May 16, 2022How Much Do You Weigh?
A question asked often by old men or young, friends, strangers
on the road. How much? I didn’t know how to answer. Certainly
not a question you’d ask of a woman—not in America where
I’d come from—but common in the village where I lived, deep
in the Land of the Lozi, people of cattle and sand. Zambians
living twenty miles from Angola. Twenty miles from civil war.
Tins of cheese from the United Nations, vividly marked Not for Sale
gathered dust in our nearly empty market. Exorbitant price. Unobtainable.
When a fat campaigning politician came slick to our village,
gaunt mothers with emaciated children gathered and pointed, astonished.
Admired his weight as if wealth. Look! He can eat and eat,
more than enough! What to make of a man who is fat? Unimaginable
fantasy to anemic mothers with brittle-boned children, bellies swollen
by hunger, legs weeping with sores. What a relief just to eat not defeated
by dry empty fields, crops gone to dust. Such ease to eat and eat
what you please and not stop. How much do you weigh? No longer
unseemly, no longer a goad. Compassionate. Tender. Driven by hunger,
rendered by need. A question which reconfigured might just as well ask,
do you have enough? Have you eaten today? Will you sleep hungry?
Tell me. How much do you weigh?
from #75 - Spring 2022