Dusk was building his house in what seemed a fair land, full of promise both for planting and for hunting in their seasons, when a rumbling beneath his feet set his knees to tremble and caused him to sit lest he fall headlong to the ground.

Before him the earth opened; the bedrock split, and opened into a great granite-walled gorge. The depth thereof dizzied him, and though Dusk pushed legs madly against the void, the yawning chasm drew him toward the precipice, as if the Earth Mother herself drew him in with her breath.

A river carved out the bottom of the gorge with high falls and narrow rapids. Many names could be given it: Alleyah, which announces a ‘guide of others,’ Galilahi, which is the word for ‘attractive’ to one people, or its like, Galilah, which to another nation means ‘God shall redeem.’ But its true name is Tallulah, which dissolves all in its meaning, ‘running water.’

Tallulah River has always been, though before it had run deep underground. And its currents have always swirled around the legs of maidens busy at their bath, their toes grasping granite pebbles in its bed.

There among them was Dawn. And as soon as Dusk saw her all her companions faded into the shadows, lingering only as the song of water splashing against stone and rising in a mist of chatter and laughter. The aroma of Dawn caught Dusk as a scent he had been born remembering; it entered his nostrils as a freshness, a perennial newness which intoxicated him before ever he tasted her lips.

All which Dusk had built, all which he had planned now seemed as naught – mere distractions which had occupied him until this moment of beholding her. He did not know her name, but if compelled he might have falteringly spoken the epithet, Hope.

And hope she flashed when she cast her eyes up, piercing questions into the heavens. Her glances had not yet discovered Dusk atop the granite cliff. After each blink Dawn quickly lowered her face to her bathing, demurely avoiding again voicing her prayer that this be the day she’d always felt approaching.

He no longer resisted the precipice, and slid, falling, floating over the edge. Dawn turned her face to the sky again, and beheld Dusk as a cloud settling into the gorge. But rather than blocking the sun which she had so recently discovered, it set a glow in her face, a blush in skin which before had been hidden from warmth, and pale. Indeed, the sun drew a silver edge to the cloud, presenting a shape for Dusk to Dawn.

Dawn crawled upon a stone to see what this cloud might be. Though the sun seemed so tiny and far away, it had already warmed her bed; its light burst into colors sparkling in the mist, and seemed to be not behind but within the cloud, and swelled as it descended to her.

Dusk touched her, gently at first, and as his cloud settled upon her and his mass grew the moisture alternately warmed and opened her skin, and cooled and quickened her. In pulses Dusk pressed her deep into the boulder, then raised her up within the walls. Dawn floated, she was crushed, and the waves were within her as well as without. He sustained his rhythm and she withdrew into the swirling rapids within her, and he changed his rhythm and she opened her eyes to Dusk as a living presence come, having chosen her, and frightening - no,  thrilling her.

In this way Dusk lifted her ever higher. And as he did, the sparkling granite walls opened around them as a night sky bristling with stars. There is only this short hour in which Dusk and Dawn come together; they are unlike and do not know the same world, for Dusk has walked the surface of our Earth Mother, and Dawn is a seed newly emerging from her womb. Yet there is this moment every morning and every evening when they are one and the same.

Every day our wives go about their tasks in the village, and our husbands leave for field and forest, but, like Dawn and Dusk, we begin and end each day with a kiss. Thus do our families and our village grow and prosper.

The image of your candle flame is burned into my mind. I still see it flickering on your forehead like a third eye looking back at me. Even behind closed lids I see it, feel your gaze.

I should get up soon, go to the sewing kit and stitch my costume for the day. The basket lies open near the bed – some dusty spools are mine, but many more are yours. The ghost of the flame still lingers, fitting the shape of a needle’s eye. I stare through it, knowing it to be a portal through which time will resume as soon as a thread is chosen and is passed through. Just a moment for my pulse to slow to the rhythm of your breath, those deliberate waves that draw me deeper into the blankets.

