Margarita Wednesdays: Making a New Life by the Mexican Sea by Deborah Rodriguez

forever.
    So one morning a bunch of us packed into a van and headed twelve hours north through the Hindu Kush mountains, into the open countryside leading to Mazar-i-Sharif. The next day we decided to have a picnic in the countryside near the Afghan-Uzbek border. It was really beautiful up there, with the fields in bloom. Mom kept insisting that Sam pull over so she could pick some flowers. I didn’t have the heart to tell her they were opium poppies. We eventually did pull over for lunch. Sam was excited about a new gun he had bought, so as we feasted on roasted lamb, naan, and pomegranates, we began to take turns at target practice, aiming at an abandoned old tank in the field. Seriously, that’s just the kind of thing you do for entertainment over there. We were all hooting and hollering and having a fine time when all of a sudden the turret on that tank began to turn toward us with a grinding whir.
    “Run!” Sam yelled.
    “Run, run!” I yelled at my mom.
    “Why? Why?” she yelled back.
    I grabbed her hand and dragged her toward the van, her headscarf slipping down over her eyes, and stuffed her in back while the others frantically gathered up the food. As the car doors slammed shut I started to laugh, uncontrollably. So did Mom.
    Mom told me she’d never go on a picnic with me again. But she sure got her adventure. Oh, and when she returned to the United States, one of her customers asked her what her favorite part of Afghanistan was. Mom smiled and said, “Dubai.”
    But now, all alone in another desert, I wasn’t sure I was equipped to handle that kind of drama anymore. Vultures circled overhead as the road began to bend and turn, taunting me with every twist. Go north, go back. Move ahead. Drive south. No, wait, turn around. C’mon, just go. Around me, the scorched brown hills stretched out for miles, broken only by the chain-link border fence that even I could have climbed over had I wanted to. This measly barrier couldn’t even keep the cows in, or out. I could see them squeezing under, heading north in herds in search of that elusive greener grass.
    My pulse quickened as the first green border crossing sign loomed into view. As my last glimpse of American soil disappeared into the distance, the reality of settling in another foreign country began to seep in. I wasn’t going to know my way around, and the little Spanish I knew was laughable. Second nature would be a thing of the past, at least for a while, until I figured out how things worked. The simplest daily tasks, like getting gas, asking for directions, or telling a doctor where it hurt, would become huge chores. Everything that made life easy in the States, gone. And, on top of it all, I knew nobody, and nobody knew me. I could be dead in my house for days, weeks even, and no one would notice. Well, I thought, being really dead in Mexico is still better than feeling dead in California.
    “Here goes nothing, Pol,” I said, the inside of my mouth so dry that I could barely part my lips.
    It was as if I had entered another dimension. The crossing into Nogales was nothing, just a green light and a guy waving me through, but once on the other side, it was as though someone had changed the channel. Gone were the rows of neat, clean, cookie-cutter houses. Here it seemed more like Afghanistan, with little cement buildings crumbling down into the road. The rise in decibel level was instantaneous. Music blared from rolled-down car windows and open shop doors, mariachi and banda and pop all banging up against each other in one big shouting match. Horns blasted. Street vendors shouted out their offerings. Naranjas! Tacos! Cacahuates! Skinny dogs ran down the muddy streets, narrowly avoiding the buses and trucks and carts selling tacos and hot dogs and corn and flowers and newspapers with photos of dead bodies splashed across their front pages. And apparently there were no driving rules in Mexico, only one giant free-for-all, with lanes disappearing into