! ! UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ! RIVERSIDE! ! ! ! ! Tiny Revolutions: ! Lessons From a Marriage, a Funeral,! and a Trip Around the World! ! ! ! A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction ! of the requirements! for the degree of ! ! Master of !Fine Arts ! in!! Creative Writing ! and Writing for the! Performing Arts! by!! Margaret! Downs! ! June !2014! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Thesis Committee: ! ! Professor Emily Rapp, Co-Chairperson! ! Professor Andrew Winer, Co-Chairperson! ! Professor David L. Ulin ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Copyright by ! Margaret Downs! 2014! ! ! The Thesis of Margaret Downs is approved:! ! !!_____________________________________________________! !!! !!_____________________________________________________! ! Committee Co-Chairperson!! !!_____________________________________________________! Committee Co-Chairperson!!! ! ! ! University of California, Riverside!! ! !Acknowledgements ! ! Thank you, coffee and online banking and MacBook Air.! Thank you, professors, for cracking me open and putting me back together again: Elizabeth Crane, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Mary Otis, Emily Rapp, Rob Roberge, Deanne Stillman, David L. Ulin, and Mary Yukari Waters. ! Thank you, Spotify and meditation, sushi and friendship, Rancho Las Palmas and hot running water, Agam Patel and UCR, rejection and grief and that really great tea I always steal at the breakfast buffet. ! Thank you, Joshua Mohr and Paul Tremblay and Mark Haskell Smith and all the other writers who have been exactly where I am and are willing to help. ! And thank you, Tod Goldberg, for never being satisfied with what I write. !Dedication! ! ! For Misty. Because I promised my first book would be for you. ! For my hygges. Because your friendship inspires me and motivates me. ! For Jason. Because every day you give me the world.! For Everest. Because. !Table of Contents! ! ! !You are braver than you think !! ! ! ! ! ! 5! !When you feel defeated, stop to catch your breath !! ! ! 26! !Push yourself until you can’t turn back !! ! ! ! ! 40! !You’re not lost. The trail is. !!!!!!!51! !Eventually sleep will come !! ! ! ! ! ! ! 56! !Don’t let the monkeys get you down !! ! ! ! ! 67! !Ordeals shape us !! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 82! !Life is worth celebrating !! ! ! ! ! ! ! 87! !Your path may be the opposite of where others are going !! ! 100! !Don’t force the moments that are meaningful !! ! ! ! 121! !Home is where the Buenos Aires is !! ! ! ! ! 133! !One straw can be broken, but together they are strong !! ! 143! !We are just animals !!!!!!!!157! !Honor your tribe !! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 167! !When you see a toilet, pee in it !! ! ! ! ! ! 190! !Look at the hills ahead !! ! ! ! ! ! ! 201! !Some things can’t be understood, only experienced !! ! ! 209! !You never know what your gifts are until someone receives them !! 229! !There is no right way to measure pain !! ! ! ! ! 235! Heaven and earth can meet halfway !! ! ! ! ! 251 SECTION 1: MOVEMENT! ! My plane lands in Cairo. I’ve had the window shade down the whole 12 hours, all the way from the United States to Egypt. I didn’t even look at the ocean. The only words I spoke were to the flight attendant, when I declined beverage service.! I shuffle off the plane in navy flip-flops and hiking pants that upzip just above the knee to turn into shorts at a moment’s notice. The hood of my sweatshirt is pulled up over my head, my long, unruly curls tucked inside the fabric. I know I look antisocial, maybe even like someone up to no good, and I don’t care. If anyone bothered to look, they’d see red eyes and a clenched jaw, not the kind of person you’d want to make conversation with anyway. ! The last time I landed in Cairo, it was a different story. I had the window seat then too. I pressed my face to the smudgy plastic, watched the green band of Nile slice through the billowy, beige fabric of land. As the aircraft descended, all of it appeared to breathe -- the mountains, the dunes, the shifting sands. It was like a golden exhale. Even closer to the ground, the light of the city shifted with glass and metal, glowing like a tiger’s eye stone. My cheeks flushed with warmth, my eyes felt clear and open. I chattered with the people at baggage claim. I made conversation with the taxi driver. I was anxious to absorb the color, sound, history of this place, excited to see how this country could change me.! "1 But that was almost a month ago. That was before my mother died of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before I traveled home to Ohio for a funeral, buried my mom in the snow and flew back to a desert, shrouded in grief and fleece. ! This time Egypt is the place where I have come to get lost, not the place where I have gone to find myself. This trip I have checked no bags. I carry only a small duffle with a change of clothes, a passport and my toothbrush. ! In the airline terminal, I walk past a bank of payphones, all of them unused. Before I departed Ohio, my dad had asked me to phone him from Cairo.! “Just a quick phone call,” he said and handed me a folded $20 to purchase an international calling card. His forehead was streaked with worry, his wispy hair grayer than it had ever been before. “Just to let me know you’re safe.”