A Cook's Tour (20 page)

     We were brought water and soap on a silver tray, as in Moulay Idriss, washed our hands, and were soon being fed with the usual array of tasty olives, salads, and bread. A thicker, lambier version of
harira
soup arrived in a tureen, very welcome on what was becoming an extremely cold night. Abdul had loosened up considerably after many beers, entertaining us with a high-spirited round of joke telling – most of which, sadly, led me to believe that jokes about Jews are very big in Morocco. I found that Polish and hillbilly jokes work just as well in the desert, if you substitute Libyans. Finally, after about an hour and a half of eating and drinking, the
meshwi
arrived, stretched out on a long, flat board, a Blue Man with a long and sharp-looking dagger right behind. Still sizzling-hot, the lamb had been roasted crispy and straight through – far more cooked than I would have done in the world of knives and forks. The skin was black in places, the rib bones poking through shrunken muscle. It did, however, smell amazing, and I found that well done, while almost never my preferred temperature, although, unfortunately, the chosen level of doneness for most of the unrefrigerated world, was in this case absolutely necessary to the kind of hacking, tearing, peeling, clawing, and sucking the meal required. There were no steak knives, after all, to be cutting tidy pink loin chops off the lamb.

     The chef broke the lamb into primal sections, then broke those down into smaller pieces, small enough to wield with a fist. I invited the chef and my new Tuareg buddies to join me at the table, and after a few
bismillahs
, everyone was poised to dig in. The chef made a quick motion with his dagger and lifted free a dismayingly large testicle from the lamb’s crotch. With some ceremony, and a few appreciative smiles from around the table, he deposited the crispy, veiny object in front of me, then sat down and helped himself to a thick slab off the other nut. Abdul contented himself with ripping steaming-hot chunks of shoulder and leg with his fingers while I, God help me, tore off a sizable piece of gonad and popped it in my mouth.

     It was sensational. Tender, even fluffy, with a subtle lamb flavor less intense than shoulder or leg; the whole experience, the chewing and swallowing, was reminiscent of sweetbreads. It was certainly the best testicle I’d ever had in my mouth. Also the first, I should hasten to say. I enjoyed every bite. It was delicious. Delightful. I’d do it again in a hot second. If I served it to you at a restaurant, as long as you didn’t know what it was, if I called it, say, ‘
Pavé d’agneau maroc
,’ you’d love it. You’d come back for more. I felt proud of myself. I’ll try almost anything once, but I often feel let down when I fail to enjoy myself as much as I’d hoped. Telling people about the cobra bile you drank when you were in Vietnam makes a great story, but it’s dismaying when the experience was just as unpleasant as it sounds. Sheep’s balls, however, are great. I would recommend them unhesitatingly and without reservation.

     Abdul, the crew, the Blue Men, and I made short work of the lamb, getting serious with our hands, until the thing was only well-picked-over fragments, looking like an autopsied burn victim. When the fire began to die down, as the musicians, servers, and camel drivers melted away to their tents, I was left with Global Alan and Matthew, and a big hunk of hash – and that classic emergency smoking device of sixties legend: the toilet paper roll and tin foil pipe.

     As it was near freezing now, we wrapped ourselves in heavy camel blankets and staggered aimlessly into the desert, heading in the general direction of a waxing moon. With the blankets covering us from heads to shins, we looked like lepers, stumbling on uncertain feet into the dark. When we finally agreed on the right distance and the right dune – still reasonably certain we could find our way back to camp – we sat down on the cold sand and smoked ourselves into a state that once, many years ago, might have been mistaken for enlightenment, our coughs and giggles swallowed up by the dunes. I lifted the description ‘a bewildering array of stars’ once from a far better writer – I can’t remember who now, only that I stole it – and that expression came to mind as I stared up at an awe-inspiring sky over the Sahara, the bright, penetrating lights, the quick drop of comets, a cold moon, which made the rippling patterns of sand look like a frozen sea. The universe was large all right, but no larger, it appeared, than the whole wide world ahead of me.

Highway of Death

I just had the closest near-death experience I’ve ever had.

     And I’m about to have another one. Then another.

     I’m hurtling full speed down Highway 1 on my way to Can Tho, sitting with Philippe in the back of a hired minivan, horn honking constantly, heading right up the center line into oncoming traffic. There’s a water truck about a hundred yards ahead, coming fast in the opposite direction, showing no sign that he intends to pull back into traffic, also honking wildly. Linh and a driver are in the front seat, with two shooters behind us – and I’m convinced that any second we’re all going to die.

