Egyptian Blues

(Photograph courtesy of Roxana)

Once you had a secret love: seeing
even her photo, a window is flung open
--after Frank B. 

There is a kind of perfect light, more measured and less abrasive, the old light from the 1970s, a time when I think to myself I must have died. 

There is a type of light that hung about in the top apartment, where old Malika used to live, The Egyptian aunt with one good eye and a gold tooth, she adopted you because so sad for a child, and she would feed us endless sweet-dishes. God, how the Egyptians love their sugar! With their tea "2" spoonfuls means 4; "3" means 5. Nothing means what you think. A lesson never learned. 

He would return, uncle Saleh, a small-time fisherman from the lowly backstreets who'd found his way to the big sea and a big ship. He'd return for a few months in the year. He'd return and still be gone, listening to recitations of the Qur'an on a tape recorder with the windows flung open, the sound of the verses always more mysterious and direct thatn the printed text. And he would wonder to himself: what had happened to my life, how had it been traded away so easily? 

If a wound had befallen you, a wound like that had already befallen others.
--Qur'an. 3:140 

He would bring us back coins and stamps from places we'd never heard of before. Some of those countries didn't even exist (Rhodesia). But I don't actually remember him saying a word. A few greetings in Arabic and stock phrases which Ubo knew, but that was all. His mouth was always full of tobacco, his teeth deeply stained; his gaunt face, lean body and tired, profound eyes; his ability to sit still and speak only necessary words left an impression that makes you wonder, even today. 

Flowers die from too much light, or too much shade. 

~~~

There is a kind of light that balances all time. In summer, in the south, the light is constant for many hours of the day and cannot be faulted, dimmed or disturbed, adding a bright edge to everything. In the north-or conditions approaching it-the light and time flow together: A moment of absence, a drifting cloud. And the land is dark with shadow again. There is a late flaring of the light, the second chance that we all crave, the "late sublime" of an old man who sees everything is beautiful in its own time, with its own specific charm. He looks out of his tall window-for how many more winters?- down, down towards some woman and thinks of his own youth and the sea. Only the chant of the sea remains. But even regret can seem to have its place in a life if your head is tilted at the right angle to the universe. Remorse, destroys the human world. 

~~~ 

Hopper and the 4 o'clock feeling, the third hour in a row of silence between them. 

~~~
At Essex, in those black-bricked monolithic towers, those monuments to the disasters of socialism and the tides of history, the high windows were sealed to prevent suicides. Bertrand Russell had seen a spate of them. There is no "why" here.

  
A said that when the light fell on her skin it was perfect. "If only I could marry again," he said, meaning: "If only I could bed her." 

~~~

A poem by Ungaretti, translated by Tom (I can't say T.C. without thinking of Benny and officer Dibble), stopped me in my tracks, left me spellbound. Traced down three other translations but here is the first:

His name was

Mohamed Sceab

Descendant

of emirs of nomadic tribes

took his own life

because he had lost

his Homeland

Loved France
and changed his name

Was Marcel

but wasn't French

had forgot how

to simply live
sipping a coffee

in the tent of his people

where the little singsong

of the Koran is chanted

And didn't know how to

give

his separateness
a voice

I went along with the concierge

from the hotel where we lived

in Paris

following his body

down the dingy alleyway

from number 5 rue des Carmes

His remains

rest

in the cemetery at Ivry

dolorous suburb

that always brings to mind

the day

a fairground comes down

It may be I alone
still know

he was once alive