$50

This time I am going to tell you about The Walker, who does not scare me.

He does not scare me. I tell my sister as much, and often. Practically all the time. I say, “The Walker does not scare me.”

We live in a very nice neighborhood, you see, which just happens to be bordered on one side by a red light district. I suppose it’s a red light district. Gay night clubs, leather bars, sex shops. That sort of thing.

I approach my neighborhood from the red light side sometimes. That’s when I find myself dodging seven-foot drag queens and young hustlers and herds of gawkers. Oh, the gawkers are more plentiful than you would believe! They come from far and wide to gawk.

Perhaps this is not an environment one can picture me in or even driving through.

Heart of darkness

Mercifully, I know of no extant evidence of me and my sister – at age 10 – performing “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” at the school talent show.

Still the memory of it will haunt me to the grave.

It was my idea and we sang it deadpan – without so much as a drop of irony or humor – each of us dressed in a salwar kameez.  

I heard the song in a store this morning and it all came flooding back to me. The horror! The horror!

First impression

He asks me if I believe in jinn.

Of course he asks this. I’ve seen him around. First thing he’s ever said to me and he says it with a smirk. Patronizing. In the way one might ask, “So you believe in little green men in spaceships, do you?” or “Do faeries come to watch over little girls in the night, ya think?”  

Do I believe in jinn?

He hasn’t yet so much as heard my voice and I am being set up for ridicule.

Fine then.

I tell him about the Dera Bugti Road. About how an hour and half northeast of Jacobabad, I pulled over at a petrol station. The only building in the world. The car thermostat read fifty-one degrees (~124° F).

I pulled over for petrol and mid-day prayer only there was no petrol. Still, at the back of this tiny, middle-of-nowhere petrol station was a prayer room. Just washing basins, prayer rugs and quiet. A mini-mosque for travelers such as myself.

I got along well until afterwards when I walked out the wrong door somehow and wound up behind the petrol-less petrol station.

Behind, there was nothing. No car, no dry pumps, no Dera Bugti Road. Nothing. Utter emptiness like I’d never known.

Only – and here’s the thing – after mere moments, it wasn’t empty. It never had been. The heat from the sun weighed me down as if it were a beast upon my shoulders. The white sands whirled in the distance, around and around whistling ancient tunes to me. Even the too-blue sky looked suspect.

This was not emptiness.

Here, where there was no life, there was a consciousness, and it had seen that I’d seen it.

Am I making any sense?

“So yes,” I say to the cute smirking guy. “Here we are, in a big city library with air conditioning blaring and iPhones at the ready and we can all laugh at some ignorant bedouin and their old superstitions.

“But go stand in the desert on the Dera Bugti Road and try and tell me, even if only for a split second of a moment there, you don’t believe in jinn.”

He’s not going to be calling me, is he?

The Mexican

My mother has concerns, you see. My mother’s concerns are the concern of us all.

No. That’s not right. I will try it again.

Our concern lies not with the object of my mother’s concerns, but rather with the fact that she has concerns, for that is where the troubles begin.

Oh, I’ve made a mess of this. Here:

It bears repeating

I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone.

I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone.I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m not afraid of being alone.

Nope.

I was daydreaming today

Always at the start of fasting come the vivid daydreams.

Like this:

I am sitting in a boat. It is a canoe of some sort perhaps, though for someone like me who knows nothing of boats or canoes, it hardly matters what sort. Let us say it is a canoe.

Racing to Ramadan

Sunday is the start of Ramadan.

For Muslims – of course – it’s a month of increased purity and prayerfulness.

I believe what this means is, if I don’t finish reading my current impure books come this time tomorrow, I’m stuck for an entire month.   

Here goes nothing...