Post by goldenmyst on Jul 10, 2020 8:09:46 GMT -6
Scent of Tamarind
We meet in the Casbah when I step down the stairs like Zeus descending Olympus. Her sisters are wrapped in burqas. With my glance, they dart like little birds back into their nest. Suddenly the window opens again. Her face peeks out and she beckons me with a tongue click. Her eyes are portals of dark fury.
She opens a door below and I find myself in a dark room scented with lemon. She says, “Let us drink cardamom tea and let the hours slip by like seconds on the clock.”
I say, “Why would a spring flower bestow her affections on a grey mop gent like me?”
“You bear a striking resemblance to James Dean had he made it to his fifties. All I have to do is imagine him with grey hair. With you, I get my heartthrob look-alike but without the Hollywood mess. You aren’t a movie star by any chance? Please say no or my bubble will burst.”
“No, but I am never too old for good tea.”
“Then drink up to your health! Of course, I also make baklava to die for. Oops, I should never mention sweets and death in the same sentence.”
“It was a good superlative. I look forward to the life of your pastry.”
“I also make a couscous topped with fava beans that melt off the fork into your mouth.”
“Have mercy, you’ve won my heart. Sitting at your table will be a culinary paradise.”
The clatter of dishes becomes the music of our years. Each morning her muezzin song opens the day for this dreamer in a land that doesn’t feel so foreign anymore.
She breathes like the breeze in a tamarind grove. Her henna-dyed tresses drift by me like thunderclouds laced with lightning in the marketplace. They ignite memories of this city known as the Bride of the North where my rose and I fell in love. We share fresh water from her fountain of youth.
We watch Moroccan soap operas on Saturday nights. However, kissing is a welcome activity on any night. She says, “Before we stock up on fruit, I want you to taste my flavored lipstick to get an idea of what you like. So I’m wearing pomegranate lip gloss. When I kiss you be sure to lick my lips. Ah, you have lavished me. The miracle fruit is a symbol of fertility owing to its many seeds. But maybe you relish my kiss more than my fruity lip balm.”
“Yes, the sweetness is in your silkiness.”
“Now, let me be your honeyed mystery. I want you to guess what kind of lip glaze I’m wearing just from tasting me. Now savor my spice.”
“You taste like a berry but I can’t place what kind.”
“My raspberry sorbet is tang for your tongue.”
“Yes, please get some on your next shopping trip.”
“You’ve crushed my heart. How could you like the dessert better than my kiss?”
“Oh no, the sherbet is just an appetizer for the main course which is when we kiss. Then the stars come out like a thousand candles in the night.”
“You need but one candle to light your way. Tell for whom your wick burns for? This is not a trick question.”
“Thou art the way, the truth, and the light.”
Sunlight washes my hair on the streets and she combs the snow on the roof of my head to see a play by the American School of Tangiers with incidental music composed by Paul Bowles whose spirit haunts the alleys of the Door of Africa.
Morocco has lèse–majesté laws, which means that it is a criminal offence to speak badly of the king. One day I am caught doing so. The police whisk me off to jail. But my sentence gets commuted to three months instead of the usual year. During that time I have no contact with my wife.
“John, during the time you were incarcerated I got this ad in the mail. ‘Custom eulogies for your dearly departed to dress up those closet skeletons as endearing peccadillos for a person of otherwise sterling character to bring comic relief to the bereaved.’ Can you imagine how that shook me up?”
“I begged them to allow me a phone call. But truthfully I didn’t know if it was a good idea for them to know about you. You might have been implicated.”
“I had a dream that the morgue called me to identify your body because I was the only close relation you had locally. So I went there. They pulled open the drawer and there before me was your sweet face ashen in its pallor. They asked me if I wanted any of your belongings so I took your glasses with me as a last keepsake to remember you by. Don’t ever frighten me like that again.”
“I’ll never badmouth his highness again.”
“If you need to unload about his majesty then do it with me privately. I won’t tell on, you.”
On the streets of Tangiers, she is a Berber angel whose halo embraces the nativity of a Moroccan Madonna holding her baby in a circle of love. Beatified in luminescence the mother’s ascetic body is lost to hunger. She is a golden daughter of creation whose son shines like the gold-leafed pages in her book of divine love. His nursery rhyme eyes are a shanty-town of tears. Mother’s milk-less breasts grieve in prophetic yearning for her son’s rebirth.
My beloved’s heartbeats are a pulsar as her soul synchronizes with the celestial harmony of maternal love eternal. My wife’s blue sky clarity crystallizes. The Roman Caesar coin my soulmate carries for luck becomes the Moroccan mama’s three thousand dollar gift. My lover woman kisses their earthen faces under the light of a thousand suns.