     During the war, Highway 1 was said to be dangerous: snipers, sappers, ambushes, command-detonated mines, the usual perils of guerilla insurgencies. I can’t imagine it’s any less dangerous now. Understand this about driving in the Mekong Delta: The thing to do is keep up a constant attack with the horn. A beep means ‘Keep doing what you’re doing, change nothing, make no sudden moves, and everything will probably be fine.’ It does not mean ‘Slow down’ or ‘Stop’ or ‘Move to the right’ or ‘Get out of the way.’ If you try to do any of those things on Highway 1 after hearing a car horn behind you – if you hesitate, look back over your shoulder, slow down, or even falter for a second – you will immediately find yourself in a burning heap of crumpled metal somewhere in a rice paddy. The horn means simply ‘I’m here!’.

     And there are a lot of people here today, just like us, tearing down the two-lane road at full speed and hammering their horns like crazy. The water truck ahead is getting closer. And closer. I can make out the grille, the Russian manufacturer’s logo on the hood. Our driver still has his foot on the gas, not slowing down in the slightest. We’re right in the middle of the road, what would be a passing lane, if they had such a thing here. There’s an uninterrupted line of fast-moving cars to our right, with no room at all between them in which to pull back in, a steady torrent of oncoming cars to our left, and the shoulders of both sides of the road are choked three-and four-deep with cyclists, motorbikes, water buffalo, and scooters – all of them loaded with crates of food, washing-machine motors, sacks of fertilizer, flapping roosters, firewood, and family members. So there is no room, none at all, should our driver suddenly decide at the very last minute to abort mission and pull out of the center. If he decides suddenly that the oncoming driver is definitely not going to yield in this maniacal high-speed game of chicken, that he’s going to have to veer off the road to avoid collision, there is nowhere, nowhere, to go!

     We’re close enough now that I can make out the features of the truck’s driver, the color of his shirt, the pack of 555 cigarettes on his dashboard. Just when our bumpers are about to meet, vaporizing all of us in an explosion of brake fluid, safety glass, blood, and bone, two cars to our right suddenly open up a space for us – and as if part of some hellish high-speed chorus line, we slip back into traffic. The water truck whips by with a terrific blast of wind, avoiding contact by less than a centimeter, and there’s that peculiar vacuum pressure-drop effect you feel when on a train that is suddenly passed by another hurtling in the opposite direction. Philippe just looks at me, shaking his head, says, ‘Are we still alive? . . . I . . . I was sure that truck went right through us.’ He’s not joking.

     Every few moments, we do the same thing again, pulling out to pass – often pulling out to pass a vehicle that is already passing – taking up the whole highway, three-deep, screaming straight into cars and trucks doing the exact same thing in the other direction, horns blaring and honking, a sea of farmers and grandmas and children on rickety bicycles on both sides, the occasional added hazard of oxcart or water buffalo protruding dangerously into the road.

     Again.

     And again. This time, it looks like an army truck, olive drab, the back loaded with standing soldiers in fatigues. They’re coming right at us, not slowing down at all. Our driver doesn’t seem concerned. He’s having a nice conversation with an equally oblivious Linh, hardly, it seems, paying attention to what must certainly this time be our imminent doom. He honks the horn. He keeps honking. He leans right on that thing like it’s a magic wand that will somehow alter the laws of physics. His foot is still on the gas, the motor racing. I see Philippe’s knuckles getting white, then whiter on the armrest of his seat, see Chris the shooter’s eyes grow huge in the rearview mirror. There’s a collective holding of breath among the Western contingent as we all brace for impact, think fleetingly of loved ones, prepare ourselves to be thrown through the windshield . . . Again, somehow, we’re back in traffic, a momentary blast of air as the two vehicles nearly kiss paint. Then we’re right back straddling that center line again, honking wildly at a slow-moving car in front of us, tailgating at 120 kliks per hour.

