The
glass panes shudder as the ancient
air conditioning unit on the roof of the building next-door
rumbles to life
below your window. You are lying in your bed again on a
summer night, studying the cracked
paint above
your pillow, counting in your mind the money in the pocket of your jeans slung over a metal
folding chair in the corner. More in there than in
the bank.
Your roll off your back and place your face in the pillow.
You think about how nice it would be to slip into the cool waves of an
ocean somewhere. The sand running through your toes as you wade in before gliding into the
salty-
relaxing bliss. Then scampering
as a child from the
cool and moist to the
dry and brittle sand by your parent’s blanket and chairs. Lying in the sun-
scorched sand, each grain sticking and
singeing your skin as the sweat begins to break on your brow. You roll over again, letting your chest cool for a moment as your back is freshly
charred. Your eyes open to see yourself rising
no longer as a child from the sand and trudging across the dunes in
your meeting-day clothes. In the distance is an
oasis. Cool water, shade, fruit trees, a bounty of food and
enticements. You
fumble along the hot sand, stumbling and
crawling the last meters until you dip your head in the shade, a cool breeze
rumbling across the water through the trees as you do. You look up to see a wood-frame wagon covered in
silks and
brightly painted gourds. By its door, a horse draped in
sashes and bells, ribbon braided into its mane, stands idly nibbling grass from the edge of the spring.
You hear the first strains of
music and then it is evening and the campfire is circled by
dancers surrounded by old men playing
gourds,
mandolins, goat-skin
drums, bean-shakers and
tambourines. You float into this glowing festival, inhaling the
ash filtering down from the
smoke plume, tracing
the shadows of the dancing girls as they play across the musicians leaning against the outer ring of wagons. They
swirl and
dip and
lunge, kicking clouds of dust into
the spark filled sky. At times they let out yelps, like wild pups to the moon,
at times they moan sweet long notes into the night sky.
The mandolin tumbles in the background
relentlessly, almost a
drone, while the drumbeat starts and stops and starts again, jerkily moving from one time to the next. The shakers and tambourines flutter in and out like
waves,
humming from near silence to a roar before subsiding only to rise again. But, on this night
the gourds are the stars,
honking and squeaking in time with the shakers. The girls moving around the fire seem to be in conversation with them,
trading howls, squeals, beeps and cackles endlessly in a pulsating contra-rhythm.
Languishing in the heat of the fire, listening to the
gourds honking away, you feel the logs beneath you crumble and hear the drums
shudder to a halt and swing your feet to the floor and scurry to the bathroom. As you close the door a taxi honks to a screeching halt in the street below down the alley
below your window.