was packing on my last afternoon in Tozeur, I anticipated my evening tryst with the mantis. I would tell him how much I liked his dusty town. He should know I would miss walking unpaved side-streets where curious children stopped to stare and offer a timid “Bon jour.” I’d tell him how comfortable I now felt in the tiny cafes filled with male diners speaking Arabic. I’d mention that I’d really miss the calls to prayer and the braying ass.
          That night, the green walking stick did not appear on my window sill.