Whispered Conversations

“Are you married?” he asks, offering me an old plastic mug steaming with a translucent dull pink tea. His wife and daughter beside him grab masses of corn dough and slap them wildly between their palms, flattening and placing them on the wood-fired stove. The flicker of catching embers filters a warm glow throughout the room, tentatively revealing momentary and incomplete glimpses of the small home. A bed. A table. An old wooden loom. The red, blue and purple dyes stained smudgendly on the man’s fingertips; a rainbowed reminder of sacrifice and hard work.  My girlfriend and I had come across the dwelling by chance, dripping and exhausted, trapped in the Guatemalan monsoonal downpours. With a gentle smile and a humble timidity the native family invited us into their home and out of the rain.  Still trembling, I reach for the tea and take a sip. It’s sickly sweet.  “We are not married”, I tell him, forcing down the tea.  The man’s eyes widen, a deep brown transcending stare.  “Have you kidnapped her?” he asks, “do her parents know that she is here?”  I begin to laugh, and the man’s fear turns to intrigue. Like an invigorated schoolboy the questions begin to flow: “Do you share a bed? Have you shared it with others?” Shyly unable to look him in the eyes, our fiery shadows flicker in whispered conversations, as I explain the culture of sex, love and marriage in Australia.  Eventually satisfied, the man pauses a moment and turns to me.    “Before we could marry”, he says,  “I had to kneel on broken glass shards for four hours in front of my wife’s father to prove my devotion to her”.  I look back, amazed. “Is that still what happens today?” I ask.  The man sits up in his chair and laughs, politely shaking his head. “Even here the times have changed”, he smiles proudly to himself. “Now the young men just kneel on bottle caps. Otherwise we would never find husbands for our daughters”. I smile back at him and we both begin to laugh. I take another sip of tea. God, it’s awfully sweet!