and then our exile

the king is dead: long live the king!

drained by a night of ferocious, nearly frenetic thoughts, the dawn wind now. a little over a week left...nearly a year has sped me by, early last august I was watching this spectre form before me, and now, oh my God, the palmful of pearls, how they have spread...

now sitting on the bed, muhammad al-husyan for ambient sound, the fading moon a perfect crescent above: wa ma'l-mar'u illa ka'l-hilaali wa daw'ihi / yuwaafi tamaama'sh-shahri thumma yughibu...and what is man but as the crescent and its light / it waxes throughout the month and then wanes? the waning light of what I had hoped to call my personal revolution...a plane ticket in the other room, but death which can come at any time: the sudden return to piety which follows the demise of our regional puppet-kings, puppetmaster.

[august], then: 24th was liftoff, a medium-sized green bag and black backpack, two small handbags. walking through frankfurt, time in dubai, and touchdown in damascus two dates later, thrown out of a sliding door onto a dirty marble floor and stifling heat, the distinct impression the world was coloured in yellow and dust, an orange bus, a quiet smile "are you basit?" from any one of the hundred curious syrian faces examining; it was nearly late afternoon and there was the clear-cut beginning--not a birth, that denotes too much even now : thus the tone, nor an end by any means because i carried as noted the luggage with me, but a beginning--as i stepped out from the interior folding walls of the airport and the metal barricades holding off the bodies the noise the heat, there it was in all its glory, and here i was.

dawn is rising. "the murmur of night fading / the shackles of liquidity approach"

it was before august, though. it was long before august--they would ask me what i was doing next year, and the contained and bright reply: "i'm planning on going to syria or yemen to study Arabic". i said this in school hallways, at family get-togethers, lying on grass under the sky. but did i know what arabic was? i had studied it before, but did i know what i was saying? at farooq's dining table then, agonizing over the respective benefits and drawbacks of my three options, his pressure to become egyptian. and then suddenly school was over and august seemed very close by, wow.

the first two days i spent with relatives of an arabic teacher in edmonton, when then transferred out of the "middle of nowhere" to masakin barzeh, zacharia's family. he welcomed me here, outlined the ropes, and left after three weeks. at registration at JD--"hah, all these white people." my hah became eek, though, after the girl next to me (from california, shoulder-length blonde hair.) laughed lightly and explained how beautifully her arabic language was lopsided, that she could write a short paper on economic or political theory but did not know the word for pillow. the catacombs of Damascus University.

"there is concrete in this land / ... / this bombed-out shell of a torrid river / ... / and the hollow at your throat / where the salt-water gathered"

early [September]. DamU, they called it, or JD. i was put into level four, a class with a dozen or so foreigners, i sat between an assistant schoolteacher from florida who moved to Syria because she found peace here, and a shi’i from india whose motto was "life is hope". the 'language center'--bringing together internationalists in a strange land, a very different atmosphere: expatriated youngpeople, with their own native eyes. i and a mormon from utah wrote and enacted a beautiful play, my interaction with drama. experiences of Damascus itself were of simple existence, neither bland nor glamorous--shock, perhaps, reeling in. cytokinesis of cytoplasm, fission of the river. khalid's stories and great red watermelons. "return without fear of recall." sitting in the grandmother of ancient and glorious vehicles, ahmad asked me why i was here, and my ready answer was false on my own tongue--so questions, why Arabic, why me, why this. again, do i know what it is i aim for, from this. peanut butter as the taste of home i would remember unconsciously in bouts, blood pounding in ears. simple records, and by that time Wuddistan seemed far away already. met WaliUllah outside the JD busstop, and he introduced me to those who would be my roommates for the next six months.

"there is marble in this city / this bougainvillea tomb / a thousand minarets wreathed in the dawn / their green memory"