Timbuktu to San Francisco

As country western music drifts in from the movie, Brokeback Mountain, my partner is watching in the main room of our one-bedroom apartment, I lay in our bed with the December copy of Smithsonian magazine in my left hand and a hard plastic dilator in my right. I am reading the “Treasures of Timbuktu” while pushing the dilator into my man-made vagina; small groans escape my lips and sweat breaks out on my forehead.

I find I have to reread some of the passages as my mind wanders to the pain in my pelvic region. “‘Tin Bouctou’ means the well of Bauctou,” the author (Joshua Hammer) writes in the glossy pages of the magazine. Its name is believed to come from the woman who ran a rest stop in the dusty desert for camel caravans on a tributary of the Niger in the 1100’s, he continues. The treasure he writes about is not gold or even life-giving water.

It’s a cold San Francisco mid-morning as I read and dilate. Our wall-heater has struggled for days trying to keep our little place cozy for us and our two cats. The temperatures have dipped into the high 30’s the last few nights, lower as you move off the ocean where we live. Low enough for life-long residents who are acclimatized to conditions that rarely dip below the mid-40’s in the fog-shrouded hills of the San Francisco peninsula to bundle up in thick coats, gloves and scarves, and complain about the bitter weather. My attention wanders and I lower the magazine to look out our third story window east onto the coastal mountain range that borders our ocean community; the visibility seems extraordinarily clear in the frigid, still conditions.

I push the dilator in further, millimeters only, and I gasp again. ‘It’s been too long since I’ve done this,’ I think. ‘I promise to do this more regularly.’ It’s been more than a month this time, and although I would prefer never to dilate again it’s the only thing that stops the bleeding. And if I stop the procedure permanently my vagina will close completely, much like a piercing that closes without its jewelry.

The treasures that Hammer refers to deep in the Mali desert are ancient texts. Manuscripts dating back hundreds of years—scores of generations. They are writings on Islamic religion (surprisingly tolerant), astronomy, astrology, nutrition, medicine, and society. There is a race in the desert there against time—time that is slowly destroying the writings. The pain I feel contrasts sharply with the bright morning outside my window, and with the textual riches buried half-a-world away. I treasure books, diaries, manuscripts—voices from the past. I want to pack up and go to Mali and help. I want never to dilate again. I want to be warmer.

Unfortunately, I don’t speak French or read Arabic; outsiders aren’t easily trusted in this ancient land—understandably. Also unfortunately, I must continue to endure the pain of dilation, a consequence of my rebirth into womanhood. But fortunately, the cold-snap will pass, Mother Nature will change her mood, and my home will eventually warm—much like it does in a faraway desert hiding treasures in the sand.