Cruel, cold floor – the slightest touch of my foot against it would connect me with this house, the entire estate, and some role it demands I play. A map of our villa is in a drawer somewhere in the room – a tailor’s pattern, a blueprint, an unfinished dream. I recall sketching lines on the parchment, but now it seems much of the handwriting is yours. You’ve made everything new, novel, perennially under construction. And yet under the blankets, where you turn to nuzzle your back into me, all seems timeless and familiar. On paper, in sunlight, every line was straight and square, correct. Too correct. Now, under moonlit shadows, the geometry is organic, conforming to each of your curves.

My thoughts have disturbed a ball of yarn in the basket. It tumbles out, and the kitten gives chase. I don’t recall your having a cat, but there she is, the mighty hunter toying with her prey. Her forehead is branded with the candle flame in my mind, like an Egyptian hieroglyph of the All-Seeing Eye. The kitty is even more Eastern than that – Siamese, I should think, judging from the turquoise and emerald of her eyes, matching the satins and sequins that wrap my love.

The fuzzy ball escapes through the balcony door. The cat pursues, after glancing back to confirm my attention hasn’t drifted. But I’m not anxious to fling open the blankets and release nocturnal warmth. I can follow her, anyway, in the theater of my mind.

Pussy is in my studio, where I spent so many years sculpting my hopes of you, my fingers penetrating deep in moist clay, my nostrils filled with the scent of earth. My hands delighted in anticipating your shape. Busts fill the shelves, statues line the walls – the stove eyes still glow atop the oven where I baked my models. Every one came short of you, though, draining of life as it dried. It must be the eyes. I sculpted a hollow in each to catch a shadow – it works, but only if I stand a little distance away. What’s that about cakes – why can’t I hold my love and look at her, too? My ceramic faces look through me to you, and crack, disenchanted now with their artist.

Feline fur whispers through the door. She’s become larger, a lynx. Though she doesn’t turn to demand I follow, it’s no accident that her tail is flipped so high. She’s in the gardens. The estate is studded with them – the baroque, the labyrinth, the orchard – and I’ve strolled through every one, though they seem to shift about and are impossible to embroider on my map. The bouncing ball has disappeared, lost. Or has it multiplied, become the fruit dangling in the branches like your delicious ideas? The lynx poses beneath the trees, waiting for me to choose one and give it a toss. The puzzle is to pick which citrus is yours and which mine, but I know the trick, and sniff for that with the sweetest, juiciest breath.

I’ve won the game but disturbed birds roosting in the trees where the fruit had been – they flutter out in a blaze of Amazon colors, the lynx watching with more than interest. I could swear she said, “Aye, sir, I’ll try you in the labyrinth next,” and she pulls my arm round her shoulder to carry me there.

The flickering wings settle as torches to light lush halls of tall hedges that are decidedly yours. A flame meets my eye wherever I turn, and lures my hand irresistibly to pierce inside. Its soul feels as wet on my skin as it does warm.

The lynx prowls on, but I stop before each corridor to listen. The wind rustles twigs into the clacking of a million little spider legs knitting their webs, and if the way is blocked somewhere around a bend the breeze is trapped, and resonates with whistles and hums of things you shouldn’t have to tell me, that I should just know. I’ve learned to avoid such paths, and choose instead the quiet ways, those you’ve forgotten were open or don’t know so well, even if all these halls are yours. The passages house thieving bunnies which take caution against the lynx, and sometimes darker, grumbling shadows and stains. Well, a few little beasties haunt my own caverns, too, and it’s best not to pester such creatures, to trust another day’s sunlight to burn them away.

So I escape your labyrinth, though leaving groomed green paths for dark jungle seems more going deeper than emerging. The torches spark and disperse as prisms woven into a veil of mist, shimmering in vines that smell of my angel’s hair. Having grown to respect my triumphs in her tests, the cat has matured more potent, a jungle feline, though before I can tell what kind she disappears with two graceful bounds into the bush, a fading shadow daring me to find her. I do still sense her behind the chaos of birdcalls, screaming insects, and alien cries that fill the forest; she’s there as surely as the sun is somewhere beyond the fog.

