A few days ago I met [Shaikh Ya'qoubi]. I do not know the words to talk of this.
--
This city has many personalities, incarnations, (you say all is continual transition / i say this is more true in damascus than edmonton / you say i never was attuned to edmonton, how can i make this claim / i say you are right, but let me write what i like.) different in ways very far from the pseudo-distinctions of Millwoods / Bonnie Doon.
I lived in Masakin Barzah for two months. Yellow Yemeni rice, the secret police, the maddening popcorn song, the squeal of the diesel air-horn, hookers in black robes silver sparkles and lurid lipstick, gulf-Arabs in long sleek cars and red shamaghs, Somalians, the sheeshani brothers, the sun rising onto bougainvillea...
i've lived in RuknedDin for five months. i complained, on and off, but it has been a beautiful time. A concrete apartment of entropy eight hundred steps up a mountain and fifty-nine stairs, but alive because of those who lived in it. A community of tullab from all parts of the world, Americans Britoids Chinese and Pakistani, converging on Damascus for to learn things that have been taught here for centuries... the individual stories and images of all those around me, the storekeepers and the students, the way life moves. I would stay up late talking to people about robot design and reading Bertrand Russ*l, I used to go to the tasmee' at MuhyidDin, back in the day, and would come home the dawn within me.
In two days i move to Mezzeh. After I first got here I would take the Diwar Shimali miekro route to the university for Arabic, return for more traditional studies. Now I will take the Diwar Shimali miekro route for islamica and to teach Englisch, return for Arabic.
--
Some pictures of this land'll be posted over the next few days, but for now we have a portrait of me some years from now by way of lcd. Pretty, no?
