Travels with my Daughter. Niema Ash

the financial arrangement included rent-free accommodation with us. We put an extra bed in Ronit’s room. She slept in one bed and every week a different performer slept in the other. Her room was small and sharing it necessitated removing her toy chest. Together we selected her favourite toys and squeezed them on to her bookshelf, banishing the rest to the locker. We also emptied one of her drawers and made space in her closet. Although she was not enthusiastic about the new arrangements, she adapted to them without protest.

      At first she reacted to the succession of musicians sharing her room, passing through her life, with indifference. Somewhat shy of strangers, she kept a cautious distance, yet made allowances for their presence in small ways like tip-toeing in her bedroom — they had probably gone to sleep not much before she awoke. Essentially she carried on with her life out of their way, while at the same time quietly observing theirs. She was good at entertaining herself. Not especially fond of dolls, she busied herself with painting, drawing, looking at books, or playing with her building toys.

      Later, after they had returned several times, she became friendly with some of the performers, even developing an affection for a rare few. She accepted the fact that there was always someone living with us, that a constant stream of people came and went. She learned to live her life around that fact, gradually incorporating it into her existence, just as she learned to live with the constant strumming of guitars, and the acceptance of people she found strange, sometimes frightening.

      Ronit was three before she saw a black person — there were hardly any in our neighbourhood, few in Montreal. She was astounded. “Mummy why does that lady have a rubber face?” she asked, bewildered. When black musicians started appearing in her room she reacted with suspicion, convinced they hadn’t washed, asking why the palms of their hands were clean and the rest of them dirty. But by the time Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee performed at the club she had grown accustomed to black skin.

      Because Sonny was blind and Brownie lame, and because they were well-known performers, no longer young, who deserved extra consideration, we had arranged rooms for them in a hotel. However, they liked spending time in our flat. I cooked special dinners for them — Sonny’s favourite was baked ham and pineapple pie — and on their nights off musician friends would come by for wonderful jamming sessions.

      From the very beginning Ronit was more friendly with Sonny and Brownie than with the other performers. They were accustomed to relating to children. Brownie had several of his own including a daughter Ronit’s age, his youngest. Identifying Ronit with his daughter, he always referred to her as “the baby.” Even years later when she was a teenager, he would ask, “how’s the baby?” Sonny treated Ronit to special harmonica effects, making his harmonica talk for her. Her favourite utterance was “I want my mamma.” She would sit on the floor, looking up at him, small and white, her eyes wide, her legs tucked under, waiting for “I want my mama” with the avid expectation she’d wait for sleeping beauty to spring to life. And he, large and black, his big boot thumping beside her, his gold rings flashing, his eyes smiling down on her, coaxed whoops and hoots and howls from his harmonica until it finally wailed, “I want my mamma.” Each time he played it, her face lit up in wonder and he laughed his great belly laugh, slapping his thighs in delight. Although she could hardly understand his thick Southern accent, I could sense a connection between them, the unlikely connection of polarities, they communicated through “I want my mama.”

      Whereas Ronit accepted the new life style with detachment and neutrality, warming to it only gradually, I embraced it. I worked at The Finjan right from the beginning, leaving Ronit at home with a babysitter on week nights and with my parents, who lavished affection upon her, at weekends, accepting their indulgences for the sake of my freedom. I loved everything about The Finjan; the atmosphere of the room, intimate with fishnet, brass lanterns and candlelit tables; the late nights; the all-night restaurants; the music; and especially the musicians. Every night was a Saturday night. I never knew the mornings.

      By now Ronit was able to get her own breakfast and dress herself for school. She woke me only to braid her long plait and to hear me say, “have a good day at school, and don’t forget your lunch.” Then she waited for my father to take her to school and I slept until noon.

      Plaiting her hair was the one thing I didn’t resent being woken up for. I did it lovingly. Ronit’s hair was my indulged darling, the fulfilment of my childhood fantasy. No sacrifice was too great for it. It fell like a cascade streaming over her bum, thick and rippling and long, long, long. I would never let it be cut. When I was a child I yearned for long hair. But my mother viewed long hair as an enemy against which she waged a relentless battle. Then one holiday at my aunt’s farm, when my mother was preoccupied, it slipped by her watchful eye and grew to my shoulders. For one sweet summer I felt like Rapunzel. Then suddenly, alarmed by her terrible lapse, she summoned a hair cutter. I remember screeching in agony as the scissors descended. The poor woman thought she had pierced my skull. My first act of independence was growing my hair long. I never cut it again. Ronit’s first act of independence was cutting hers short. It was many years before she allowed it to pass her ears.

      For me, meeting a new performer every week was, in a way, like travelling, each musician an adventure, a landscape to explore, a magic encounter. I didn’t have to court the exceptional as every real traveller does, the exceptional courted me. I learned to tread softly as though entering a new land, feeling my way into the experience. I had a special affinity with those who not only sang traditional ballads, work songs and blues, but who wrote their own songs. Long after Shimon had gone to sleep, I would spend what remained of the night, ensconced in my wonderful kitchen, listening to their music, participating in their visions, immersed in their poetry. They were like the images in their songs, like the sound of their music, tender, powerful, haunting, original. They were like outlaws with anti-establishment lyrics as their weapons, they embodied romance, mystery, excitement, rebellion. I looked into their eyes, breathed their atmosphere and longed for the unknown yet to be experienced. With the first signs of light I’d slip away, not allowing the shapes of morning to dispel the poetry of the night. In what remained of the day, I would cook for them, ascend Mount Royal in the heart of the city to dream under the weeping willows by the lake, attend to the flat and to Ronit, prepare for my university courses, and wait for the night.

      Most of the performers were male. Women found the bitter solitude of anonymous cities strung together by vast stretches of highway, with only a guitar for comfort, too hard for consistent endurance and rarely returned. They fascinated me, these determined, devoted males, these gypsy bards. I was fascinated not only by their talent, by their need to make music, but also by the way they lived, on the edge, exposed and vulnerable, singing protest and love, their lives part of their songs.

      Performing at The Finjan was a difficult, lonely experience. Bereft of electronic assistance, of extravagant lighting, of a distanced stage, the performer was alone, impaled by a red-amber spotlight, caged by expectant faces, with just his guitar and his voice. Yet he created sounds and images that went directly to the centre of feeling, enhanced by the intense sensuality he projected. He held up his soul like a mirror and I saw myself in it. He sat on a tall stool, the guitar cradled in his thigh, the fingers of one hand stroking the slender neck, while the other beat a driving rhythm, and I could feel him lower his head into its curves in perfect oneness. When he threw back his head, drawing the guitar to his breast, clenching his eyes shut in some wild ecstasy of music and man, I’d shiver with the embrace. Sometimes I knew I could love him because of his song, such was my empathy, my yearning, my desire to nourish, to hold. I related to the wanderer in him, the seeker, the rebel, and because I was temporarily anchored, I was able to provide an anchor, a small haven, a brief respite. Because the musicians were always on the road, not in one place long enough to make friends, they responded to my extension of care with enthusiasm and affection. In one way they had the effect on me children were supposed to have, they inspired mothering, but unlike children they never overstayed their welcome, their last song left me wanting more. And they inspired much else. They dared to point to a new horizon over which the changing times were taking shape, and I, along with my generation, tuned into their vision, sharing their sense of triumph in breaking new ground. Armed with flowers in our hands and in our hair, “coils of beads around our necks,” and lines from their songs, we embraced the changing times. I became very close to many of them. Some