My dream of love sits at our table like a Bedouin angel in love with the world. The Couscous with fava beans is hot from the oven and served steamy with falafel wrapped in pita bread. We sit as seasoned lovers in the cradle of the land where Casablanca was filmed.
My litany of love is spoken “Just try the chemo for a while. If you get good results then continue the treatment. You have nothing to lose but your life which is more precious than all the hair you will lose.”
The waiters gather around our table and echo my sentiments word for word like a Greek Chorus. She agrees to my idea over falafel dipped in hummus.
On the threshold of a casket, her tears come like orphans seeking a home. She says, “We may never meet on this earthly plane again. But here is how I want you to remember me.” She takes the barrettes out of her beehive hairdo. Her charcoal hair falls in waves upon her shoulder-delta where her latte river flows beneath the chocolate sea of her kaftan. She hands her hairpins to me. “The kief was sweet when we shared the hookah. When you smoke remember that sweetness and let it fill your heart with my love.”
I emerge into the alley. Her blossom is plucked in the flower of youth. Yet when I watch the women gather water from the well I see her face in every woman who dips her pail.
One afternoon, years past her passing, I am walking the streets of the city nicknamed, “Blue Pearl of Morocco” for its blue alleyways and blue-washed buildings. My feet take me down a blue alleyway but to my surprise, my heart turns into a crab digging into my chest. I make the call to emergency services. While trying to describe my location to the operator I hear a voice I haven’t heard for years. My deceased wife tells me, “It is alright John, I will help you. Here hold onto me.”
The operator says, “Who is that? I hear a woman’s voice. Why is she so calm?”
“She is someone I lost track of but everything is ok now. No need to send the ambulance.”
“Ma’am, please forget this happened. Just chalk it up to one of the mysteries of life,” my wife says.
My wife takes the cell. “He just had a stumble. He is just fine. He’ll be going home with me.”
My wife hands the phone back to me. “I feel light as a cloud. This blue passage is like a corridor through the sky to heaven,” I say.
My wife takes the cell, “You see how could a man feel so heavenly yet really be sick?” She clicks off the cell. When the heavenly turnstile returns me to this planet I learn that this phone call was recorded as a mystery of life which cannot be explained or understood for there was no corpse left as evidence. Only the phone was found lying on the blue-painted doorway.
We meet in the Casbah when I step down the stairs like Zeus descending Olympus. Her sisters are wrapped in burqas. With my glance, they dart like little birds back into their nest. Suddenly the window opens again. Her face peeks out and she beckons me with a tongue click. Her eyes are portals of dark fury.
She opens a door below and I find myself in a dark room scented with lemon. She says, “Let us drink cardamom tea and let the hours slip by like seconds on the clock.”
I say, “Why would a spring flower bestow her affections on a grey mop gent like me?”
“You bear a striking resemblance to James Dean had he made it to his fifties. All I have to do is imagine him with grey hair. With you, I get my heartthrob look-alike but without the Hollywood mess. You aren’t a movie star by any chance? Please say no or my bubble will burst.”
“No, but I am never too old for good tea.”
“Then drink up to your health! Of course, I also make baklava to die for. Oops, I should never mention sweets and death in the same sentence.”
“It was a good superlative. I look forward to the life of your pastry.”
“I also make a couscous topped with fava beans that melt off the fork into your mouth.”
“Have mercy, you’ve won my heart. Sitting at your table will be a culinary paradise.”
The clatter of dishes becomes the music of our years. Each morning her muezzin song opens the day for this dreamer in a land that doesn’t feel so foreign anymore.
She breathes like the breeze in a tamarind grove. Her henna-dyed tresses drift by me like thunderclouds laced with lightning in the marketplace. They ignite memories of this city known as the Bride of the North where my rose and I fell in love. We share fresh water from her fountain of youth.
We watch Moroccan soap operas on Saturday nights. However, kissing is a welcome activity on any night. She says, “Before we stock up on fruit, I want you to taste my flavored lipstick to get an idea of what you like. So I’m wearing pomegranate lip gloss. When I kiss you be sure to lick my lips. Ah, you have lavished me. The miracle fruit is a symbol of fertility owing to its many seeds. But maybe you relish my kiss more than my fruity lip balm.”
“Yes, the sweetness is in your silkiness.”
“Now, let me be your honeyed mystery. I want you to guess what kind of lip glaze I’m wearing just from tasting me. Now savor my spice.”
“You taste like a berry but I can’t place what kind.”
“My raspberry sorbet is tang for your tongue.”
“Yes, please get some on your next shopping trip.”