! I stuff my hand in my pocket and feel for the plastic card. With that in hand, I stop at one of the phones. The line is dead. ! I shift to the next phone and pick up the receiver. That one is dead too. Same with the next. And the one after that. All the phones, dead. ! I know there’s an internet cafe in the airport, so I head there instead. If I can’t call, at least I can send my dad an email. I just need to let my family know I’m safe. Suddenly this feels very important. I know my dad is at home alone with a weak and sad heart, still lopsided from mourning. I don’t want him to worry about me. Clusters of people push past, a collection of black and grey hijabs, swishy kaftans, sandals that whisper “ship-ship-ship” with each step. Nobody seems to understand the gravity of this; all of them look beyond me. ! "2 The internet cafe is closed, a handwritten Arabic note on the locked door. I can’t read it, but I assume it’s a routine, down-for-maintenance kind of message. ! At the information desk in the airport’s main lobby, I ask if there’s another place to access the internet. ! The woman working at the desk sets her mouth into a straight line. “No,” she says. “Bad day for internet.”! “So all the internet is down?”! “Yes,” she says. “Bad day.”! When I turn away from the desk, it’s the first time I notice the men standing in the windows. The entrance of the Cairo airport is all light and glass, like facets on a pale topaz, with windows that begin halfway up the wall and reach all the way to the soaring ceiling. The guys are in uniform, long-sleeve black shirts and pants, perched on the windowsills, holding automatic weapons. The way they are positioned -- arms locked, legs wide, weapons at the ready -- they look like toys, like plastic army men arranged in a row. There are more uniformed men on the ground. These guys wear crisp white outfits, like sea captains. ! I pivot toward the information desk and ask the woman, “What’s happening?” She shrugs. Bad day for information. ! My eyes are wild now, scanning the crowd. There are business people in suits, women in headscarves, men in gellabiya that drag along the ground. Children and teenagers, suitcases and strollers. But now I pick out more soldiers, "3 armed and walking among the travelers. They carry themselves with the unmistakable air of authority, their footfalls purposeful and strong. Though the security is impressively tight at the Cairo airport, I don’t remember seeing such a strong military presence before. Nobody else seems panicked. ! My eye finally lands on a TV, where a crowd is gathering, all watching the BBC news. The footage shows tanks and rioters, piles of people throwing stones, wrestling each other to the ground. The background of the footage begins to take shape and look familiar. It’s Tahrir Square, just a block from the hostel where I stayed before in Cairo and where I intended to stay again.! A red graphic with bold letters flashes across the screen: “EGYPT IN CRISIS!” My stomach drops and I begin to sweat. My face is hot. My eyes water. My pulse erupts into a full-body tremor. ! A revolution has begun. # "4 LESSON: You are braver than you think! Seven months before the revolution begins in Egypt, I was on the other side of the globe and in love. ! Jason wraps his lean body around me and squeezes me tightly. It is the first night of our honeymoon, so some might mistake the embrace for passion. But mostly we are just very cold on the floor of the Lima International Airport.! “Great honeymoon, sweetie,” Jason says though clenched teeth. His dark hair is rumpled, and his jawline is rough with stubble. Black-framed glasses sit askew on his face, one side of which rests against a sweatshirt-turned-pillow.! Technically this trip to Peru is our first romantic getaway as a married couple, but it is also the launch of my year-round trip around the world. The plan is for Jason to spend three weeks with me in Peru, then return to California. After he is gone, I will continue on my own through South America, then Africa and Asia.! I’ve never heard of anyone else leaving a marriage before.