Me Here

http://www.saharazik.com/musique/mauritania/demi-mnt-abba.html
Every Saturday night, Cheikh sleeps over.  I don't know quite why it developed this way, but it has been so regular that if he couldn't come for some reason, I would probably sit around not knowing what to do with myself.  So every Saturday night, I open the door to C, panting and sweating from the climb up the stairs.  He tosses a t-shirt and juice box onto my bed, and takes off his shoes at the most inconvenient spot right in front of my bedroom door.  We eat together if I've cooked, then we sit together on my desk chair and watch a youtube video, or read some article he likes, or look at plane ticket prices for our next holiday, or argue about which pictures from my camera I should email to him.  Then we put on some non-classical music, roll around, lie around with my teddy bear thighs wrapped around his antelope legs, and shower together.  Then he gets back on the computer and reads the news while I do girly hair and skin things.  If there is a fight to be had, this is usually when it happens.  But they have occurred less and less, consistently since the beginning.  Before we get in bed, he puts on Arabic music from this website that has a little girl's voice announcing its name every few minutes.  I like to imitate this voice and he laughs and tickles me.  We get cuddled up in bed and then ten minutes later have to decide who is going to get up and adjust the volume of the music, or turn up the AC, or close the curtain, or find the chapstick.  Then, I lie there looking at the outline of this long, dark man with broad eyelids that make his face look so calm, asleep. 
Once a week for the past eight months, I have fallen asleep to the soothing rhythm of this droning, drumming, wailing Mauritanian music.  I am the same person who used to lie in my bed that I'd slept in my whole life, press the hour-long button on my alarm, and fall asleep to WSKG classical.  And that person was the same person whose mom used to click on cassettes of lullabies before bedtime.  I don't even remember being that person. 
Saturday night there were mosquitoes harassing us, as has been happening every night lately.  We were too lazy to get up and try to kill them, but when in the middle of the night we were still swatting at them above our heads, I sat up to try to do something about it.  C has this superstitious theory about white clothing detracting mosquitoes, and he mumbled something about that.  I said, I need a mosquito net.  He said, get your Mauritanian dress, we'll sleep under it.  A few weeks ago he came home from Guangzhou with a gift for me, which was a dress that Mauritanian women wear.  It's pretty much just a big, strategically-tied sheet, made out of nice, airy fabric, that goes over your head and around your body a few times.  Mine is white with a green geometric print that I don't really like, but how is he supposed to know?, poor guy.  I like it all the same, though.  I don't have any pictures of myself modeling it yet, because neither of us could figure out how to tie and drape it properly, and I actually can't find any information on the internet about how to do it.  I don't know how it's possible that there is no youtube video explaining how to tie Mauritanian clothing.  But there isn't. 
So I got the thing from my wardrobe, and we threw it over our heads and arms.  My computer had also fallen asleep by then, so we lay, unintentionally listening to the bullfrogs croaking in the drains outside and my little unit air conditioner trying its hardest to push out the humidity seeping in through the space under my window/door, breathing in eachother's breath under our gauzy bug shield.
My life here is like this dreamland, alternate reality, caricatured version of a life.  Nothing about it is the same as it used to be.  Nothing about me, here, feels like the me who I have always been.  I think I have never been so different from myself as I am right now.  When I get back, will my life snap back into familiarity?  Or will I increasingly feel further and further removed from the chubby little girl running around barefoot on Cornell Ave?  I guess I remember what she used to feel like.  But I don't remember thinking in her brain, I don't remember actually being her. 
On the other hand, what's not normal about that situation I just described? There's nothing actually strange about that.  But it feel strange to me. 
When I go back to the states I'll immediately be able to look back on this time when I was the person I was in China.  My life will never ever be like this again.  No matter how bitter or frustrated I become with this country by the end, I know I am going to feel seriously painful nostalgia for it, because of the distinctness of the situation.  The atmosphere here, the energy that swirls around you at all times, is so particular and unique.  So Chinese.  No matter how sick I am right now of having to absorb this energy, I know I'll miss it intensely because there will be nothing, anywhere else in the world, that can recreate it. 