I choose the one constant – the song of a river threading through mangrove roots. Its chorus gradually increases to a crescendo at the base of a waterfall. A thousand eyes push me up its channeling rocks, the cascade washing my back so clear that my heart is revealed, throbbing like a red sun. Easily I claw to the summit – our balcony overlooking the rainforest – and notice your kitten-paw slippers beside the bed. Somewhere under the mound of blankets is the spring, the source of all that moisture.

The sewing kit still lies open. I squint through the needle’s eye, deciding which uniform, what version of me best says to you, “It is I.” But animal magic begins to reveal the moon whole under the shadow of its crescent, and my lids open full. I find your eye peeking over the pillow, flickering the scantily coded message, “Need you get dressed just yet? The candle is still lit.”

A dove should be nesting at this late hour, but there she is, flitting about as if crazed by the full moon. Like a moth drawn to a candle, she tries to reach the silvery orb, only to drop exhausted from the sky – the reflection is farther away than it appears. Again and again she falls from light into shadow, till I see her no more.

I’ve lifted my own dove in this very same glow, produced by blue gels over stage lights, when dancing a pas de deux with Lacy, my ballerina of many seasons. But that was in the past – I’m on duty now, in the back parking lot of a church in urban Atlanta.

The police are tidying up their report just a few blocks away. Next of kin known, but disinterested – the little crack-whore is destined for the paupers’ cemetery which runs downhill from the prison, just above the landfill. Her drama will soon be covered over by the light of the moon. I think of it as a hunters’ moon – I avoid claiming that it actually contributes to lunacy with the pragmatic observation that the bad guys can simply see their targets better. It’s just risen above a branch of that oak against the fence, as if the tree were raising a lantern to reveal the world for which I am responsible.

I seek to recover strength behind Israel Baptist Church, sitting in the cruiser assigned to me as EMS lieutenant for the southern half of the county. The child around the corner is dead, beyond recovery. As I approached, the cop had lifted pencil from clipboard just enough to indicate the door to a toolshed – a sure sign that his most pressing concern was to avoid contaminating a crime scene. The moonlight that could penetrate the one greasy window took a moment before revealing a little black girl collapsed over her knees like a Muslim at prayer, her forehead to the concrete. I had no real hope that the dark pool running from beneath her to the floor drain might be oil. Her skin was the temperature of the night, and my fingers discovered only the wound in her neck – the heartbeat had gone out with her blood, it had been a while since her last sigh.

I wanted to do more for her – at least give her the dignity of pulling her pants up from around her knees. But once death is confirmed it is indeed a crime scene. The medical emergency is over – just cancel the ambulance and fire crews who are en route, and disturb nothing for fear of cheating CSI technicians of their booty. I’ve no more duty to her – only to the file cabinet, providing a medical report to supplement the police documentation. The cop knew her name, having picked her up a few times as a child out too late and loitering at the wrong corner.

The church parking lot is empty, save for me. A few hours earlier it had been filled. They call it choir practice, but at an urban gospel church on a Saturday night surely throats were filled with the same passion and joy as will be shared with the congregation in the morning. Worship that waxes and wanes as does the moon – their song will rise again with the sun. It’s a hot night, but the cool blue of the moonlight makes everything in this world gleam as if from a light within, a landscape under a summer snow.

The peace belies the neighborhood. Somewhere in the shadows nearby is the monster who thought her life worth less than the coins she’d asked for her service. I don’t know that devil, though it’s easy to recognize others – I can diagnose a patient’s drug of choice by the personality of the demon who’s taken him over. There’s a corner suckling at liquor, a whole block loiters with marijuana and hashish, but the nearest intersection is the haunt of crack cocaine, her pushers and her whores.

