Page 60 - WTP Vol.X #8

When it comes to down-and-dirty curses—the kind that make you feel cleansed and self-righ- teous—my friend Ricardo says there’s nothing quite like La puta que lo parió: terse, to the point, adequate for almost any situation, especially when followed
by La puta que lo remil parió. (The lo means ‘it’, so if you’re addressing an individual, it would be: La puta que te parió! La puta que te remil parió!)
The emphases here are important. I’m not talking about Spanish’s normal accents. I mean the depth of feeling imparted to the first syllable of puta, which is stressed, but when used in these curses is stronger by several magnitudes: the p in puta explodes out of your mouth, accompanied by flying saliva. Similarly with remil: the l in remil is a labial that lingers delec- tably between tongue and palate before parió brings the curse to its emphatic close.
These are curses which—when said with intense pas- sion and with as guttural a voice as you can muster— make you feel that you’re shaking your fists at the Fates that have brought you to a miserable state of af- fairs: La puta que lo parió! La puta que lo remil parió!
These curses can, if addressed to the thin-skinned, end relationships: they should be used judiciously. Beware of saying them around people who happen to have weapons in their hands, like a cast iron skil- let. Be careful when using them around those who have—as the Spanish saying goes—sangre en el ojo: lust for revenge. In Latin America, wars have started over less.
At first, it’s best to try these curses on inanimate objects: a car that doesn’t start in cold weather, a hammer whose business end goes astray and lands on flesh and bone. Slowly, you can build up to aiming these curses at human beings: for example, during a frustrating moment when no one around you seems to understand what’s perfectly clear to you.
Ricardo swears by La puta que lo parió, but he ac- knowledges that Arabic has some curses that give nearly as much satisfaction: namely, Koos omak and Koos ochta—the ch is guttural. Both have an ono- matopoetic quality that makes translation (practi- cally) unnecessary.
Even without the benefit of translation, you can prob- ably figure out what these curses mean. They’re
about mothers and sisters and sexual organs and prostitutes: the usual curse-fodder. And yes, they are terribly sexist and misogynistic, which is not surprising: Spanish and Arabic curses, after all,
are generally hurled by angry males brought up
in cultures where women are considered either pure as the first snowflakes of late autumn, or irre- trievably sullied, like three-week-old urban slush subjected to footprints, mud, and soot. Nothing in between.
But the fact is, when one uses these curses, their meanings almost never reach the level of conscious- ness. What the words literally mean is not the mes- sage. Strong curses are simply a series of sounds that come from somewhere outside cognition, some deep gut-chasm that needs to express itself as anger, frustration, and extreme exasperation.
All of which leads to a story.
Once, when I was living in Jerusalem, I received a letter from an acquaintance asking for a favor: would I mind going to the Old City and buying a Bedouin dress, then sending it to her? Oh, and please don’t spend more than $40.
It seemed an outrageous request, one that would end up taking up a full day. Though I usually enjoyed going there, it was a tense time in the Old City, one
of those periodic flare-ups during which Damascus Gate is swarming with Israeli soldiers; a time when tourists stay away from the area and merchants are desperate for customers.
I wasn’t overly concerned about possible violence; but since there was likely to be tension in the air, I was reluctant to speak Hebrew while shopping: only English, so as to be taken for a tourist.
There was a down-side to this. A merchant specializing in Bedouin goods would probably charge a tourist more than he’d charge a local resident; but it seemed a decent trade-off: pay a tourist premium and feel less vulnerable as a result.
I went in and out of several shops before I found one that had a large selection of clothing that looked handmade, as if these goods had been crafted in the desert with camels chewing palm fronds nearby: exactly what I was looking for.
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Final, Last, Ultimate Price
roberto loiederMAn