Unwelcomed and Unwelcoming Encounters
Annarose Pandey
Abstract
There had been a dance hall, a glorious church, grand art deco plaza, a labyrinth for the children, an airfield and even an official building designed as a ship setting out to sea. There had been a zoo and a pool. A flood washed out the zoo along with all of its creatures one day in 1987. The pool had long been abandoned and was filled with beer cans from the men in town who were good Muslims and never drank. It was beautiful because while most of the buildings had been crumbling for years and the stench of the open sewers made the water fetid and the beach a place to be feared, one could easily project an image of the beauty that once was. The very few women with whom one might have encounters during the day were either non-Muslim Berbers or those who had not yet reached puberty or who had passed through menopause.