The girl was fourteen. Her skin had become ashen upon releasing her dove, no moisture left in her body to give it a sheen. Her voice is silenced forever, her dove flung into darkness, with only my prayers to lift her to the light. Maybe that’s why I think of Lacy – she was about this age when I first danced with her.

My virginal Lacy – she danced the Snow Pas de Deux clad all in white and glowing in the stage lights. I appeared in white, too, when I danced with her, my partnering an act of worship of Beauty become corporeal. During this dance our legs grew cold from the dry ice machine rolling a heavy fog over the stage – I can imagine how that felt to the snowflake dancers when they finally found order, forming two columns and bowing deep into the mist. Approaching the final crescendo, I carried Lacy overhead in promenade between them, and paused at center stage. I could feel her leg stretch just a bit higher above me in arabesque, even feel her wrists pulse the last waves of music before the curtain. Nothing so lovely could be real, but there she was, living, perched on my hand as if I’d plucked her from the heavens to present her almost within reach of the first row. As the music receded I could hear the audience draw in the vision with their breath.

Movement in the shadows under the tree catches my eye, but it’s only a breeze stirring dead leaves. Where in the debris has that dove fallen? I would brush away the ashes of the world into which this little spirit was born and, like that oak lifting the moon above the shadows, present her to the heavens, asking God to receive back this child. I can’t save them all – I know that. The choir must rest its voice in the stillness before sunrise, but I search for the prayer that could find the lost dove. No words come – what rises from my heart is a vision of Lacy circling cautiously till she takes my hand, and trusts me to lift her into the lights. I have touched Beauty. I am ready for the next call.

The cartwright’s wife had no wood left for the fireplace before which her guest could warm his limbs as her dinner had warmed his stomach. Her visitor, a hermit who had settled just beyond the city walls to bring the message of Christ to Nuremberg’s poor, told her to fetch icicles outside from the eaves and cast them into the fire. Obedient to the missionary hermit, she was soon astonished to see her icicles blaze as if oaken tinder.

The hermit, Sebald, who was later recognized as the patron saint of Nuremberg, visited this same family on another occasion, and expressed a taste for fish. Unfortunately, the lord of the city had just passed an edict that no one would be allowed this dish until the castle was first provided. When it was discovered that the cartwright was in violation for the sake of his guest, the lord had his eyes put out. This ruler should perhaps have considered that the breach was for the sake of Sebald – all the town knew of a man who had once heckled the hermit while he preached, knew that Sebald had called the ground to open and swallow him whole. But no such punishment came to the lord, as it was not the gospel in Sebald’s mouth to which he objected, but only the fish in his belly – the hermit simply restored the cartwright’s vision.

                                                     *    *    *                                          

I learned this lore of St. Sebald while living in Nuremberg, where a gothic cathedral fixes him in the city’s memory. His body rests in a silver casket within an iron shrine built by Peter Vischer, east of the altar. Like all such churches in Europe, the exterior of Sebaldskirche (the church of St. Sebald) is darkened by the modern city air. Stone saints imbedded in its walls cast stern eyes on the world’s corruption, and demons trained as gargoyles hold others of their kind at bay. The cathedral doesn’t seem meant to bring a presence into this world, but rather to carve out a protected space inside. Its inner skin does show some stain – the graffiti of privileged families hawking their names, resembling the faded tatoos of once nubile women whose concepts of beauty have been profaned by the world. However, in from the walls, the holiness of the place is palpable.

I felt instinctively that Sebaldskirche is the spiritual heart of the city, even before learning of the patron saint. I was thus excited to notice a placard one day which announced an Angels’ Choir Concert to be held in the early evening. I’d absorbed much of the instrumental music that flows continuously throughout this city, but very little choral work.

