The secret lives of cats

I am home and it is quiet. A miracle since my house has recently become a regional way point for urban and rural Adrar PCVs, visiting volunteers from Mauritania and abroad, and the occasional stray South African SUV caravan.

In this moment, however, I only hear donkeys braying in abandoned alleys and birds chirping from thorny nests in my neighbor’s acacia tree. For the first time in perhaps weeks, I am alone.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the sky on fire with vibrant pinks and rusty oranges. I dash up to my roof before the sun sets, hoping to see the shadows lengthen, lengthen, disappear. The catwalk bridging my roofs stretches perilously high: a perfect spot to perch, dangle my feet, and revel solitarily.

My concrete stoop looks west toward the wadi, a barrier built of boulders and concrete against unlikely floods. Couples walk slowly over the wadi, hidden behind folds of veils and boubous, lingering over loose rocks and stolen twilight. Just beyond, thick leafy trees border neat garden plots planted painstakingly, optimistically by local women’s cooperatives. The latest downpours have rewarded their optimism and (almost) given purpose to an absurd flood wall.

From my vantage point, I peer into neighboring compounds, empty and quiet like mine. Blindingly white satellite dishes break up the muddy skyline and fool my third world sensibilities. Is it wealth or disposable income being… disposed of? Intimately framed in a doorway, a young woman adjusts her veil deliberately, carefully and begins to pray. Her laundry flaps in the wind, licking the wall in concert with a prayer call echoing off plastic bidons¹ and rusted doorways.

I enjoy a few seconds more before I hear voices in the courtyard below me. Greetings, greetings, something, mumbles, nasraniye. I have been found out; such is my cue to descend. As I gather my boubou,² a mangy cat leaps impossibly over rooftops to sprawl on the ledge of a high wall. Covered in dirt, she blends in effortlessly, a furry brown ornament to a mud brick wall. I contemplate hiding among satellite dishes before slipping down my stairs, almost unnoticed.

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1: bidon – n. a 5-, 10- or 20-liter plastic jug, sometimes called a gerrycan, previously filled with oil or paint thinner, marginally cleaned enough to hold water, bissap juice or brousse wine.

2: Women can wear boubous too, more often in the south and in Senegal; they are called grand boubous (big boubous) and are more sheer and much more vibrantly dyed. It is a cooler alternative to the veil, but inevitably draws inconsiderate comments such as, “shuuv disquette w’il-bess-he coriye” (look at the slut and her southern clothes).