I can close my eyes still, and conjure up the memory of dust and sweat and fruit and wood fires and steaming dung and the heat of animals. Leaving the plane through its high doors, the ground quivering below, I was assailed by heat and light, by a rush of smells so strong it almost shoved me back, like a clenched fist. Twenty-five years ago, I stood, thin and pale, squinting into sunlight. I find only cool air, clear and fresh, unclouded by sand. In the summer of 1991 I often wake, seeking the place I longed for, longing for a hint of perfume, the drift of robes against bare feet. I follow my mother's eyes as they search the horizon, seeking the bloom of tents. I believe her intent gaze followed the line of the road cutting a clean scar through the desert.
I imagine that journey, my mother, bare-legged in Swiss cotton, her foot trembling on the brake. So for my driving test, the instructor followed in another car." "It would not have been proper for an Arab man to drive in a car alongside a British woman. I recall my mother, cool beside the women's dark warmth. As the Gulf War rages through the summer of 1991, I am often awakened by the high, wild cries of Bedouin women, greeted by the memory of flocks of them at the hem of the desert.
0 kommentar(er)