And sundown is the perfect time to be in the sanctuary. There are two rows of pink sandstone columns which branch at the top, creating quite the sense of a woodland clearing with its canopy of tree limbs. The sandstone is quarried from Nuremberg’s own bedrock, and catches the sunset from the west window perfectly. With the rosy glow augmented by flickering candlelight, one feels himself to be at a timeless forest campfire – as all these stone cathedrals are cool like the earth beneath the frost line, it’s a welcome, warming impression.

I learned at least one architectural term that evening – it seems that an Angels’ Choir is not a collection of heavenly voices, but rather the balcony high up in the west between the two towers. The music was actually a string quartet, the performers positioned against the railing. The audience, too, was required to ascend the spiraling staircase and take seat in the balcony, which was much deeper than would be imagined.

It was well worth the climb. Before I had only known Sebaldskirche from a perspective on its stone floor. The columns, statuary, alcoves – all enhance the sense of forest clutter, in which the space marked as one’s campsite fades indefinitely into the woods with the bonfire light. But from the balcony high above one sees the perfect order of the architect’s vision of sanctuary. I had not imagined this space held so much light.

I had already realized that it was time for me to move away from this medieval city when I saw another placard at Sebaldskirche. Something about a meditation – the sign’s language was too complex for my skill – but again I anticipated music of a very gentle sort. After all, Pachelbel himself had once been organist in this very church. But I’d forgotten how literal the Germans are – this was indeed to simply be meditation. A score or so drifted into the sanctuary alone or in pairs. The host acknowledged each arrival by striking his hand-held chime, its voice a crisp, wintery tone inviting each to take a seat for silent prayer.

The feeling of Nuremberg leaving my heart became increasingly like a placenta pulling itself away from the womb, cramping in my gut so hard that I moved from my pew to sit on the stone floor, my back against one of the columns. No sunset light, and what candles there were barely lit the space in which I sat, above and around me only darkness.

But the host insisted I move my limbs – we were to take our meditation to different stations throughout the church. Like a stray dog, I followed the line of native citizens up the spiral of the south tower, endlessly, so high that many were winded. The weight of my own legs increased with every step as if affixed to a cable, hauling more and more flagstones up from the floor below. We finally halted on a tower platform, and with the thinness of the air everyone easily recovered the meditative state. All but me, my feet still objecting to stepping away from the town I’d come to know in these past years, to walk into an unknown future.

We were ushered through a door onto a narrow rim around the outside of the tower, high above the old city. Familiar streets, the river, restaurants where I’d met friends so often – I had drifted above them, separated, it seemed, forever, as if I were already in the airliner that would be taking me away. Again we paused to meditate. No words were ever spoken – our guide used his chime to announce the beginning and end of our movements. Nonetheless I felt I had only a migrant’s understanding of the language used in this place.

Evidently our pilgrimage was timed to bring us here on the hour, for the bell in the opposite tower began to dong. So massive a sound, the north tower found a harmonic with which to sway, and in a moment the ledge which suspended our legs so high above the cobblestones began also to weave. It was here I realized that my grief was visible to others in the group, that they were allowing me distance for the wind to clear it away. A human touch might have drained my heart straightaway, but this was not forthcoming.

Not until the tones rippled away were we allowed to leave the ledge and partially descend the tower. I’d left much behind, was lighter because empty. Our host showed the entrance to an attic – I hadn’t known that this space existed between the roof and the sanctuary ceiling, but it was quite large. We found our places along wooden walks for this station. The ceiling below appeared as rows of cement dunes – odd that from heaven’s perspective the holy sanctuary looked to be under primitive burial mounds.

A pilgrimage always ends where it began, the place changed not in what is there but in who we have become. And so we returned to the sanctuary to embed the experience in our souls. My heart felt blank, but light enough to smile with the hope that what I’d given to the air outside the tower hadn’t added to the pollution darkening the walls of Sebaldskirche.

