la 1ère semaine

I'm in France. It's awesome. More posts to come... eventually. In the meantime, here's what i've been listening to this week. 

East

Here in the Muslim cemetery where three 

young boys kick a ball and

shout Hello to me

pleased with themselves

but the word to them is just aimless 

syllables leisurely

wrapped around their tongues, a checkered 

keffiyeh wrapped around 

a grandfather’s head as he sits 

drinking coffee with cardamom in a corner

of the souk. 

“You pronounce the name very well,”

the old spice seller tells me as I 

ask to buy za’atar. 

Here in the Old City where stenciled 

graffiti of the Dome of the Rock 

is painted on the walls 

along the Via Dolorosa in the 

green, white, red, black 

of the Palestinian 

flag; here where sandstone dust 

rises ghostly

in a tense marriage 

with street vendors’ voices, where 

each station of the cross is a

balm for the 

exhausted pilgrim. 

He hands me a plastic container

filled to the top. “You pronounce 

the name very well,” he says 

a second time. “You should speak

Arabic, or Hebrew.”