When Poets Ruled On Me

I’ve been dog-sitting this week while Lily is in Morocco. Soeur is a generally adorable and well-behaved puppy, although she’s still quite young and doesn’t like to be left alone. I’d been planning a weekend trip to Nouakchott for a while, hoping to stock up on supplies and go to Easter mass at the Catholic church. Lily and I agreed that I would take Soeur with me for the weekend and she left me some cash so I could buy her a seat in the taxi. This meant that rather than an obese Moor woman, I’d have a smallish 30 lb puppy on my lap during the three-hour trip to the capital—maavi mushkile (no problem)! She happily enjoyed the view out the window for a while and every now and then did her best to come between me and Three Cups of Tea, my current read. About an hour into the trip she started making a noise I thought was the hiccups, which she usually gets once a day, but these were a bit more violent than normal. All of a sudden she opened her mouth wide and out came what looked like an entire can of wet dog food… right onto my lap. Stunned, I turned to Melissa, who was heading to Nouakchott as well, and said, “Soeur just puked on me,” as if it were another camel crossing the road. She came to her senses more quickly and told the driver to stop. He didn’t listen at first, and then the two men sharing the front passenger seat turned and saw what must be the most unclean substance known to Muslims and forced the driver to pull over. Luckily it wasn’t very moist and it didn’t get on the seat (which could have gotten us booted from the car). I was able to shake it off and then rinsed the front of my grand boubou with water from my bottle. Melissa asked me if I wanted to change, but I said no, we’d better get going. We’d already left town an hour and a half later than planned. I figured her little stomach was empty at this point—how much food can a puppy hold? Apparently more than that. Another half hour or so later she started making that same sound again. I quickly picked her up and aimed her face out the window and then in a split second envisioned vomit all over the side of the car, vomit flying back in through the open window, and I knew I had to take one for the team. I pulled her close to my chest, leaned over, and weathered the storm. It was worse the second time. I had to change my clothes on the side of the road while Mauritanians stood by and muttered about the Nasraniye and her dog. Once we were going again the driver cracked his window open a bit so he could spit out splinters of the toothbrush stick he was chewing on. He missed. A wad of saliva, plaque and splinters hit my cheek. I started to laugh. “Need to blow your nose? ‘Cause I’m here,” I joked to Melissa. “At least it didn’t go in my mouth… I do have some standards left.”

If you’re wondering about the title, I tried to send out a text about what had happened, but my phone didn’t recognize “Soeur” or “puke” – it came out “Poets just ruled on me!”