How like a church is the human psyche, separated from heaven and buried in the earth below. And yet within the walls there is a sacred space full of light, the seed of Deity. Little deaths and big, yet always I emerge, empty but restored, ready to go through those doors out into the next world. The meditation was at end, and I grew restless. The past life finally surrendered to winter, its icicles in my heart have flickered into flames – the hermit’s gift warming me in remembering Nuremberg.

The two aged scientists were alone in the observatory. It was quite late, although the hour was irrelevant when using the uplink to a telescope suspended in Earth orbit. Perhaps they were too old to change their ways.

“Let’s see – 11:15 PM. What would that be in sidereal time?” Steve asked.

“17.32156 hours, today.” Joyce checked the orientation of the telescope, clicked a bit on her computer, and called out the rotation figures.

Steve fetched champagne glasses from a drawer while they waited for the telescope to execute the command. They turned their attention to the monitor. The planet was so far away that it took almost twenty years for the light reflected from it to reach the lens and be transmitted back to Earth. But their equipment snapped pictures so quickly that they were effectively watching live video of the planet’s past.

“Focus in at that lake in the northeast quadrant,” Joyce instructed. “There…”

Joyce and Steve could see what was obviously a group of living humanoids enjoying what appeared in every respect to be an old fashioned Sunday afternoon picnic.

“Here we are,” said Steve, and popped the cork. “We’ll make history on this day.”

“Teens at a lake shore,” Joyce observed. “Yes, I can hear the news vans filling the parking lot now, come to beg for our footage.”

“What a handsome boy standing there underneath the tree, proving our theory. You bet. MTV will probably pirate this video and make a rock icon of him.”

“They will want to wash him up a bit first. What – is that chocolate smeared all over his face?”

“Give the kid a break, Joyce. He’s wiping it off.”

“Oh, and his species has discovered napkins, too. I had feared for his sleeve.”

“When he’s fixed his eyes on that pixie over by the table? Oh, she is a little darling, isn’t she? Were you ever that skinny?”

Joyce pushed at his chair with her foot, but only caused her own chair to roll away. Steve cautioned her, “Careful, dear – I don’t know how well our insurance covers hip replacement.”

Joyce returned to the monitor. “She is cute. I don’t know, though – is he studying her, or the food set out behind her? Look how he’s wolfing down that cake – I don’t know how he can even taste it for worrying about what’s still on the table.”

“He looks like a clever young man – he may be trying to decide if she knows how to bake.”

Joyce said, “I don’t think she made the cake. Aren’t those crumbs of chocolate on her plate, too? Look – there’s still a slice left on the table. Is that devil’s food?”

“Devil’s food? The girl or the cake?” Steve asked. “Oh, it does look good. If that frosting were any thicker it would just slide down onto the platter. Uh oh – look, he’s turning to her. I think he’s making his move.”

“My turn to ask,” said Joyce, “His move on the girl or on the cake? Look how he’s stepping between her and the platter.”

“He wouldn’t bother to wipe his mouth if he were after more cake.”

“He is talking to her. But I don’t know,” she said. “A smooth operator like him would know that a girl could never take a second slice with someone watching her.”

Steve said, “Oh, but there’s always someone watching.” The two astrophysicists exchanged knowing smiles. “Look – what’s he saying to her?”

“Like I can hear from halfway across the universe. Well, I’ll try to read his lips. Hmm… something… look at him motion to the sky with his arm – do you think he knows he’s being watched?”

“He’s telling her that their love is written in the stars,” Steve said.

“Every boy tells every girl that,” said Joyce. “Look, she’s dropping her chin to hide a grin. She’s not buying it.”

“You’re interpreting the data too quickly. Would disbelief make her pink-up like that? Such a pretty face. But a girl who wears white to a picnic – does she look like a young rocket scientist to you? Look, look – he’s reaching for it.”

“For the cake, I hope, and not her,” said Joyce. “He’s going to leave chocolate fingerprints on anything he touches. Oh, look in the eyes of that hungry beast – he’s frightening.”