I have a student, Luke, who has a huge crush on me, and I can't bring myself to discourage it because I enjoy his company.  It's not in danger of going anywhere, luckily, because he has the Chinese too-shy-and-inexperienced-to-flirt-properly thing.  He is 25 - one of my pre-masters students - and wears vests and jewelry, and smokes, and does magic tricks, and seems like this rebellious free-spirit stuck inside China's oppressiveness.  He tells stories about his dad punching him in the face a lot - coming into his primary school, and punching him in the face in front of his classmates to show respect to the teacher.  I ask, if you have kids are you going to beat them? He says, noooo no absolutely not, but...I really don't want kids.  But once I told my dad that, and he punched me in the face.  Anyway, despite the beatings, or maybe because of them? somehow he ended up with the loveliest, most convincing American accent.  If you were talking with him, you would notice a lack of contractions (You will not go?), or an over-reliance on certain phrases like "I think that is OK," before you would notice anything wrong with his accent.  I know this doesn't sound like anything special for someone looking to study in an English-speaking country, but at this university, even the English teachers have significant Chinese accents.  So it feels special to me.  Some of the other American teachers and I were talking recently about how we have this problem, which is that is we feel like when we are talking to Chinese people, regardless of their status as student or teacher or administrator, we feel like we are teaching them.  Like we can't help but speak to them in this deliberate, accidentally condescending tone.  It seems so silly but I honestly thing that I/we must have some subconscious thing with accents, that we just can't get past.  Like, a Chinese accent puts up this wall between us and prevents us from interacting normally with people.  But I don't have this with Luke.  It's partly that I know he will understand 95% of what I say, even when I don't extract from my speech expressions and ambiguous meanings and things that I do normally.  But the other part is that his American accent takes down the wall that goes up with other people and makes me feel like maybe I could have normal conversations with him, ones that don't leave me drained, and like I could really get into his brain and understand what he is thinking. 
He's still Chinese, so, maybe not.
Usually, C gets up on Sunday mornings and stumbles back to his dorm by 7AM, I think for the sake of morning prayer.  I hate not getting to hang out with him in the morning, having to wake up later at 9 or 10 alone.   The worst moment of my entire week is when he gets out of bed to leave, and we exchange some sleepy words about calling later that day.  In less than two months, I have to say goodbye to him, permanently.  Not goodbye until I come back next week, or goodbye until Christmas holiday when I can fly to Mauritania, or even goodbye until I finish having this year-long foreign adventure, or something.  Goodbye, like, forever.  I have to go to the airport and walk through security with my stuffed lamby and him standing behind, waving, knowing he will most likely never ever see me again. Thanks for being my companion, this life-altering relationship we've had has been great, hope you find a nice Muslim woman and have attractive babies, all I want is for you to be happy, have a fulfilling life, bye.  Our ability to be together was particular to this specific time and place, in a way that no other time and place will ever be, so, alright, call me on skype sometimes, OK?  Jesus?! If I thought we were right, we would get past all the obstacles.  But we're not right.  He doesn't make my heart flutter and I don't feel at home with him.  I feel in China, with him.  We were right here, in China, this year.  It's not a waste, at all.  It's not a waste of a relationship, or a waste of love, or time, or anything.  It's just another experience that I will have to mourn the loss of as it hangs heavy on my heart forever.  It's not that you're a bad boyfriend, baby, or that you were unfaithful.  Or that I've found another man, or that we've been fighting too much.  It's just, our lives would fight.  Our lives could not coexist like we have here.  You would weigh me down and I would mess you up. 
It would be so much easier not to have done this at all.  All of it.  But I knew that before I came, going in.  I knew it would be easier not to go.  But if I hadn't come, I wouldn't have spent a Saturday night during the wet season in the south of China cuddling with you under a cotton dress.  And where would you be?  Maybe already dating someone appropriate and making plans to live together in a mutually suitable location and talking about baby names that both of you could pronounce. Sorry to delay such things.  But hell, what's a year, for a lifetime of achingly, maddeningly lovely memories?