Pigeon Tower

The Pigeon Tower is fortified and high.

Pigeons flied far away, and I remained all alone.

I saw a Pigeon Tower first in my uncle's countryside home as I mentioned here when I was 7 or 8 years old. I liked how majestic it looked and the idea that pigeons also had a neighboring home to which they came back everyday before sunset. It was built of mud bricks and painted white.

We, as kids, were allowed every now and then to go inside and have a look.

Afterwards whenever we traveled in the countryside, I started to pay attention more and more to those towers, which were mostly built in the fields around the villages. My uncle's tower was one of the few, in our rural area at least, that was built inside the village.

Any countryside drawing of mine at that early age included a pigeon tower somewhere.

Then in a famous film produced in late sixties, that I watched on TV, there was a cruel rape scene that happened in a pigeon tower. Certain scenes in the movies we watched when we were young remain unforgettable, and that was one. It gave pigeon towers, in my mind, another dramatic, and maybe sexual, connotation.

Years later, a beautiful, jazzy and sad song of my very favorite singer, included the two above-mentioned verses while depicting her feelings of loneliness, despair and nostalgia. I love the song.

Joyful, sensual and then Nostalgic. Natural sequence.

Horses' Heads And Eternity

I met her many years ago when she was a university student in Paris. We were among a group of students of different nationalities. An energetic and full of life girl with wild beauty, blue eyes and smiling face. Academically she was brilliant, and socially she was wooed by many. We got together into few situations that left their repercussion unforgettable in my memory.

We drifted apart more than 20 years ago and never contacted each other. Accidentally every few years, I would hear something about her from persons who turned out to be common acquaintances.

Few days ago, I have been told she passed away after a strong battle with the monster disease, survived by a husband and a daughter. I was given a link to her FB and came to see her recent photos and read the condolence messages.

Twenty years are long enough to bury many feelings, but her loss saddens me. Besides, I am in a mood that makes me apt to feel saddened.

Our memories together kept her alive in my mind and kept me feeling as if I was still close to her as I once was. 

Try

Moments of silence are needed to try to understand.

Unanswered

* I found someday that my khaki pants were missing. Nothing could explain the disappearance. No strangers were in my house who could have stolen them. I have not left the gym wearing my work-out clothe and forgot them in the locker. I did not use a self-service laundry. Nothing.  I gave up trying to figure out where and why. Years later and in another country where I was living, the exact same scenario repeated. Khaki pants were missing from my house. And again no explanation. This might seem funny, but it is true.

* Family1, whom I completely trust, told me family2 stole his money and submitted the evidence. It seemed credible, but I could not believe f2 with his integrity could do it. I said to myself there must have been a margin of error somewhere. F1 never told anybody else in order to keep the family together, and years later he passed away. F2 went in life armed with his usual nice character, kind attitudes, level-headed views and supportive positions. Where does the truth lay? To be totally unaware of a possible hidden and evil aspect of character of someone so close and so kind is something scary.

* The nostalgia to the past kills me. I admit the past might not have been the best of times and I can not deny the beautiful aspects of the present, but why it seems so tender and so sweet? Memories feel like a wind coming from far off and the moment it touches my face with its waves of beauty and longing, I get so overwhelmed that I kneel down. My parents, the family house, the garden, the quiet neighborhood have all gone and will never come back, but here I am on my knees receiving the waves with my eyes closed and both arms extended.

Fatima and Her World

The other person who used to turn away her face whenever she saw photos of snakes, as I mentioned in “Semi-close encounters with snakes”, was the help who worked in my parents’ house. She would not give a clear answer why. Photos of snakes were just a big no.

She was originally from my mother’s hometown. A friend told Mama about a trustworthy widow who would like to move to the city and work as a help after the death of her husband. She was in her late forties and had a married son and a daughter who lived back in the village. Mama immediately accepted.

What drew my attention first was her thick accent. I had to pay good attention to understand her, although I was not completely stranger to that accent because Mama would sometimes switch to her hometown accent if she met one of her old relatives or in her rare visits to her hometown.

Fatima was fat with curved body. Living all her life in the countryside made her unaware of many aspects of life in the big city. She shocked us at the beginning with her frequently-used swear words that infiltrated her talk. She, innocently and naively, had no sense in choosing the appropriate words. It was not until Mama let her understand that such words could not be tolerated, that she stopped using them. She also used to tell stories about how her late husband loved her and how he, before their marriage, threatened to commit suicide if she did not accept his proposal. Sometimes she was real fun.

She was also a flirt. I remember once I saw her in the corner of the garden with the guard of the neighbors' house in what looked as an intimate moment. There was nothing physical, but they seemed quite cozy. I took few steps back and mentioned nothing because my parents, with their conservative attitudes, would not have tolerated it.

She worked for us many years, until suddenly one day she requested to leave because she found another job for an expatriate family with a much better salary. We were disappointed by her decision. For few months after her departure Mama was so upset that she did not return back her calls, but later our attitude became friendly, and she used to come visit us every now and then.

In the following years I left the house and the country, and I did not see much of her. Mama told me in her last years Fatima was almost unrecognizable because she lost a huge weight due to her diabetes. She passed away in her hometown, survived by her son and daughter.