“Come here, let me put my arms around you. I won’t let that monster get you.”

“Wait,” she said, “No time for kissing. What’s he doing? See – he’s picked up the cake knife.”

“What do you think, Joyce? Are her charms so wanting that he’s taking the last piece for himself, or will the young gentleman serve it to her?

Suddenly the voice of the observatory director broke in from behind them. “Are my two senior scientists making history again.” Studying their monitor, he said, “Hmph. Billions of dollars of equipment – so powerful that it can look back almost to the beginning of time, back to the Big Bang itself – and you two use it to watch your own courtship reflected on the lakes of Vulcan.” But, seeing that there were only two glasses for toasting their success, he turned for the door.

Joyce whispered to Steve, “Oh, if we’re going to watch the Big Bang, we’ll need to recalibrate, and switch to infra-red.”

He replied, “Our theory is proven – every stolen kiss is recorded in the heavens.” As the director pulled the door to, Steve slid the drawer open again and pulled out a box of cherry cordials, adding, “Every secret chocolate, too.”

Robert C Flanders

all rights reserved

Sultan’s Döner
Balabar put his finger to my forehead, thumb raised in likeness of a cocked gun, and demanded, “How would it be if I shot you right now.” I’ve never seen such deadly, focused fury in a man’s eyes. And I was in a foreign land, still learning the ways of the people around me.
Friday evening began as did many in a Turkish restaurant in Nuremberg. The staff and the regulars were friends, or so I’d felt. Guli reached to clear my coffee spoon from the counter, and looked startled when I snatched it away. She couldn’t ask why, nor I explain, because the lovely young woman didn’t speak a word of German and certainly not English, nor I a syllable of her native Kurdish. She gave me a quizzical look, then returned to the booty of dinnerware she’d successfully collected in the sink behind the counter.
Guli (pronounced ‘Goo-Lie) has an unfortunate sound to English ears, but I’m told it means ‘Rose Moon.’ Working in her uncle’s café while visiting from Turkey, she obviously delights in shopping in Western stores, as she is always dressed in a manner befitting her name and not the duties of a dish maid. Cautiously I pushed the spoon across the counter toward her till a reflected sparkle caught her eye. She didn’t raise her head, but her nose twitched. When her quarry was hopelessly within range the kitten pounced, and my silver mouse was doomed to the dishpan.
Casim came in to begin his shift – a man who loves the ladies. Eight to eighty, it was all the same to him – he would hold them in conversation till they finally saw how precious they were in his eyes, and only then release them to go on their way smiling. I couldn’t wait to tell him, in the hearing of as many who could understand my German, about the lady I’d met way across town. I had a table outside a coffee shop, and because it was so crowded a Turkish woman of about our age asked whether she could take the seat opposite. Conversation eventually drifted to telling her about my café, and I showed her pictures of my friends there. When she dealt through the deck to Casim’s photo her eyes lit up and she exclaimed, “I know him.” From this day forward I will never miss the chance to call to Casim, Ich kenne ihn!
In greater numbers than usual the evening crowd drifted in, filling the tables with Kurdish men anxious to discuss politics. There was plenty to talk about because in just the past few days my country had invaded Iraq on the claim that it gave safe haven to terrorists. This café was my own haven in Nuremberg. I was always subliminally aware of being a foreigner – an Ausländer – in Germany, as were the Kurds. And nobody understands what that means as do they, made foreigners even in their own homeland in regions of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Having exile in common with me, the Kurdish community had adopted me. But the café council was conducted in their own tongue, and my German was too slow and awkward to thrust into the day’s urgent matters.
I didn’t care. I was preoccupied with Guli, wondering whether she would toy with her mercilessly cleaned prey by returning the spoon to me for the chance to reenact her triumph. ‘Rose Moon’ – the guys probably told the truth on this one, since it fits her so well. Still, I remember their teaching me sounds to parrot to Akan before he came in one day. Not that I would ever indulge in such a prank myself, but I knew not to repeat their message until the counter was between me and Akan. Fortunately he turned on his laughing comrades rather than me.
