Between The Ribs

Burden on shoulders, gloom in heart and shattered pieces of self stubbornly decided to not return inside the heart-shaped box. In that night, lights of cars and neon signs flickered in the streets, saddened and happy faces alternatively passed by me and smells of different foods sneaked out of noisy restaurants' doors. All followed like black and white pictures in an old silent movie that lacked intimate bond with the spectator.

I sat on a bench in the nearest park staring at nothing and then remembered joyful moments in my childhood, my mother's emotion, the majestic bougainvillea in the family's house, memories of being bullied at school, the hallway in the house that looked narrower and darker every time I returned back home after long absence, my leaping heart during the telephone call in 1987 and..and..and...but what did ElSayyab's old poem say about Sindbad who finally found his treasure between the ribs? I couldn't remember. I tried hard but only few words accepted my forced invitation.

I arrived home and immediately ran to the shelf and picked up the book, but before I reached the right page, the words ironically saw their way to my memory...

As though I hear sails flapping

And the tumult as Sindbad puts out to sea

He saw his grand treasure between the ribs

He chose no other as his treasure-then he returned....

2012- What I did not do

I planned early in the year to visit the hometown of a close old friend whom I have known since the secondary school. He never lived in his hometown, but was just born there and then the family moved permanently to the city and left uncles and aunts still living there. After a very long absence some family business obliged him in the last few years to regularly go back in quick trips. 

The town is more like a village. It is in a remote region surrounded by the river on one side and rocky hills on the other, and the village itself is on the edge of the hilly part of the region. The train takes around 7 hours to reach the closest town and then a 30-minute bus ride is needed.

My friend showed me some pictures which were not actually very impressive, but what attracted me most how he talked about the village, although what he said might not be very different from what could be said about any small village any place on earth. Sleepy houses, dozens of families who knew each other and a continental weather of burning heat in summer and freezing temperatures in winter particularly at night. 

He said that ghosts' stories thrived in the village, and regardless of their credibility, he believed that the view of the fog surrounding the huge old trees in winter nights and until the dawn could easily feed the imagination to picture strange shapes and creatures moving between the trees. 

Whenever he arrived there he felt he cut off attachment with the world as he knew. It was like going decades or centuries back into history. Signs of poverty were also quite visible.

His family still owned an old house there that, despite being in a decaying condition, revealed remnants of old beauty.

We agreed last February to make the trip together, but then some circumstances impeded us from achieving the plan. It is sad that I am now thousands of miles away from my friend and his village.

This photo I took almost two years ago in a region that was not far from where the village is located.

Dream (November 4, 2012)

I was riding a big bus that looked from inside like a big hall and was crowded with passengers  A good looking blondish man in his late twenties stood up and started to argue with another person whom I could not see because he/she was sitting down among the crowd. The other passengers tried to calm him down but in vain. I stood up and tried to figure out what it was all about, and noticed that the blondish man had one arm much smaller than the other. The argument heated up again but this time the other person stood up and turned out to be a darkish man of the same age. He was also physically disabled with only one arm and a disproportionally big lower part of body. The argument for a moment was on the edge of turning physical, but then both men lowered the tone and continued to argue while they were sitting down next to each other at the back of the bus.

Moments later, an old woman wearing an orange colored long dress and a Muslim veil on her head started to shout at another woman. The other woman stood up, went directly to her and punched her. Many people in the bus tried to come between the two. The woman who started shouting ran around the seats and the other ran after her. I thought it was rather funny because she who started the fight was the one who got beaten and who tried to ran away to avoid the punches.

The bus was full of riders and not everyone seemed interested in what was going on. I wondered when I would get off.