     Whatever magic safety zone our driver thinks envelops our car, protecting us from harm, we’re beginning to think he must be right. There’s no other explanation for our continued survival. Again and again and again, we just miss colliding, so frequently and regularly that, after an hour on the road, we actually begin to believe it, even count on the idea that we are invincible – that some Vietnamese juju does indeed prevent us from slamming head-on into another vehicle. We run straight at the most unroadworthy twenty-year-old Soviet-made contraptions on four wheels, gas pedal flat on the floor each time, enduring that queer Doppler effect as they whip by, the horns going
WHOOoooANNnngggg
as the shock wave blows us sideways toward a family of four on a wobbly bicycle. On more than one occasion, we come so close to rolling right over a pedestrian or an overloaded bicycle that I’m sure we touched them. I think all of us, long ago, would have screamed at our driver to slow down, maybe even attempted to wrestle the wheel away from him (he’s clearly a madman intent on destroying us all), but there isn’t a single second when we’re not paralyzed with fear, bracing for impact, or at least certain that if we were to speak, or distract him for even a split second, it would surely cause our instantaneous deaths.

     Eventually, nerves shattered, blind faith takes over and we either try our best to ignore what’s going on outside the thin layer of metal and glass around us or we simply pray, nearly hysterical with fear and nervous exhaustion.

     The city of Can Tho is a low-rise river town with the colonial architecture of its French planners. We check into the Hotel Victoria Can Tho, one of the many luxurious foreign-run hotels one sees more and more of in Vietnam. It’s stately, beautiful, with an airy whitewashed lobby, black-and-white marble floors, a pool and boathouse on the shores of the Mekong River, hardwood teak and mahogany rooms with comfortable beds, and satellite TV. There’s a business center, a health and massage studio, a very decent restaurant and bar – and an anti-aircraft battery down the street. As we drive by the gun emplacement, Linh reminds the shooters, ‘Not to photograph, please.’

     I order a mango daquiri as soon as we check in. God, there’s nothing like a fine hotel when you’ve survived multiple brushes with death. I splurge and send out my moldering clothes to be laundered, schedule an hour-and-a-half massage, and treat myself to a traditional Vietnamese lunch of chicken BLT club sandwich. Philippe, in a monogrammed hotel bathrobe, is already at the pool. Soon, I’m oiled up on a table, half-asleep, a tiny Vietnamese girl walking on my back, by now only vaguely aware how lucky I am to be alive.

     I’m also beginning to think that there must be a lot of penile dysfunction in Asia. There’s no other explanation for it. Just about every damn thing you can think of seems to have been thoroughly investigated for its potential wood-raising properties. If your waiter or a friend urges you to put something in your mouth that a few weeks ago you never would have thought of eating, chances are it is believed to ‘make you strong.’ Only desperation can account for what the Chinese, for instance, do in the name of ‘medicine.’ That’s something you might remind your New Age friends who’ve gone gaga over ‘holistic medicine’ and ‘alternative Chinese cures.’ They say there are sun bears in China, hooked up to kidney drips like catsup dispensers, leeching bear bile into tiny bottles. Rhino horn. Bear claw. Bird’s nest. Duck embryo. You’ve got to be pretty anxious about your penis to contemplate hurting a cute little sun bear.

     And you’ve got to be really concerned about your penis to eat at the My Kanh Restaurant in Can Tho. Our waiter greets us and proudly takes us on the obligatory premeal tour of the grounds. It’s a large wooded park with a narrow cement pathway that winds and twists around zoolike cages of menu selections. Everything here is available for dinner. I lose my appetite as soon as I see the sun bear. There are snakes, bats, lizards, crocodiles, cranes, an eighty-kilo python, monkeys, and dogs. The dogs, our waiter assures us – not too convincingly – are not for sale. We pass ponds where one can catch one’s own elephant fish or catfish. And in the middle of this torture garden, where the cages seem to radiate fear, are cute little bungalows where Chinese and Taiwanese businessmen come for dirty weekends, their mistresses in tow. They come to eat animals that most Americans have seen only on the Discovery Channel, to absorb, I’m guessing, the animal auras at close hand – before killing and eating them. The plan, then, I can only assume, is to settle the check quickly, rush back to the bungalow, and endeavor mightily to produce a hard-on. The management of My Kanh, our waiter proudly shows us, is putting in a swimming pool. It’s a horrifying theme park of cruelty. And I’m sickened by it all. Bad enough to want to eat some of these creatures. But to want to stay here, close to your victims, to lie in bed with your mistress, listening to animals die – what kind of romantic weekend getaway is that?