The radio plays a national anthem of a bordered area over a map that marks a place that I once called home. The borders are sketched with a white line that seems as if chalk's been used to mark the outlines of the country, the same chalk they'd use to sketch the exact position of a dead body once it's been found. I can still see the stain; a cherry artificially-flavored juice that spilt thirty years ago over the map leaving a red stain right in the center of the world. Ironically, the chalk outlines remain, the stain remains, but the structure of the world has changed so much, so much that I reckon that if people found out I still own this old map they'd sentence me for public hanging while being shot with squirt guns, in fear of my being old-fashioned; but I refuse to be rid of it. It reminds me of a time when the world made sense, when demographic elements i.e. people, believed that God still had a say in things.

Still playing, an anthem of something that I supposedly belong to, like a psychedelic pop song that I once fancied, I listened in awe. I folded the map like a newspaper and stared for what seemed like three hours at my chalk outlined country, my so-called home, that's been asleep, dreamless and wet, for the past three decades, stained with the color red. A guilty sensation froze my wristwatch as I began to question my cherry flavored drink, whether I had dissolved sleeping pills in it, thirty long years ago, or whether it was but a sign for me to pack my life and leave; that whatever I've been waiting for is cold dead, cherry-flavored bleeding all over the white chalked outline. Never have I felt so connected, like there's a reason for my being here, for my reluctance to leave. I look at the chalk outline and feel so small and helpless, a mixture of emotions, wondering whether I should feel sorry for my flat dead country and walk away or to stay and await its resurrection.

Egypt, I so long for you.

Posted by Яαgιи Яαvєи on Sunday, August 06, 2006 at 8/06/2006 12:42:00 AM | Permalink