Rhythm | February 7
There are many things you don’t imagine yourself doing in a certain span of time like this. Watching Turkish historical dramas is one for me. The sound of Arabic and stringed instruments from the TV mingle with those of yowling cats and the voices of my hosts, laughing at a cousin’s sister’s babbling one-year old. The different rhythm jolts me out of my own rut of reality and shakes me into its own. It shakes me shivering out of bed in the morning to scramble into my layers and hurry to my tea. At 8:00 I will leave the house, kiss Miriam b’salama - right cheek, left cheek - and begin to walk up the hill to the bus stop. I’ve tried, five or six time I’ve tried, to take a picture of that sliver of beauty that rises and sinks for me every morning. The mountains over the wall are dim and deep under a bright sun or a darkling sky, and they only last a moment in their largeness before they mostly are covered by the wall.
Yes, bus stops are a blessing. As I watch my bus, just missed, lumber down the road, I know that now I will have half an hour to sketch, to catch what my iphone can’t see. With all of myself, sketch book included, I will never be inconspicuous, as the woman in the seat across from me tells me each time we catch eyes between looking out the window. So be it! Then I will draw you, without you knowing, friend, and remember that I was also in your eyes. My wobbling road lines will turn into jots of words to you too. Let me speak to you an unheard conversation:
I’ve learned, mother,
that you and I are both strangers here perhaps.
I’ve learned it by our skin; by your features you have not
always been here.
Now you are old, well wrapped in your flowered scarf,
but once you were young, south and west of this place.
Why did you come, mother?
I am lighter, you are darker than our neighbors
and both of us wonder why the other
is riding the bus
to the Medina
this morning.
Are you Moroccan now, mother? Do you have a son who got to France,
while here you stay
to live your days
and to ride
the bus?
Again, we catch each others eyes,
but I will never know you more than this gentle glance
or more than your relief
that a boy gave you his seat.
I bid farewell to jolts of the bus and the crush of this woman’s shoulder against mine, disembarking with the rhythm of the crowd.