“You’ve crushed my heart. How could you like the dessert better than my kiss?”
“Oh no, the sherbet is just an appetizer for the main course which is when we kiss. Then the stars come out like a thousand candles in the night.”
“You need but one candle to light your way. Tell for whom your wick burns for? This is not a trick question.”
“Thou art the way, the truth, and the light.”
Sunlight washes my hair on the streets and she combs the snow on the roof of my head to see a play by the American School of Tangiers with incidental music composed by Paul Bowles whose spirit haunts the alleys of the Door of Africa.
Morocco has lèse–majesté laws, which means that it is a criminal offence to speak badly of the king. One day I am caught doing so. The police whisk me off to jail. But my sentence gets commuted to three months instead of the usual year. During that time I have no contact with my wife.
“John, during the time you were incarcerated I got this ad in the mail. ‘Custom eulogies for your dearly departed to dress up those closet skeletons as endearing peccadillos for a person of otherwise sterling character to bring comic relief to the bereaved.’ Can you imagine how that shook me up?”
“I begged them to allow me a phone call. But truthfully I didn’t know if it was a good idea for them to know about you. You might have been implicated.”
“I had a dream that the morgue called me to identify your body because I was the only close relation you had locally. So I went there. They pulled open the drawer and there before me was your sweet face ashen in its pallor. They asked me if I wanted any of your belongings so I took your glasses with me as a last keepsake to remember you by. Don’t ever frighten me like that again.”
“I’ll never badmouth his highness again.”
“If you need to unload about his majesty then do it with me privately. I won’t tell on, you.”
On the streets of Tangiers, she is a Berber angel whose halo embraces the nativity of a Moroccan Madonna holding her baby in a circle of love. Beatified in luminescence the mother’s ascetic body is lost to hunger. She is a golden daughter of creation whose son shines like the gold-leafed pages in her book of divine love. His nursery rhyme eyes are a shanty-town of tears. Mother’s milk-less breasts grieve in prophetic yearning for her son’s rebirth.
My beloved’s heartbeats are a pulsar as her soul synchronizes with the celestial harmony of maternal love eternal. My wife’s blue sky clarity crystallizes. The Roman Caesar coin my soulmate carries for luck becomes the Moroccan mama’s three thousand dollar gift. My lover woman kisses their earthen faces under the light of a thousand suns.
My dream of love sits at our table like a Bedouin angel in love with the world. The Couscous with fava beans is hot from the oven and served steamy with falafel wrapped in pita bread. We sit as seasoned lovers in the cradle of the land where Casablanca was filmed.
My litany of love is spoken “Just try the chemo for a while. If you get good results then continue the treatment. You have nothing to lose but your life which is more precious than all the hair you will lose.”
The waiters gather around our table and echo my sentiments word for word like a Greek Chorus. She agrees to my idea over falafel dipped in hummus.
On the threshold of a casket, her tears come like orphans seeking a home. She says, “We may never meet on this earthly plane again. But here is how I want you to remember me.” She takes the barrettes out of her beehive hairdo. Her charcoal hair falls in waves upon her shoulder-delta where her latte river flows beneath the chocolate sea of her kaftan. She hands her hairpins to me. “The kief was sweet when we shared the hookah. When you smoke remember that sweetness and let it fill your heart with my love.”
I emerge into the alley. Her blossom is plucked in the flower of youth. Yet when I watch the women gather water from the well I see her face in every woman who dips her pail.
One afternoon, years past her passing, I am walking the streets of the city nicknamed, “Blue Pearl of Morocco” for its blue alleyways and blue-washed buildings. My feet take me down a blue alleyway but to my surprise, my heart turns into a crab digging into my chest. I make the call to emergency services. While trying to describe my location to the operator I hear a voice I haven’t heard for years. My deceased wife tells me, “It is alright John, I will help you. Here hold onto me.”
The operator says, “Who is that? I hear a woman’s voice. Why is she so calm?”
“She is someone I lost track of but everything is ok now. No need to send the ambulance.”
“Ma’am, please forget this happened. Just chalk it up to one of the mysteries of life,” my wife says.
My wife takes the cell. “He just had a stumble. He is just fine. He’ll be going home with me.”
My wife hands the phone back to me. “I feel light as a cloud. This blue passage is like a corridor through the sky to heaven,” I say.
My wife takes the cell, “You see how could a man feel so heavenly yet really be sick?” She clicks off the cell. When the heavenly turnstile returns me to this planet I learn that this phone call was recorded as a mystery of life which cannot be explained or understood for there was no corpse left as evidence. Only the phone was found lying on the blue-painted doorway.