The debate behind me sometimes swelled enough to intrude on my game with Guli. Who needs language when a man’s eyes can tell a lady how lovely she is, and hers how she enjoys discovering she’s an international delight? I was only dimly aware that Balabar had become very drunk. Were my attention not diverted, I would have realized how out of character that was for him. Though he was young – about thirty – he normally had such dignity that even the elderly men listened when he spoke.
But Balabar finally commanded my attention, coming to the counter and demanding whether I thought war was a good thing. Frankly, I was happier thinking of Guli than of the current events. Still, the Kurds were our allies in the conflict, fighting shoulder to shoulder with us against the regime which had committed atrocities in their villages. I answered, “Maybe not good, but I think this one is necessary.”
I would have returned to the more pleasant diversion, but Balabar shouted something to the council in Kurdish, and gestured as if he had identified the Devil himself. He placed his finger to my forehead and demanded, “Good! How would it be if I shot you dead right now – would that be good?”
His comrades circled us – there were so many that it made the café seem dark – but they gathered him back to their table and were able to quiet him. Guli looked indecisive whether to stay at her post for my comfort or retreat to the kitchen. Mixed German and Kurdish words from Balabar’s table – no chance that I could understand the charges leveled against me. Had I lost my name and become the unwilling representative of America in this alien court? But if I left now I could never return to this little café.
In time his comrades’ balms failed Balabar, and he returned to demand the same answer from me. Again the fleshly gun to my forehead, again the mortal question. But this time several of his sturdier comrades moved my trial to recess by escorting Balabar out the door and away into the darkened streets.
On Monday I returned to the café. Not eagerly, but I recalled that the week after the World Trade Center was destroyed my parents (in their seventies) ended their debate about whether to visit me in Germany, and grimly bought tickets for the overseas holiday. I could at least venture down the street.
Casim was the only one there in the late afternoon. I asked him whether Balabar was dangerous, and received a delayed shrug which said Casim only knew that he damn well could be. He left me alone to drink my coffee quietly.
And as if paged, Balabar came in. He took a seat at the far end of the counter and talked quietly with Casim for a long while. Just when it became obvious I was the subject of their conversation Casim returned to me. He said, “Balabar wants to admit treating you unfairly, and wants to know if he can buy you a raki.”
Raki is a Turkish liquor, much too strong for my taste, but this was not a drink to be turned down. Casim set the glass before me, and when I accepted it Balabar came to take the stool beside me. He said no more than to repeat that he had treated me unfairly the other night. When I offered my glass in solute he touched his to mine.
We each made a long, minute study of the counter before us. Finally I tested, “Have you lost someone to the war?”
“My sister. ” His answer did not come easily. “She was killed in a bombing on Friday.”
The knowledge and the raki burned in my throat. I let the minutes eliminate the question of which side had dropped the bomb. Instead I asked, “What is her name?”
“Nesrin.”
The liquor was going to my forehead. I returned to my examination of the counter, allowing the dignity of privacy for his wet eyes. Guli came out from the kitchen. Had she been carrying anything it would have been dropped when she saw the two of us drinking together.
Though neither Balabar nor I was fluent in our intermediate language of German, I managed, “What is she like?”
“She leaves children behind.” He seemed to be replaying a film in his mind, but finally told me what he saw, “She was always finding something to laugh about.”
How could I share his pain without the insult of stealing it? All I found to say was, “I will remember Nesrin.” I have no picture to offer in honoring this promise, but this is how I remember her cousin, Rose Moon:

The names in this history have been changed to honor my friends in their own language, remembering that only recently Turkey repealed the law that had made it illegal to give a child a Kurdish name. It is, however, impossible to substitute any other for Guli’s name.

Robert C. Flanders